Then came the reception committee on the run for me, for my time on the program had come and the speaker who was to hold the stage until I came had already repeated part of his speech three times. The barber finished shaving me, and I went my way; but I shall always remember my Irish singer and his philosophy.
“A man in trouble must either laugh or die.”
CHAPTER XIII
Silence Not Always Golden
Looking Wise and Saying Nothing—Passing Encouragement Around—The Critic and the Short Skirts—The “Lion” and the Honest Deaf Man—How Reputation and the Deaf Man Overtook the Hon. Robt. Grey—The Simultaneous Blessings at the Dinner-table—Jealousy and Mrs. Brewster.
It has been said of a Cape Cod man that if he will tell where he comes from, look wise and say nothing, he will pass as a person of fine intellect. Much the same is true of the deaf man. He is too apt to talk all the time, or else to say nothing—and sometimes he does both at once. Many of us betray the shoals of our mind and our shallow waters of thought by talking too much. The Yankee is naturally inquisitive. He has injured his position in history by asking too many useless questions. Unfortunately, this is also the failing of too many of the deaf. Instead of realizing that the choicest bits of conversation are reserved for them, they persist in trying to borrow the dross. Cardinal Wolsey’s outburst of bitter self-reproach would be a valuable memory gem for us:
“I charge thee, fling away ambition.
By that crime fell the angels.”
Here we must part with the foolish ambition to deal in small talk. The surest way for us to become social nuisances is constantly to demand the details of current conversation, and some of our worst embarrassments come when some well-meaning, loud-voiced person diligently relays to us the trivial remarks. For be it known that the bubbles of words which work up from the feeble fermenting of shallow thoughts are usually stale and unprofitable. And many a deaf person has passed an hour of agony in company smiling and pretending to enjoy conversation which might as well be carried on in Europe, as far as his understanding goes. A student of lip-reading can find much amusing practice in such situations, but it is far better for the rest of us to say frankly that we cannot hear the talk, and then retire from the field with a book.