Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

The deaf man must carry this world of silence about with him always, and it leads him into strange performances. I know a deaf man who went to a church service. He could hear nothing of the sermon, but he felt something of the glory of worship, and when the congregation stood up to sing my deaf friend felt that here was where he could help.

“Just as I am, without one plea,” announced the preacher, and the deaf man’s wife found the place in the hymn book. He sang along with the rest and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, one of the penalties of the Silent Country is that its inhabitants can rarely keep in step with the crowd. My friend did not realize that at the end of each verse the organist was expected to play a short interlude before the next verse started. There has never seemed to me to be any reason for these ornamental musical flourishes; they merely keep us from getting on with our singing.

The deaf man knew nothing of all this. He was there to finish the singing of that hymn. It is a habit of the deaf to go straight to the end, since there is no reason why they should stop to listen. So he started in on the second verse as all the rest were marking time through that useless interlude, and he sang a solo:

“Just as I am, and waiting not!”

He sang with all his power, he was in good voice and his heart was full of the glory of the service. He was never a singer at best, and the voice of a deaf person is never musical. This hard, metallic voice cut into that interlude much like the snarl of a buzz saw. His wife tried to stop him, but he could not quite get the idea, and he sang on. It is rather a curious commentary on the slavery to habit which most intelligent human beings willingly assume that this one earnest man, just as little out of step, nearly destroyed the inspiration of that church service. The unconscious solo would have taken all the worship from the hearts of that congregation had it not been for the quick-witted organist.

Some human beings have risen to the mental capacity of animals in understanding and conveying a form of unspoken language. It may be “instinct,” “intuition,” or what you will, but in some way they are able to convey their meaning without words. I have found many such people in the world of silence. The organist possessed this power. Before the deaf man had sung five words she had stopped playing her interlude, had caught the time of what he was singing, and was signaling the choir to join her. By the time they reached the end of the second line at “one dark spot” the entire congregation was singing as though nothing had happened. The minister, too, sensed the situation, for at the end of the verse, before the deaf man could make another start, he said:

“Let us pray.” And the incident was happily closed.

As I look about me in the world of silence and see some of the sad blunders of my fellows, I feel that in their poor way they illustrate something of the life tragedy which often engulfs the reformer. The deaf man does not know or has forgotten that those who are blessed with good hearing do not and cannot go straight to the mark. Much of their time is wasted on useless “interludes” or ornamental flourishes which mean nothing in work or worship. This man at the church, while his heart was full, could only think of getting that hymn through, earnestly, lovingly, and without loss of time. He may have had more true worship in his heart than any other member of the congregation, but he dropped just a little out of form, and he quickly became a ridiculous nuisance. The truth is, if you did but know it, that some of your clumsy efforts to keep step with so-called fashionable people make you far more ridiculous than those of us who fall out of step. Nature never intended your big feet for dancing, but, because others dance, you must try it.

Your reformer broods over his mission until it becomes a part of his life, a habit which he cannot break. He reaches a position where he cannot compromise, sidestep or wait patiently. He goes ahead and never waits for “interludes,” which most of us must put in between efforts at “reform.” The rest of the world cannot follow him. He becomes a “crank,” a “nut,” or an “old stick,” because he cannot stop with the crowd and play with the theory of reform, but must push on with all his soul. It seems to us who look out upon the aimless procession moving before us that an average man feels that he cannot “succeed” unless he stops at command and plays the petty games of society; he has sold himself into the slavery of habit and fashion, though he knows how poor and trivial they may be. This is bad enough, but it is worse to see scores of people fastening the handcuffs on their children. Now and then the organist has visions which show her what to do, and she swings the great congregation to the deaf man’s lead. Unhappily there are few such organists.

It is strange, indeed, when you come to consider it, that two worlds, separated only by sound, lie side by side and yet so far apart. You cannot understand our life, and perhaps at times you shudder at the thought of how narrow our lives have been made. We who have known sound and lost it have learned to find substitutes, and we often wonder that you narrow your own lives by making such trivial and ignoble use of sound as we see you doing. Fate has narrowed our lives, and we have been forced to broaden them by seeking the larger thoughts. You, it often seems to us, straiten your own lives by dwelling with the smaller things of existence.