OTHER: While we have but one voice room, we have two hearing rooms or passages, and they are the most wonderful of any you ever did see. One is placed on each side of the head.
Elmer: Those are the ears, I know. Please let us send a sound through them, mother, and you tell us what it finds.
Mother: Very well; and we will suppose this sound has eyes as well as a tongue, and it will tell us what it sees. Now listen:—
All sounds are made of such tiny waves, so very, very small, that you can never see them, yet they are something like those you see when you throw a stone into the pond. The first thing a sound finds when it wishes to visit the master of the body-house, is a pretty porch just outside of the passage made for it to enter.
“Something like a shell.”
Amy: What does it look like?
Mother: Something like a shell, and it is a pretty, pale pink color. I suppose it was made this shape so it can catch and hold sound; for I have seen some people living in old houses put up their hand to make the porch larger so they could hear better.
Percy: I have often seen grandfather do that, but I never knew why before.
Mother: Each sound finds a little door, which always stands open, and, though it is very small, the sound finds no trouble to get inside. This part of the passage is covered with sticky yellow wax, which is there to keep out anything which should try to go in except different kinds of sounds.