The World of Silence Uncharted—Two Initial Incidents, Darkness in the Tunnel, and at Home—Imaginary Terrors of the Deaf—When John Harlow Thought He Was a Murderer.

For some years I have considered writing a book concerning the life of the deaf or the “hard of hearing.” It is hard to understand why our peculiar and interesting life in the silent world has not been more fully recorded. We read of adventures in strange lands, far away, yet here is a stranger country close by, with its mysteries and miseries uncharted. Having lived in this silent world for some years, I have often planned to make an effort to describe it. However, like many other writers, I could not get going. I was not able to start my story until two rather unusual incidents spurred me into action.

Those of you who know industrial New York understand how the vast army of commuters is rushed to the city each day and rushed home again at night. From New Jersey alone a crowd of men and women larger by far than the entire population of the State of Vermont is carried to the banks of the Hudson from a territory sixty miles in diameter. Once at the river bank there are two ways by which these commuters may reach the city. They may float over in the great ferryboats, or they may dive under the river in rapid trains driven through a tube far below the water. This submarine travel is the quicker and more popular way, and during the rush hours the great tunnel makes one think of a mighty tube of vaseline or tooth paste with a giant hand squeezing a thick stream of humanity out of the end.

I reach the Hudson over the Erie Railroad. At this point the underground tube makes a wide curve inland, and in order to get to the trains we must walk through a long concrete cave far underground. The other morning several trains arrived at the Erie station together, and their passengers were all dumped into this cave like grain poured into a long sack. There was a solid mass of humanity slowly making its way to the end. The city worker naturally adapts himself to a crowd. He at once becomes an organized part of it. Take a thousand countrymen, each from the wide elbow room of his farm, and throw them together in a mass and they would trample each other in a panic. The city crowd, as long as it can be kept good-natured, will march on in orderly fashion; but let it once be overcome by fear, and it will be more uncontrolled than the throngs of countrymen.

This cave is brilliantly lighted, and we were moving on in orderly procession, without thought of danger. We would move forward perhaps 50 feet and then halt for a moment—to move ahead once more. During one of these halts I looked about me. At my right was a group of giggling girls; at my left a white-faced, nervous man; behind, a lame man, and in front two great giants in blouse and overalls. I was close by the change booth. A slight, pale-faced young woman sat within; the piles of money in front of her. A husky, rough-looking man was offering a bill to be changed. I saw it all, and as I looked, in an instant the lights flashed out and left us in inky darkness.

I have been left in dark, lonely places where I groped about without touching a human being, but it was far more terrifying to stand in that closely packed crowd and to realize what would happen in case of a panic. I reached out my hand and could touch a dozen people, but I could hear no sound. Suppose these silly girls were to scream; suppose this man at my elbow were to yell “Fire!” as fools have often done in such crowds. Suppose that man at the booth reached in, strangled the girl and swept the money out. At any of these possible alarms that orderly crowd in the dark might change to a wild mob, smashing and trampling its way back to the entrance, as uncontrollable as the crazy herds of cattle I had seen in Western stampedes. The deaf man thinks quickly at such times, and in the black silence dangers are magnified. The deaf are usually peculiar in their mental make-up; most of them have developed the faculty of intuition into a sense, and they can quickly grasp many situations which the average man would hardly imagine.

But there was no scream or call of alarm. After what seemed to me half an hour of intense living, the lights flashed back and the big clock at the end of the cave, solemnly ticking the time away, showed us that we had been less than 50 seconds in darkness. With a good-natured laugh the crowd moved on. Those girls had had no thought of screaming. They were more interested in the group of young men behind them. That nervous man, whom I had thought trembling with fright, had been laughing at the joke. The rough-looking man, whom my fancy had painted as a possible murderer and thief, had been standing before that money like a faithful dog on guard. There had been danger of a panic, and I had sensed it, but most of my companions had thought of nothing except the joke of being held up for a moment. They were happier for their lack of imagination.

At home I started to tell our people about it. The baby sat on my knee. She had my knife in her hand, paring an apple. Mother sat by the table sewing, and the children were scattered about the room. Suddenly the lights snapped out. I put up my hand just in time to catch the knife as the baby swung her arm at my face. And there we sat, waiting for the lights to return. There was no fear, for we knew each other. There was faith in that darkness; there could be no panic. I could hear no sound, yet the baby curled up close to me and all was well. Darkness is the worst handicap for the deaf. Give them light and they can generally manage; but, in the dark, without sound, they are helpless, and unless they are blessed with strong faith and philosophy, imagination comes and prints a series of terror pictures for them which you with your dependable hearing can hardly realize.

These incidents gave me my start by bringing to my mind the story of John Harlow, curiously typical of the imaginary terrors of the deaf and the folly of giving way to them. John Harlow was a New England man. He had all the imagination and all the narrow prejudice of his class; he had never traveled west of his own corner of the nation, and he was deaf. The man who carries this combination of qualities about with him is booked for trouble whenever he gets out among new types of people. Part of the Harlow property was invested in land lying in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and it became necessary for John to go there, to look up titles and investigate agents.

About all the average New Englander of that day knew of that mountain country was that it seemed to be the stage on which bloody family feuds were fought out. The Atlantic Monthly had printed stories by Charles Egbert Craddock, and they were accepted as true pictures of mountain life. John Harlow should have known that the New Englanders and the mountaineers are alike the purest in real American blood, and that they must have many traits in common; but he went South with the firm conviction that life in the mountains must be one long tragedy of ambuscades and murders.

When a deaf man gets such ideas in mind, imagination prints them in red ink, because the deaf must brood over their fears and troubles. They cannot lighten the mind with music or aimless conversation. So when Harlow left the train at a little mountain hamlet he was not surprised to find his agent a tall, solemn-eyed man, with a long gray beard; a typical leader in the family feud, as the Boston man had pictured it. Harlow mounted the buckboard beside this silent mountaineer, and they drove off into the mountains just as the dusky shadows were beginning to creep down into the little nooks and valleys. As soon as this man found that John was deaf he drove on in silence, glancing at his companion now and then with that kindly awe with which simple people generally regard the deaf.

It was quite dark when they reached a small “cove” or opening in which stood a large house, with the usual farm buildings around it; the forest crept close to the barn at one point. It struck John that the buildings were arranged in the form of a fort, but what a chance had been left for the enemy to creep up through the woods and suddenly fall upon them! After supper John stood at the window watching the moon lift itself over the mountain and go climbing up the sky. There came to his mind the description of just such a moonrise, from one of Craddock’s stories, where a group of mountaineers came creeping over the hill to fall upon the home of their enemy. As he stood there he became aware that the whole family was making preparations for what seemed to him like defense. The women came and pulled down the curtains, and one of the boys went out and closed the heavy shutters. His host came and tried to explain, but Harlow was nervous, and it is hard to make the deaf hear at such times. All that he could catch were scattered words or parts of sentences. “We are waiting for them.” “They will be here by nine o’clock.” “There is a pistol for you.” “They have done us great damage.” “We must kill them tonight.”

Then the lights were put out, and even the great fire in the fireplace was dimmed; a rug was thrown over the crack under the door, and they all sat there—waiting. John Harlow, the deaf man, will never forget that scene. The little splinter of light from the fire revealed the stern old man and his three sons waiting, gun in hand, and the women sitting by the table, knitting mechanically in the dimness—all listening for the coming of the enemy. By the door lay two large dogs, alert and watchful. And Harlow, pulled from a comfortable place in Boston and suddenly made a part of this desperate family quarrel, did not even know what it was all about. He started twice to demand an explanation in the loud, harsh tones of the deaf, but the older man quickly waved him to silence.

How long they sat in that dim light Harlow cannot tell. He never thought to look at his watch. Suddenly the dogs lying by the door started up with low growls and bristling hair.

“Here they are,” said the old man; “now get ready.”

He thrust a pistol into John’s hand and took him by the arm as the boys silently opened the door and passed out with the dogs. John found himself following. In the moonlight they crept along the shadow of the buildings out to the point where the woods crawled in almost to the barn. There the old man crept off to one side. For the moment the moon was obscured by a passing cloud. Then its light burst upon them, and John from his hiding-place distinctly saw three forms crawling slowly across the grassy field to the back of the barn. In the clear moonlight he could distinguish three white faces, peering through the deep grass. They would move slowly forward a few feet, and then halt, apparently to listen. The deaf man in this strange, lonely place, thought he saw three desperate men making their way to the barn buildings. This very thing had been described in one of the stories he had read; three mountaineers had crawled slowly through the grass to set fire to the barn. And it came to John’s mind that these three white-faced fiends were creeping up to burn down this home and then shoot down its occupants by the light from the burning! The nearest crawler came slowly to within two rods of John and raised his head to look about him. As viewed in the moonlight it seemed a hideous face, hardly human in its aspect.

John Harlow was a man of peace, and he had been cursing himself for having been brought into this neighborhood quarrel. It was none of his business, he told himself, but the sight of this cowardly wretch crawling up like a snake to fire the buildings was too much for Boston reserve, and John raised his pistol, took aim at that hateful white face and pulled the trigger. The figure seemed to throw itself in the air at the shot, and then it lay quiet, the ghastly face still in the moonlight.

As John fired there came a sharp volley from the other buildings, and the two other shapes lay still. A cloud passed over the moon, and through the darkness, feeling himself a murderer, John found his way back to the house, where the women were waiting with eager faces. They lighted the lamps once more and the men came tramping back, to hang their guns on the wall. They were all in great spirits, and the old man came to John’s chair and with much shouting and waving his hands, made the deaf man understand.

“You made a great shot. Got him right between the eyes. We got them all laid out on the grass—come out and see them.”

But John did not want to see these dead men! He was a murderer. He had killed a man, perhaps an innocent stranger who had never done him wrong. It was frightful, but even the women insisted that he come, so with his eyes shut John permitted himself to be drawn out to the hateful spot where those dead bodies were lying.

“There’s the one you got!” roared a voice in his ear.

“You must be a dead shot—look at him; see how white he is!”

And Harlow opened his eyes, expecting to see a picture which could never be erased from memory. There were the dead bodies on the grass before him in the lantern light. There were three big skunks with more than the usual amount of white about their faces and backs!

Harlow gazed at them, and his paralyzed mind slowly came back to normal working order. And then the light came. He had not taken part in any family feud. No one had tried to kill him. The people of that section were as kindly neighbors as any he had ever had in Boston. For some weeks the skunks had been stealing chickens, and the family had organized this successful defense. It was not the white face of a man that John had seen in the tangled grass, but the white head and back of a skunk. He was not a murderer—he was only a skunk-killer!

Most deaf men go through these “adventures in silence.” Many of them are not particularly thrilling, but they are sometimes exciting enough to let the imagination run away with us. In what follows I shall try to make it clear that most of our fears are imaginary—thin ghosts, stuffed lions, scarecrows (or skunks!) which stand beside the road to frighten us. For the deaf should know from experience that the only safety in life is to go on, no matter what dangers croakers or cowards may predict just around the curve.