The Deaf in Social and Business Life—The Partially Deaf—Endeavors to “Get By”—The Yeas and the Nays—Fifty Cents or a Dollar?—The Safety of the Written Word—The Indian and the Whisky—The Boiling-down Process—The New Sense Developed by Affliction—The Deaf Cat and the Piano.

During the years of expectancy, when we continue to look forward to a cure, we deaf generally try to deceive ourselves along with others by refusing to admit our condition, and by attempting to conceal the defect in conversation. Many people are more or less deaf in one ear; frequently they really do not realize the extent of their affliction. They go through strange performances in their efforts to hear. Have you ever seen a horse or a mule traveling with one ear bent forward and the other reversed? The animal is, no doubt, somewhat defective in hearing, and he “points” his ears front and back so as to catch all noises, particularly commands from the driver. Back in the earlier ages man also possessed this power of moving the ears; most of us have seen individuals who still can control the muscles on the side of the head so that their ears “wiggle.” All of us still have these muscles, even if they have fallen out of use. Ear specialists say that many of us do actually move our ears slightly when making a great effort to catch the conversation. At any rate, human beings with defective hearing must bend forward, or even move about a circle of talkers to get in full range of the voices. We wonder sometimes why people insist upon getting on a certain side of their companions, and always walk on the inside of the street. Such a person is merely maneuvering to present the live side of his head.

It is really very foolish for the deaf to attempt to conceal their affliction; it places us in a false position, and we are at an added disadvantage in society. We may hide our trouble for a time, but sooner or later we will be found out, and it is far wiser to be frank in the first place. Some of our misguided efforts to pose as full men have humorous results. We have various tricks of the trade which we at times employ to catch or hold conversation. One common plan is to lead the discussion along lines which will enable us to do most of the talking. It has been said of the deaf man that he either talks all the time or else says nothing, and that sometimes he does both at once. Sometimes we meet a talker who is desperately determined to tell all of his own story—which is one involving many fatal direct questions, such as “Am I right?” “Do I make myself clear?” Then the deaf man is hopelessly lost, and the part of wisdom is to produce pencil and pad.

A friend of mine who knew that he was going deaf conceived the brilliant scheme of saying “Yes,” or nodding his head to agree with everything that was said to him. He felt that the path of least resistance lies along the affirmative—in letting others always have the say. One day he settled himself in the first vacant chair in a barber shop, at the mercy of a very talkative barber, with whom expression of thought had become merely a vocal exercise. My friend knew that this man was talking and asking questions, but as he could hear nothing, he merely nodded at each evident interrogation point. He had some important work on hand which he was trying to develop, and, as is the habit of the deaf at such times, he became absorbed in his thought and quite unmindful of what the barber was doing. At each questioning look he emerged from his brown study only long enough to nod his head. Finally the barber finished, and presented a check for about three dollars. It then appeared that instead of asking the usual questions about the weather and business the man had been talking hair cut, singeing, facial massage, moustache curling, hair renewer, and all the rest. Delighted at such a model customer, the loquacious barber had done his full duty. Nothing but that special Providence which guards fools and deaf men had saved my friend from the bootblack, the vibrator and the manicure girl.

I recently read in the daily paper of a lawsuit in which a man sued his barber to recover $4.75 obtained in just this way—the plaintiff being a deaf man. The justice decided against the barber on the ground that a man cannot legally be said to order a service unless he knows what it is going to be. So, score another for the deaf man.

This and similar experiences convinced my deaf friend that the road to affirmation is well lined with a group of citizens who do far more than hold out their hats for charity. No deaf man is safe on that highway. So he changed his method and shook his head at all questions. He said that experience had convinced him that at best this is a selfish world, and most men approached him seeking some advantage rather than offering service: therefore a general negative was the best policy. Shortly after making this decision he attended a reception at a wealthy man’s country home. At one stage of the proceedings the men were all invited into a side room, where a very dignified butler marched about and whispered to each guest in turn. My friend ran true to form and shook his head. In a short time a fine drink was served to everyone except himself.

As his affliction progresses, the deaf man learns frankly to admit his inability to hear. This turns out to be a remarkably effective way to separate the sheep from the goats, for most people will never go to the trouble of making us understand unless they have some really important message to deliver. Whenever we owe money, we find that our creditors are quite able to communicate with us; would that our debtors were equally insistent! Now and then comes a man who feels the tremendous importance of his message, although no one else recognizes it. He looks upon the deaf man as his select audience, and after giving us an agonizing half-hour, he goes on his way, pluming himself on the kindly deed he has performed in helping the neglected deaf man to valuable information!

I once lived in a little Southern town where the man who kept the livery stable was quite deaf. He was popularly known as a “near” man, “so close you could see him.” “The only thing he could hear was the clink of money in his pocket.” The men who worked for him often had trouble getting their money. One day his stableman, Ben Adams, colored, approached the boss and screamed in his ear:

“Mr. Brown, can I have fifty cents?”

Brown heard him perfectly, but no one ever extracted fifty cents from him without working for it. So he put on a fierce look and roared:

“What? What did you say?”

Exceeding penury had made Ben Adams bold. Here was a chance to raise his demand, and the delay bolstered his courage. So he made a trumpet of his hands and roared again:

“Massa Brown, can I have a dollar?”

Brown donned that fierce scowl which the deaf know so well how to assume, and roared himself:

“I thought you said fifty cents!”

The only safety for the very deaf man is to have the message written out. Lip-reading and the use of superior instruments are frequently very helpful, but my own experience is that it is a mistake to accept anything but written evidence. I take it that sound conversation is uncertain at best, and when a message is passed along through several persons, all more or less careless in speaking or listening, it is sure to be twisted out of its original shape. In our Southern printing office there was a stock anecdote about the Indian who mixed up his message.

This Indian was printer’s devil in a small newspaper office in Mississippi. He was said to be a star performer whenever he was supported by firewater. In those days local printers made their own ink rollers out of glue and molasses. During the Civil War the old roller wore out, and it became necessary to send the Indian to Vicksburg for the material for a new one. The printers did not dare write out the order, for if papers were found on the Indian he would be hung for a spy. So they coached him carefully and told him to go on saying over and over to himself:

“Something sticky and something sweet.”

They felt that Vicksburg would understand this trade language, so they started him off with the money. The Indian made straight for Vicksburg through swamps and woods and across streams, ever repeating the mysterious message. On the last lap of his journey he fell and struck his head on a log with such force that he lay unconscious for a time. Finally he recovered, shook his scattered wits together and went on repeating the message. But it had been affected by the fall. Subjective audition may even have been responsible, but, at any rate, when he finally scrambled into the store at Vicksburg and presented his money, he called for:

“Something sweet and something to drink.”

The merchant was well posted in this metaphor, so he fitted the Indian out with a jug of whiskey and five pounds of brown sugar. A day or two later the red man walked proudly into the printing office with this roller material. The printers were given to philosophy, and, being unable to make the ink roller, they proceeded to make a company of high rollers, in which task they were ably assisted by the faithful messenger. During the carouse a company of Grierson’s Union cavalry rode into town. All trades were represented in the Union army, and a couple of Northern printers used the printing outfit to good advantage. When the owners woke up they were put to work printing one of Lincoln’s proclamations.

By insisting upon written communications we deaf lose much of the skim-milk of conversation, but we come to be expert in estimating the ability of our friends to express themselves in clear and simple English. Try it on a few of your visitors. You will be astonished to see how many well-educated men will fail at the simple test of writing what they have to say quickly and tersely on paper. They flounder like schoolboys. My observation, as I look out from the silent world, is that with many humans talking becomes a sort of mechanical operation, usually involving no particular thought. It takes brains to put words on paper; and, again, the written word is actual evidence. A man speaking to you, and writing to me, would probably give me the stronger and more reliable account—and work harder while doing it. I know a very pompous, dignified gentleman of the old school who would probably say to you:

“The fateful hands upon the clock registered midnight’s doleful hour before my head sought my pillow.”

Or, “The emotions generated by that pathetic occasion had such a profound effect upon me that I fell into a lachrymose condition.”

If I handed him my pencil and pad he would get down to:

“I went to bed at twelve. I wept.”

Another bar to wordy discussions on paper is the fact that many well-informed people are not sure of their spelling. In this modern age too many business men depend upon their clerks and stenographers to see to such trifles as spelling and grammar; their own knowledge of the mechanics of expression grows dusty. One reason for the decline of the Roman Empire was that the soldiers became too lazy to carry their own weapons. They left them to slaves, and the slaves practiced with the implements of war until they became so expert that they overcame the masters. I think of this sometimes when a man who has nearly lost the art of writing through this transfer of the medium of expression from the hand to the mouth tries to communicate with me. Once I received a scathing reply to an excuse I made to a correspondent—that a sore throat had made it difficult for me to dictate letters. He acidly inquired how long it had been since people wrote letters with the throat.

Ignorant men who write little usually make the meaning evident, though the form cannot be called graceful. One night a drunken man drove into my yard by mistake. It was pitch dark, and I happened to be alone on the farm. His horses, eager for harbor, had turned into our road. I went without a lantern (the family had taken it on their trip) to turn his horses about and start them down the highway. Then he became possessed with a strong desire to tell me all his troubles. Of course, as I could not hear them, I made no reply, and my silence so enraged him that he wanted to fight. He clambered down from the wagon and groped about in the darkness to reach me. At last I made him understand that I could not hear, whereupon he was seized with a great grief for my trouble, and insisted on writing out his sentiments for me. There was no denying him, so off at one side of the buildings I started a little blaze of straw, and by its light he scrawled on a piece of writing paper with a blunt pencil. By the same flickering light I deciphered this:

“I am darn sorry. My brother cured his’n with skunk oil.”

Then he drove off singing, glad in his heart that he had offered consolation to an afflicted brother.

My children have been interpreters for me from the time they were able to write. They can go with me on business trips and get the message which others frequently cannot deliver on paper. At first they found this hard and irksome, but it has proved remarkably good drill for them in English. They have come to be excellent reporters, with the ability to put the pith of long sentences and whole lectures into a few exact words. This exercise of giving the deaf man an accurate and brief account of the great volume of an ordinary conversation has really developed their powers of expression.

We of the silence know that but few words are needed to grasp the really essential things of life, and we often wonder why others lose so much time in the useless approach to a subject when we can often see through it by intuition. Probably one of the compensations of our affliction is that we actually come to consider that these talkative, emotional people who surround us are abnormal. Two men with good ears meet for a business deal. They must go through the formula of discussing the weather, crops, or politics before they start at the real subject. The whole discussion is useless and irrelevant, yet they both feel that in some way it is necessary, and even when they reach the point at issue, they seem to prolong the debate with useless formal details. The deaf man cannot do it that way. He must fully understand his side of the case beforehand, forego all preliminaries, and plunge right into the heart of the subject with as few words as possible. Is this entirely a disadvantage? I think the man with perfect hearing might well learn from the deaf man whom he pities in this respect to cut out useless conversation and spend the extra time in thinking out his project. The most forceful and dependable men you know are not long talkers and elaborators. Their words are few and strong.

While a philosopher may perhaps summon this sort of reasoning to his aid in the matter of conversation, he cannot apply it to music. Here the deaf are quite hopeless. I have little knowledge of music, and could never fairly distinguish one note from another. I have often wondered whether a real musician who has lost his hearing can obtain any comfort from reading music as we read poetry or history for consolation. Can a man hum over to himself some of the noble operas and obtain the satisfaction which comes to me from “Paradise Lost” or Shakespeare? No one seems to be able to tell of this; but of all the sorrowful people of the silent world, the saddest are the musicians, for sound was more than life to them. I read that Beethoven could muster no consolation when the silence finally fell upon him. Life had turned dark, with no hope of light.

I often sit with people who tell me that they are listening to delightful harmony of sound—music. My children grow up and learn to play and sing, but I do not hear them. When my boy plays his violin I get no more pleasure from it than I do from his sawing of a stick of wood—not so much, in fact, for I know that the wood will build up my fire and give me the light and heat which I can appreciate. It is absurd, and I smile to myself, but sometimes when others sit beside me with invisible fingers playing over their heart-strings at the wailing of the violin and the calm tones of the piano, my mind goes back to Lump, the white cat.

There is a general belief that white cats are deaf. I know that some of them cannot hear, and Lump was one of the afflicted. I am bound to say that Lump endured his loss with great equanimity; he was more of a success than I ever was. He has given me more points on living happily in the silence than I ever obtained from any human being. He forgot the drawbacks and enlarged the advantages. Lump was never strikingly popular with my wife. She would not have cats in the house, and, her hearing being good, she could not appreciate the philosophy of this particular specimen. The proper place for cats, in her mind, was the barn, where they may perform their life duty of demolishing rats and mice. There are some humans who, like Lump, are forced into ignoble service when they are really capable of giving instruction in psychology.

Long before my time men have been forced to meet their boon companions under cover of darkness, or they have had to make private arrangements for a rendezvous with the “guide, philosopher and friend.” So, sometimes at night, after the rest of the family had retired, I would open the back door. There always was Lump, curled on the mat, ready to share my fire. Many a time as I let him in I have taken down a familiar old book from its shelf and read Thackeray’s poem:

And Lump would sit at the other side of the fire, turn his wise head to one side, and look over at me as if to say:

“Old fellow, we are two of a kind—a rejected kind. They pity us for our misfortune; let’s make them envy us for our advantages. I know more of the habits of rats and mice than any cat in this neighborhood, because I have been forced to study them. I have made new ears out of my eyes and nose and brain, and so developed a new sense—instinct, which is worth far more than their hearing. Why can’t you do the same with men?”

Those were great nights with Lump before my fire, and we both understood that when the interview was over he was to go outside. One night, however, I forgot this, and as I went sleepily off to bed he stayed curled up by the warm hearth. The dreams of a deaf man are usually vivid and emphatic. Sleep may be your time for rest and relief from noise; with us it may be our period of music and excitement. That night I dreamed that I was engaged in a prize-fight. I had given the other man a knockout blow, when suddenly the referee came up from behind and struck me on the side with such force that my ribs all seemed to give way. I “came to” to find an energetic figure sitting up in bed beside me, and pounding my side in an effort to bring me back to assume my true position as defender of the family. Around the bed were grouped several small white figures, and at last they made me understand.

“There’s someone downstairs. He’s robbing the house. We can hear him. Go down and see about it!”

“What’s he doing?”

“Playing the piano.”

I will admit that my experience with burglars is somewhat limited, but I had never heard of one who stopped to play the piano before starting to burgle. Only a very desperate character would be likely to do that. There have been numerous cases where a deaf man has been shot down when approaching a house at night. He may have come on the most innocent errand, but as he could not hear the command, “Speak or I’ll fire!” he kept steadily on and was shot. I remembered these incidents, but could not recall any instance where the deaf man was supposed to give the order. But I had been telling my children great stories of life on the plains, and the only way for me to remain a hero was to tackle the intruder. I took my big stick and started down, while my wife brought a lamp and held it at the top of the stairs. I presume she was handing out some very sensible advice as I descended—but I could not hear it.

Now, what would you do and what would you say if you were roused at night, led by your family into a conflict, only to find an old and trusted friend robbing the henroost? I probably felt all your emotions when I caught sight of that robber. The piano had been left open, and there, walking up and down the keyboard impartially on black and white was my old friend Lump—the deaf cat. He was taking advantage of a night in the house to go on a voyage of exploration. His jump on to the piano led to my disgrace. The “robber” was quickly flung into outer darkness by an indignant woman, and probably I escaped a plain recital of my shortcomings only by lack of hearing. Do you know, while I would congratulate the husband on his escape, I always feel sorry for the lady, who would be well justified in giving her man a full lecture, and yet knows that he would not hear it. However, I feel that some innocent member of the family may receive the impact of these remarks. At any rate, before we were settled the baby woke up. It certainly was one of those rare occasions when the deaf man appreciates his advantages enthusiastically.

But why did Lump, in spite of his usual good sense, decide to try the piano at midnight? Of course, he did not know he was making a noise; but why mount the piano? I puzzled over this, and the wise old cat looked at me pityingly; but I could not understand. Every time he could slip into the house he went straight to the piano for a promenade up and down the keys. I began to think that we had developed a wonderful “musical cat.”

Some time later the piano seemed to need tuning, and a tuner came to take the muffle and twang out of its strings. When he opened up the front, the mystery of the musical cat was revealed. Just behind the keys, inside, was the nest of a mouse; she had carried in a handful of soft material—and in it were half a dozen baby mice. Lump had not been attempting “Home, Sweet Home”; his thought had been more nearly along the line of “Thou Art So Near, and Yet So Far.” He had no ear for music, but he had a nose for mice, and he had demonstrated his knowledge of the habits of mice. I, too, have found it wiser to judge people by their habits rather than by their music, for there are many who would be willing to play “Home, Sweet Home” while in reality they are after the mice.