CHAPTER VI

MEMORIES OF EARLY LIFE

Reflection versus Conversation—Old Memories—The Lecture and the Whipping—Education and the Stick—Ridicule Unbearable to the Deaf—The Office Fight—The Dangers of Bluffing.

The deaf man may not excel in conversation, but he is usually strong on reflection. He has plenty of time, for his life is roughly divided into three chief periods, working, sleeping and thinking. It may safely be said that the character and temper of the deaf are determined rather by their thought than by their work. The greater part of their thinking is a form of mental analysis. They like to go back to the beginning of things. That is why the deaf man is such a remarkably superior specimen of a “grouch” when he puts himself to the task of analyzing his own troubles. If you could read the thoughts of the deaf as they sit by themselves without book or work you would find that they are searching the past to find something which may be compared to their present experience.

It is a curious mental sensation, probably far different from anything that comes to you in your world of sound, unless it comes in moments of depression, or when you are deeply stirred by old memories. Sometimes in the evening we become tired of reading and we cannot join in the music or chatter about us; it is too dark to work outdoors, and we have accomplished enough for the day. So we amuse ourselves by trying to go back to the beginnings of things. When did I first fall in love with the portly lady who sits at the other side of the fire? How much smaller was she then? When did I find the first gray hair? When did I first discover that my eyes had failed so that I could not read signs across the way? When did I begin to discover something of the real life difference between work and play? We think these things out to no particular advantage, except that perhaps they may form a text for a moral lecture to our young people. And now I find that my children very properly pay little attention to my lectures. I have stopped delivering them since going back to the original dissertation given for my benefit.

The old gentleman who brought me up was much addicted to the lecture cure for youthful depravity. He would seat me in the corner on a little cricket, and with his long forefinger well extended would depict the sin and laziness of “this young generation” whenever I forgot to water the horses or to feed the hens. I can see him now, with his spectacles pushed up to the top of his bald head, and that thick finger projected at me as he recounted the hardships of his own boyhood, and his own faithful and unfailing service. What a remarkable boy he must have been! Then his wife, who was very deaf, and, more unfortunately, very inquisitive, would appear at the door and shout: “What say?” Her husband would patiently gather his lungs full of air, make a trumpet of his hands and roar in her ear:

“I’m telling the boy about the terrible sin and danger of this young generation. What kind of a world will it be, I ask you, when such boys as that grow up to control things? It will be another Babylon, and I don’t want to live to see it.”

And his wife, getting only a word here and there, would quote some appropriate passage from Isaiah and go back to her work well satisfied that she had done her duty.

“Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel:” And now it seems to me, as I sit here, a gray-haired man of the silent world, that I have seen many of the signs and wonders, though I did not recognize them as they passed by. That “sinful young generation” has grown up, and men of my age may be said to control the nation. It seems to me that it is a good world after all, and I believe that my mischief-making children will grow up into a steadily developing generation which will make it better yet. For here in the silent world we learn to smile at youthful antics, and to have great charity for them.

The earliest incident of my childhood that I can remember is the time my father pretended to give us a whipping. My older brother and I had been sent to bed in disgrace, to wait for father to come home and administer punishment. I can just recall that we were up in a New England attic, in the bed at the head of the stairs, surrounded by a collection of trunks, boxes and old rubbish which a thrifty housewife always puts “upstairs.” She is too economical to throw them away, and too neat to have them in sight downstairs. I think the town bell was faintly ringing, as it always did at six o’clock, and there was a sound like a gentle tapping as the water lapped at the wharf in high tide. I can just dimly remember the sunshine streaming in through the dusty window as we lay there in bed. The dust danced and floated in it like a flock of tiny flies. Since then I have read much of history. There have been many occasions when brave souls have waited for death or an ominous sentence. These scenes haunt the deaf; we cannot talk and laugh them away as others do. We must put down our book and go back in memory, seeking something in our own lives which may even remotely resemble what we have read. That is part of the penalty which must come with the silence. I remember reading a powerful description of Louis XVI on the night before his execution. A well-meaning, easy-going man, he had never been able to realize the serious side of life until it suddenly peered in through his window with the hideous face of Revolution. Then, face to face with death, he rose to that dignity “which doth become a king.” As I read that passage I put my book down, and, ridiculously enough, there flashed into my mind the picture of these two little boys waiting for the coming of father with his stick. We had determined that we would not cry, no matter how hard he hit us. That was our nearest approach to “dignity.”

I think that even then my hearing was a little defective. I heard my father come in below, and mother’s clear voice was certainly intended for our hearing.

“Now, Joseph, you go right up and whip those boys! They would not mind me, and _you must do it_.”

All through my life I have somehow managed to hear the unpleasant remarks or thorns of life. We deaf usually miss the bouquets. Poor father! The Civil War was raging, and he had volunteered. My young people seem to think that the Civil War was a mere skirmish beside the great World War just ended. Perhaps so, if we count only money and men, yet our part in this recent conflict was but a plaything in intense living, in sentiment, and breaking up of family life, as compared with the war of the sixties. Father was to leave home for the front in less than a week. He was captain of the local company, and should probably have been stronger in family discipline. But his heart was tender. He did not want to whip his boys, and he protested, as many a man has done. I could not hear what he said, but I knew from the expression on my brother’s face that he was protesting. Tonight, after these long and toilsome years have boiled out much of ambition and the desire to know the great things of life, I wish most keenly that I could have heard what my father said.

But mother insisted, as good women do, and finally we heard the big man slowly mounting the stairs. I can see him now as he stood framed in the doorway with the bright splinter of sunshine bathing him in light; a tall man with a strong, kindly face and a thick black beard. It is the only real memory I have of my father, for he did not come back from the war alive. Long, long years after, I sat at a great banquet next to a famous Senator, who had seen much of life. I told him that I have only this memory of my father, but that I had finally found a man who had served in the same regiment with him, slept in the same tent, who had known him intimately as a man.

“Now,” I asked, “shall I hunt up that man and have him tell me in his own way just what kind of a man my father was?”

Quickly the answer came from this hardened old diplomat:

“Keep away from him! Let him alone! Never go near him! Burn his letters without reading them. You now have an ideal of your father. This man knows him as just a plain, common man, probably with most of the faults of humanity. Let him alone! If at your age God has permitted you to retain an ideal of any human being, keep it pure. Take no chances of having it blackened!”

I took his advice, and have always been glad that I did so. It has been my experience that deaf men are able to hold their ideals longer than those who can hear; probably this is another part of our compensation. I would advise every man of the silent world to build up a hobby and gain an ideal. One will serve to keep hand and brain busy, the other helps to keep the soul clean. I heard one deaf man say that clean ideals mark the difference between a “grouch” and a gentleman.

My father came slowly to the bed where we lay, tuning his voice as nearly to a growl as the nerves between the vocal chords and the heart-strings would permit.

“I’ll attend to your case, young men! I’ll teach you to mind your mother!”

Then he began to strike the pillow with his hand, growling as before.

“_Now_, will you mind your mother when she speaks to you?”

It was one of those cases of thought suggestion which I have mentioned. My brother and I understood. No one can prove that father told us to cry and help him play his part. Like the horses in the pasture, we understood. We screamed lustily as father spanked the pillow, though we had fully agreed between us that we would endure it all without a sound. In fact, we carried out our part so well that mother, listening below to see that father did not shirk his duty, finally came running upstairs to defend her brood.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Joseph, to hurt those little boys so! They did nothing so very bad!” And there was a great loving time, with mother holding us close and making little crooning sounds as she swayed back and forth with us. Father stood by, trying to act the part of stern parent, with indifferent success. And then he carried us downstairs, a reunited family, where we boys each had a doughnut with our bread and milk.

That was nearly sixty years ago, and I have been forced to stand up and take punishment for many sins and omissions. If father had lived, it is not likely that we would have discussed this little deception, but it still would have been a beautiful memory. My wife, who was once a school teacher, strong in discipline, says it was a great mistake on father’s part. Perhaps I show this in defects of character. He should have taken a shingle to us, she says. Perhaps so; yet after all these years (and what test can compare with time?) I am glad he acted as he