did. If I were starting on his long journey, I should be likely to treat

my children in the same way.

I have often been asked if deaf people of middle-age can safely be entrusted with the bringing up of a little child. That depends—both on the grown people and the child. Generally speaking, I should not advise it. Deaf people are likely to be obstinate in their opinions, rather narrow in thought, and slow to understand that the habits and tendencies of society grow like a tree. Many of them have made a brilliant success in certain lines of work, but they are apt to be narrow as a board outside of their limited range. In rearing a child it is a great disadvantage not to be able to hear its little whispered confidences; if the little one has no reliable confidant it will grow up hard and unsympathetic, or it will go with its confidences to the wrong person. I know deaf people who regret bitterly that they can only give financial aid and reasonable example to their children, while they long to enter into that part of child life which can only be reached through sound.

Looking back over life, I become convinced that my hearing was always a little dull; probably the trouble started in a case of scarlet fever when I was a baby, and in those days no one thought of examining or treating the ears of a child. Also, I think one of my teachers helped to start me along the road to silence. Those were the days when “corporal punishment” was not only permitted, but was encouraged. Most of us were brought up on the “Scriptures and a stick,” and each teacher seemed to select some special portion of the human anatomy as the most susceptible part through which to make her authority felt. Some of the educational methods of those days were effective even if they were violent. I have had the teacher point a long stick at me and issue the order:

“Spell incomprehensibility!”

I would stumble on as far as “ability” and then fall down completely. In these days my children are led gently over the bad place in the road, but then we took it at a jump. The teacher would lay that long stick three times over your back, and while the dust was rising from your jacket would make another demand.

“_Now_ spell it!”

And I must confess that we were then usually able to do so. This particular teacher chose the ear for her point of attack; she would steal up behind a whisperer or a loiterer and strike him over the ears with a large book, like a geography. Or she would upon occasion pull some special culprit out to the front of the school by the lobe of the ear. Such things are no longer permitted in the public schools, yet I frequently see people in sudden anger slap or “box” their children on the side of the face or on the ears. It is a cruel and degrading punishment, and, remembering my own experience, I always feel like striking those who are guilty of it squarely in their own faces with all my power.

What annoys the deaf man most is the suggestion that he is being used as the butt for ridicule. We can stand abuse or open attack with more or less serenity, but it is gall and wormwood to feel that there are those who can make sport of our serious affliction. I once worked on a newspaper where one of the editors was absolutely deaf, unable to hear his own voice. He was a big man, naturally good-natured and reasonably cheerful. The foreman of the composing-room was a man of medium size, and a great “bluffer.” Sometimes he would try to impress strangers in the office by using the big deaf man as a chopping block for courage. He would get out of sight behind, shake his fist over the poor fellow’s head and roar out his challenge:

“You big coward; for five cents I’d lift you out of that chair and mop up the floor with you. Step out in the street and I’ll knock your block off!”

It was very cheap stuff, though quite effective. The deaf man, of course, didn’t hear a word of it, but kept on with his work, and many visitors considered the foreman courageous for calling down a much larger man. But one day the editor chanced to see the reflection of that fist in his glasses. He looked up suddenly and caught the foreman right in the act. The deaf think quickly and accurately in a crisis, and in an instant this man was on his feet, pulling off his coat. He did not know what it was all about, but here was a man taking advantage of his affliction. There is something more than impressive about the wrath of the deaf, and the foreman ran behind a table, took a piece of paper and wrote the following:

“I cannot fight. I promised a Christian mother that I would never strike a cripple, or a deaf or a blind man!”

The deaf man read the communication and made but one remark:

“I am under no such obligation!”

The way he polished off his tormentor was a joy to us all. He could not hear the foreman yell “Enough!” and we did not notify him until the job was perfectly done.

However, the deaf man will be wise if he keeps out of quarrels. When they arise suddenly he cannot tell which side he ought to be on. I have taken part vigorously in several sudden and violent battles only to find when it was all over that I had been doing valiant work—on the wrong side! Likewise, “bluffing” is taboo. Few men can ever escape with even the wreckage of a “bluff” unless it is safely mounted on skids of sound. We all learn these things by hard experience before we discover the limitations of the silent life.

Some years ago I attended a banquet where a great company of lions appeared to have gathered to feed and to listen to a few roars after the meal. The man next to me would have made a splendid “announcer” for a circus. Here, he told me, was a famous statesman; that man over there might have been President; this man had enough money to buy a European state; the man helping himself to a double portion of terrapin was a poet; the big man nibbling his bit of cheese was a well-known historian. He was a man of great ability, though unfortunately somewhat deaf, which fact naturally interested me so much that I kept an eye on the historian.

When the toastmaster began his “We have with us tonight,” it seemed as though every speaker felt that he carried a ticket to a front seat in the Hall of Fame, and in an evil hour I decided to attempt a little “bluff.” I rose for a few remarks on agriculture. Pedigree or good stock is essential to good farming, so it was easy to refer to “my ancestor, Lord Collingwood.” I had read somewhere that Lord Collingwood was present at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a petty officer on one of the English warships. It was quite easy to refer to the fact that I had one ancestor in that battle wearing a red coat and another behind the American breastworks wearing overalls! What would have happened to me if both had been killed? It was what we call very cheap stuff—too cheap for a deaf man to handle. It was a very silly thing to do, but for the moment it seemed to impress the audience. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the historian with his hand at his ear whisper to his companion and then make notes on a sheet of paper.

“Ah,” I thought with gratification, “I have impressed the great historian!” And I sat down thinking very well of myself. But the eminent historian folded his paper and sent it to me by a waiter. This is what I read:

“_Are you sure of your pedigree? The facts seem to be that Lord Collingwood had only two children, both daughters. I think neither of them ever married._”

Then and there I lost interest in my ancestors. I have no further desire to trace back my pedigree, especially in the presence of well-read historians. And I am cured of “bluffing.”