Adventures in SilenceCollingwood, Herbert W. (Herbert Winslow)
Science
Adventures in Silence
Collingwood, Herbert W. (Herbert Winslow)
Deafness
Let’s not hurry. Let our journey be like one of those happy family
wanderings in the old farm days, long before the age of gasoline. On a
Sunday afternoon we would all start walking, on past the back of the
farm. Father, mother and the baby, all would go. We could stop to drink
from the spring, to rest under the pines, to stand on the hill looking
off over the valleys. The beauty of the walk was that time was no
object; our destination was nowhere in particular, and we always reached
it. No one hears of those family trips in these days. We “go” now. The
family, smaller than of old, will crowd into a car and go rushing about
the country in an effort to cover as many miles as possible, and to do
as little sight-seeing as may be during the rush. Now, we shall not
hurry, and there will be no great objection to our leaving the road now
and then to gather flowers or bright stones, or to watch a bird or a
squirrel. We shall need all the pleasant memories we can think of when
we arrive.
Very likely you have before now entered into a “solitude where none
intrude,” and have thought yourself entirely alone in the silence. But
you had not reached the real end of the road. You missed some of the
familiar sounds of your everyday life, but there were substitutes. There
was always the low growl of the ocean, the murmur of the wind among
the trees, the cheerful ripple of the brook, the song of the birds, or
some of the many sweet sounds of nature. It was not the silence which
we know, nor were the voices which came to you harsh or distorted. They
were clear and true, even though they were strange to you.
I did not realize how largely the habits of our life are bound up in
sound until some years ago we hired a city woman to come and work in our
farmhouse. We live in a lonely place. This woman spent one night with
us. In the morning she came with terror in her eyes and begged to be
taken back to New York.
“It’s so still here; I can’t sleep!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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