Of course, thousands of grey-haired persons can recall just such terrifying childhood situations. Usually as we grow older the memories fade away, though they are never entirely lost; they are probably waiting in the subconsciousness for darkness and a worried mind to bring them forth. They are clearer to the deaf, and nearer to the surface of consciousness; hence they are more easily roused to play their strange tricks upon us. It seems strange to me that novelists have rather neglected this strong emotion of fear, and it is particularly remarkable that they have seemed to slight the mighty struggle to overcome it, which all deaf people know.
Some years ago I planned to visit a New England town to attend a college celebration. I had never been in this particular locality before, but I supposed I should find a large town with full hotel accommodations, so I took a night train. At about eleven I alighted at the railroad station, and, to my astonishment, found myself in complete darkness. The train made but a brief stop; it hurried off like a living thing, glad to escape from the lonely place. I watched the last glimmer of its rear light disappear around a distant curve, and then I was completely wrapped in a dense, inky blackness, through which I could feel the moist fingers of a thick, creeping fog. They seemed to clutch at my face and throat. For an instant the old wild terror seized me, and then there came an impulse to rush through the blackness desperately—anywhere—to escape the clinging things which seemed to be reaching for me. But I stood still, and finally there came to me a sort of amused sense of adventure—I remembered the night in the hotel when I wandered about the dark passage and ran into a drunken man. The fight sobered him, and as he led me back to my room he thanked me, for he said that his wife was waiting up for him.
Now my first thought was to locate the railroad station. That would at least prove a starting point; but I had absolutely no idea in which direction to start, for I could not even tell whether any buildings at all were near. The last light on the train had traveled east, but I had turned around several times since I watched it out of sight. I dared not call out; I remembered the deaf man who was shot and nearly killed under similar circumstances. Being lost in the darkness, he called for help, not knowing that he was near a farmhouse. The farmer heard him and pointed a gun from the window, calling: