Years later a sudden cloudburst in the hills above our farm filled the streams to overflowing. The little river near our home jumped out of its bed and spread over the road—a rushing, roaring, shallow sheet of water. I had to cross that part of the road in order to get my train, and I took a steady horse, with one of the little boys in the buggy with me. At the edge of this overflow we found a group of excited men who were listening to the roaring, and were afraid to venture over. I used my eyes calmly and observed that the bridge was quite sound, and the water was too shallow to be really dangerous. So in I drove with my boy—who was white with terror—while most of the men tried to stop me. The old horse waded calmly and safely, and we crossed without trouble. The water never reached the hub of the wheel! Yet on the other side men stood half paralyzed _because they heard the roaring water_ and stopped to listen. On the other side my boy said, “But you never would have done it _if you could hear that water_!”
As I look from the silent land out into the busy world I see men hesitate, falter and fall back at terrors which appear to me imaginary. They _stop to listen_—and are lost. Like my boy on the edge of the river, they hear the roaring water and become unfit for calm judgment, or keen analysis of actual danger. Most people with good hearing stop too frequently to listen. A scarecrow may have been making a noise like a fighting man! If you listen long enough to the tales of a liar you will come to regard him as a lion.
A friend of mine relates a strange adventure which befell him on a New York subway train. He was a “strap-hanger” in a crowded express car rushing up town. As is the habit of the deaf he forgot the throng around him and let his mind become absorbed in the business he was engaged in. This is the privilege of us deaf; we may be near enough to a dozen men to touch them with our hands, yet the mind can take us miles away from all distractions. This man was rudely shaken from his oblivion by a great commotion in the car. The passengers rushed forward past him, stumbling over each other in their eagerness to get away to the front of the train. Two so-called “guards” fled with the rest. The deaf man did not join the stampede because he had no idea what it was all about, and long experience of the vagaries of people who can hear had taught him the wisdom of keeping out of the rush. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the back of the car was empty save for one man, who stood quite near to him. This was a thick-set individual with a small, bullet-shaped head, set firmly on a bull neck. He had a heavy red face, and small, deep-set eyes, but his most singular feature was his right ear—it did not look human at all, but resembled a small cauliflower. The eyes of the deaf are quick to seize upon the most unusual or conspicuous part of an object—my deaf friend noted first of all that cauliflower ear.