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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



September, 1908 



Monthly Comment 



iHE prevailing quiet of the country is one of 

 the permanent fictions of imaginary litera- 

 ture. It is a conception evolved in the city; 

 it is an idea supported by city writers; it is 

 maintained, in the present day, by the pop- 

 ular city cartoonist; in its origin it doubtless 

 originated with a person who had never 

 been in the country, or perhaps knew it alone as viewed from 

 his car window. No one who has ever visited the country 

 will, after a single day or night, venture to set forth any be- 

 lief in its quietude. Dull it may be, but there is no such thing 

 as silence in the country, nor is the quiet that one reads of in 

 books to be found in any rural region whatsoever. 



The noises of the country are penetrating and far-reach- 

 ing in their loudnesses. They extend through all hours of 

 the day and night. If they begin at all, in the sense of start- 

 ing afresh, it is at an early hour when every civilized man 

 and woman would prefer to be sound asleep instead of being 

 aroused to listen to a concert performed by a multitude of 

 living creatures, each playing his own instrument in his own 

 way, each intent on the particular sound he is making, and 

 all with the utmost disregard of harmony and unified beauty. 

 Barbaric music, which seems to be not music at all, but just 

 sound, is doubtless a human survival of nature's unhuman 

 music. And once started, the uproar continues without in- 

 termission so long as human ears are awake to hear it. Like 

 the modern vaudeville, the performers vary with the hour. 

 The sounds that strike the air at four A. M. are quite differ- 

 ent from those that fill the ether at four P. M. Night brings 

 no relief. 



Yet if the books are to be believed, there are people who 

 like these things, who dote on every single sound uttered by 

 animal life, who catalogue them and name them, who write 

 books about them and even spring into fame with them be- 

 cause their account is the longest, most accurate and most 

 convincing! There is, of course, no accounting for tastes; 

 those who like strange sounds are entirely welcome to them. 

 Those who do not mind noise are surely at liberty to seek 

 it where they can find it. It is perhaps pleasant to know that 

 the great world of nature is not voiceless, but is filled with 

 so great a category of voices that the mere listing of them 

 has as yet been too great for the span of a single human life. 

 Yet the scientific aspects of country noises appeal to only a 

 comparatively few. To most people the country is an ex- 

 ceedingly noisy place, full of noises that can not be sup- 

 pressed and which have the uncomfortable quality of being 

 always disturbing. 



Country noises are, of course, quite different from city 

 noises. They are so exceedingly different that the first per- 

 son to describe country quiet failed to recognize the scientific 

 truth that the distinguishing difference between city and 

 country was not noise in the former and its absence in the 

 latter, but that the country noises were so very much of the 

 country that the ear trained to city uproars could not dis- 

 tinguish them as noise, but mistook them for agreeable sound. 

 The observation, in its primitive form, was probably made 

 by a visitor from the city who wrote it down immediately on 

 his arrival in the country, telling of the delicious quiet and 

 repose he had wandered into. Had he waited until the next 

 day this pseudo-observation would never have been made, 

 for there is little sleep in the country after the introductory 



chorus begins at four A. M. or thereabouts. In fact, it need 

 not be a chorus, for a single robin, performing on the lawn 

 beneath your window, is much more effective in abolishing 

 sleep than a dozen trolley cars. 



For the lover of quiet the city is, of course, an atrociously 

 noisy place. It abounds in noise of the most awful kind. Its 

 noises are varied and ugly; they are painful and penetrating; 

 they are lasting and obnoxious; and in most instances they 

 are completely unnecessary and avoidable. This is what 

 really hurts, for it is a frightful thing to have to listen to a 

 noise that is not needed and which does not even do the per- 

 son who is making it any good. The anti-noise societies that 

 have sprung up in several large cities have not, as yet, 

 touched the popular mind, but they are a very sure index of a 

 better city life to come, a life in which there will be less noise 

 and in which every unneeded sound will be suppressed. 



Meanwhile the country is defenseless. No crusade 

 against country noises that seems now possible promises to 

 bring relief to this real home of noise and uproar. Legisla- 

 tive enactments and local ordinances will not suppress rural 

 noise save at the cost of the complete extinction of animal 

 life. The price seems high, especially if the animal happens 

 to be yours. Yet what is to be done? You live, it may be 

 imagined, in a rural town. If the mosquitoes are not too 

 friendly you are sitting on your porch enjoying the cool of 

 the early evening. The hens have gone to sleep and the 

 birds have stopped their singing. Occasionally a stray sweet 

 note sounds in the far distance. But on the whole there is a 

 quiet hush. The air is serene, the moon is shining brightly, 

 peace seems at last to have settled on a noisy world. Then 

 presently, and for no apparent reason, a dog begins to bark. 

 Then other dogs begin to bark. They bark all around you. 

 They bark close at hand and far away. If you are- a statis- 

 tician you presently calculate there must be a million dogs 

 barking away as though their lives depended on it. Perhaps 

 they do, but you really do not care so much now for dog life. 



If the going to sleep is perilous with sound, the awakening 

 is an agony. It begins long before you are ready to get up 

 and hours before anything can be had to eat. Every pos- 

 sible sort of bird seems to have camped beneath your window. 

 Charming and delicious as most of the sounds are, you are not 

 then ready to enjoy them, and you simply don't. The family 

 hens are a-cackling down in the barn yard ; the roosters seem 

 to have taken on a fresh lease of life and are yelling their 

 heads off. Some of the larger live stock seems to be uncom- 

 fortable, and are giving vent to strange and uncouth sounds. 

 You think of Noah, and wonder what he did with his ears 

 during his famous forty days. And then a strange and 

 frightful noise rises high above everything else. It is a 

 shriek and a squeak; it is high, loud, sharp and clear. It is 

 not one noise, but several. It is a perfect cyclone of sound, 

 and effectively banishes any thought of sleep. You arise to 

 ascertain what strange and terrible creature can make so 

 hideous an uproar. Surely some frightful beast has strayed 

 into your yard. Yet all is peace without. There is no need 

 for a gun. There is nothing to frighten you, although you 

 have been mightily disturbed. Up the lane come a stately 

 row of guinea fowl, lifting their heads to the newly risen sun, 

 and crying aloud in very joy of life ! Vowing their immediate 

 destruction for the table, you prepare yourself for the quiet 

 of town. 



