996 
Tht RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
August 6, 1921 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
This is a hard and trying season for 
many farmers. With us the constant 
rains made it almost impossible to keep 
the crops on our lower land clean. Fifty 
miles away there has been no rain, and 
crops are suffering like a man lost on the 
desert. Prices started in very low. though 
they are now rising. The heat has de¬ 
pressed and worried most of us; why, I 
could go on and paint a picture of trouble 
that would win a prize at an exhibition of 
gloom. I meet people now and then who 
seem to have lost thew grip on hope. Last 
week we had something about the phys¬ 
ical effect upon the body when we permit 
fear, anger, disgust and worry to master 
us. Various glands pour their secretions 
into the blood and actually poison the sys¬ 
tem unless we can get rid of this poison 
through work or the emotion of joy or 
hope or love of beauty, which seem to act 
as an antidote for the meanness of worry 
or fear. There seems to be no question 
about it. A man most certainly can and 
does “worry himself sick” if he keeps on 
brooding over his afflictions. The mind 
may really affect the body through the 
glands. Joy and hope rebuild ; worry and 
fear destroy. 
* * * * * 
I thought of this last week when Hiram 
Chambers sat and poured out his dark 
tale of woe. That is not his exact name, 
but it will answer, for, unhappily, there 
are as many Hirams as there are sands 
on the 'beach, and a season like this one 
starts them up into activity. You should 
have heard this man declaim. Here is part 
of It: 
“I am the most afflicted man I know of. 
My wife is down sick ; three men to feed 
and women demanding wages that would 
suit a bank president. Just look at that 
hay ! It’s been out in the rain until it’s 
as black as your shoe. And the price of 
milk ! . Look at it. Here I am compelled 
to divide up with a lot of farmers I 
never saw or heard of. How do I know 
whether they deserve it or not? Then 
that rheumatism in my shoulder is coming 
back. 1 know it will lay me up. That 
boy of mine wants to go off riding the 
country every night after milking, when 
he ought to be sleeping tip for another 
day. My girl says if she can’t have some 
pay for her work she’s going to get a job 
in town. Look at those potatoes, just be¬ 
ginning to show blight. Look at the 
weeds in that corn. There are more 
worms in the apples this year than I 
ever say before. No, sir; Job had very 
little on me, except his boils. I’m the 
worst afflicted man I ever saw. I’ll bet 
you can’t name a man who nas it worse 
than I have!” 
* * * * * 
It seems hard to believe it, but here 
was a strong healthy man with a good 
home and a good family, giving vent to 
his emotions. He surely was gloomy 
enough. He had worried and given way 
to fear till he had overworked the glands 
I spoke of last week and really changed 
his nature. I just sat and looked at this 
big, strong man and wondered. But when 
he offered to bet me that I could not, name 
a man with a greater burden or affliction 
I decided to take his wager. 
“But I can tell you of a man whose ex¬ 
perience will make your troubles seem 
like boy’s play !” 
“You can’t do it! I’ll challenge >ou to 
do it. When you get through I’ll agree 
to beat it out of my own troubles!” 
O, Hiram had a bad dose. It had been 
growing upon him for weeks. He had ac¬ 
tually come to the point where he believed 
his own tale of woe. When a man gets 
to that point about the only hope for him 
is to swallow some mental dynamite and 
let. it explode inside of him. So I told 
him the story of my old friend ’Gene 
Wilson, who had perhaps the hardest ex¬ 
perience I have ever heard of in common 
life. It is quite a long story, but I will 
try to condense it: 
•t* 
’Gene Wilson was a deaf man. His 
hearing had slowly faded away and left 
him in silence. In some ways that is the 
most merciful way for silence to steal 
upon one, yet, on the other hand, it fills 
the mind with keen regrets. ’Gene was a 
farmer with wife and children. He went 
about his work with good spirit and a 
fine resignation which taught him to ac¬ 
cept without great complaint what the 
changing seasons left at his door. I im¬ 
agine this resignation and calm hope is 
the best fertilizer that any farmer can 
ever use on the land. ’Gene could not 
complain at the way the farm treated 
him—he would not complain anyway. It 
happened that one Autumn he sent a car¬ 
load of potatoes to New York, and ho 
went along to attend to their sale. And 
his wife and baby went along, too. for a 
little outing and to help him transact his 
business. You see these deaf men need 
an interpreter whom they can trust. On 
the second day of his visit, ’Gene under¬ 
took to cross Broadway at 42d street. 
That is a crowded and dangerous place. 
The policeman on duty waved ’Gene back 
as a signal not to come, but the deaf man 
was a little confused and went ahead. A 
great car darting by on some hurried er¬ 
rand smashed into ’Gene from behind and 
threw him headlong to f he ground. Then 
all went black around him. 
***** 
An accident at home, on the farm, 
would have been different. Tender hands 
would have carried the deaf man into the 
house and from every nearby farmhouse 
men and women would have hurried with 
help and neighborly sympathy. It is dif¬ 
ferent in the city. When a stranger drops 
in the street he is not so much a human 
being as a “case.” So they bundled ’Gene 
into an ambulance, much as they would 
have handled a piano or a piece of furni¬ 
ture, and hurried him off to the hospital. 
The doctors say they asked questions and 
talked with him, but ’Gene never an¬ 
swered. How could he, when he could 
not hear what they said, and while his 
brain was confused and his eyes dimmed? 
So they put him down as an idiot or a 
mildly insane man. It is not possible for 
one with good ears to realize what such a 
situation must mean to a deaf man. The 
doctors dressed the wounds on his head 
and bandaged them so as to cover his 
eyes entirely. He could see nothing. 
What difference would it make, the doc¬ 
tor's agreed, to this dazed and apparently 
idiotic man, whether he could see or not! 
So poor ’Gene, battered and stunned and 
and blinded, lay helplessly on that hos¬ 
pital bed, while the nurses searched 
through his pockets for some papers to 
show his identity. 
***** 
Then suddenly ’Gene’s mind cleared 
and he remembered the accident, but could 
not place himself. There he lay in dark¬ 
ness, he knew not where, with that fright¬ 
ful pain in his head and that roaring in 
his ears. He shouted and called out, but, 
of course, not knowing of his affliction, 
the nurses could not make him under¬ 
stand. An awful terror, such as only the 
deaf, suddenly plunged into darkness, can 
ever know, fell upon him. He caught at 
those hateful bandages over his eyes and 
tried to tear them away, so that the 
blessed light might reach him once more. 
No man, even those who are hopelessly 
blind, can ever know what light, blessed 
light, meant to poor ’Gene Wilson at that 
moment. But strong hands caught his 
and pulled them away from those ban¬ 
dages. They strapped his hands and 
arms to the bed so that they could not 
reach his head. And there he lay, a pris¬ 
oner in that hated darkness. It is a cu¬ 
rious thing about the deaf that at such 
times they do not cry or scream as others 
might do. Their affliction has taught them 
a sort of fatalism, so that they cannot 
weep or cry out and thus relieve their 
feelings. They usually endure in silence. 
Terror snatches at the very soul, and un¬ 
less they be of strong and vital character 
it is often hard to decide when they come 
up close to the border line of insanity. 
Thus it was with ’Gene Wilson. Life had 
given him a rich fund of philosophy and 
faith, but as he lay there in the darkness, 
a stranger and a prisoner, he >tells me 
that he went to the very edge of the line. 
It seemed very real. Hateful, loathsome 
shapes seemed to take him by the arm and 
lead him into a dim, somber country. 
They reached a large gateway and looked 
in upon a gloomy place. It was peopled 
with dark shapes, some sad visaged and 
others grinning and devilish. And ’Gene 
says he knew that he was standing at the 
gateway of insanity—with one foot over 
the line! 
***** 
“But what kept you out?” I asked. 
“It is strange,” he said, “but pretty 
much the whole of my life seemed to flash 
before me, as I stood there struggling 
with those shapes at my arm. Some sort 
of thing which apparently represented my 
farm and the money I had saved seemed 
to come and offer the value of it all. But 
these shapes at my side shook their heads 
anl pushed me on. Then there came and 
stood in the gateway the figure of a little 
girl. I recognized her as the little one we 
took into our family to bring up some 
years before. She is now a woman 
grown, but I saw her there distinctly, 
just as she looked when she first came to 
ns, small and pallid and ragged. She held 
up a little hand and the shapes fell back 
before us.” 
“I suppose all this seemed very real to 
you !” 
“It did. It was more vivid and natural 
than any other experience of my life. At 
the sight of that little one there flashed 
into my mind something that I had not 
recalled for years. When I was a boy my 
mother taught me to repeat the Twenty- 
third Psalm. As I grew to be a man it 
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f.S-.... H«m C.uU Fran FI, Fnu 
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