Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1886 — How to Kill Noise. [ARTICLE]

How to Kill Noise.

There are a multitude of sufferers from the noises of their neighborhood who endi4re what amounts to agony, exciting their nerves to abnormal action and their pulse to fever heat, when it would do them no injury to use a simple means of obviating the whole thing. The clangor of machinery, the ringing of bells, the cries and laughter, the yells and roars, of a hundred or less children at recess or at ball-playing, the passing of heavy drays—all or any of these and other things are sometimes fatal to the health of the invalid and to the work of the thinker. Often it is 4itterlv impossible to move into a region where no heavy drays pass, no bell-ringing is allowed; and then there is hardly a region to be found not invaded" by the whistle of the steam engine, or where boys do not shout at their games; and even where there are no cocks to crow, or dogs to bark, or birds to sing at unseemly hours before dawn, there is always some other sound to torture the sensitive ear. If now, the sufferer will take a hit of spermaceti ointment of about the size of a pea, tie it up in a small square of fine linen, and place it deep in the ear, working it round till it takes the shape of the orifice, leaving the end to hang out, not a murmur of sound can be hea. d; the atmosphere is sweet and serene, the nerves are quite at rest, all exasperation is subdued, and when the noise is over, or the necessary season of quiet has been had, the litle plug can be removed, the murmur of the world allowed to return, and no harm done.— Harper’s Bazar.