Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1892 — Silence. [ARTICLE]

Silence.

Silence, in the sense of absolute stillness, is almost unknown in Nature. In her loneliest shrine there is nearly always a world of small noises, of stirrings and rustlings, quiver ol leaves, hum of insects, stir of flowerets and grass blades, song of birds—only in the desolate Arctic regions, or the pathless desert, does the explorer enter into the realms of absolute silence, and then it is oppressive and terrible. Noise itself may be missed. The Dorset poet writes truly when he' speaks of the over-worked mothei complaining of the “noisy fun” of he; children; but chronicles how, in latei years, when the family was scattered, “somemarried, some dead,” thelonelj old woman looks back to by-gone days, “and she do wish, with idle tears, to have again about her ears’ the very noise which once “stunned* her. How terrible is the quietude which settles over the household after the death of a child; how dull the silence that pervades the establishment aftei the return of the boys to school, albeit every one had previously grumbled at their “incessant noise.” It is said that a miller’s wife, leaving the mill after the death of hei husband, suffered so much from stillness through missing the clack of the machinery, that she made her servant bring the coffee-mill into hei bed-room every evening and “grind her to sleep.” Like other grievances, noise itsell may be “mourned when missed.” The professed foes of noise often increase what they attempt to destroy. “Name me, and you Weak me,” is an old riddle, but not apparently one always remembered by the loud-voiced callers for “silence.”