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The deaf man must carry this world of silence about with him always, and it leads him into strange performances. I know a deaf man who went to a church service. He could hear nothing of the sermon, but he felt something of the glory of worship, and when the congregation stood up to sing my deaf friend felt that here was where he could help.

“Just as I am, without one plea,” announced the preacher, and the deaf man’s wife found the place in the hymn book. He sang along with the rest and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, one of the penalties of the Silent Country is that its inhabitants can rarely keep in step with the crowd. My friend did not realize that at the end of each verse the organist was expected to play a short interlude before the next verse started. There has never seemed to me to be any reason for these ornamental musical flourishes; they merely keep us from getting on with our singing.

The deaf man knew nothing of all this. He was there to finish the singing of that hymn. It is a habit of the deaf to go straight to the end, since there is no reason why they should stop to listen. So he started in on the second verse as all the rest were marking time through that useless interlude, and he sang a solo: