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ASSASSINS OF
SILENCE
By MARC N. GOODNOW
O N E of the first impressions
the tense, modern citydweller
who journeys into
the country has forced upon
him is the absolute quiet
that reigns there. Let him strike out away
from the beaten paths of the motor car
or the steel threads of the electric or
steam railway and he enters a new world
—the world of silence. For awhile it is
a welcome relief, but soon it becomes
actually oppressive.
Life without noise is
nowadays a horrid bore
to thousands who have
known little else. Existence
minus the grind
of wheels, the screech of
machinery, the toot of
whistles, the shrill call
of the newsboy or the
alley peddler, the nasal
twang of the leatherlunged
sidewalk or street
vendor is beyond their
ken. The city child of
today seems fated to have no sounds
upon his ear-drums but those of rumbling,
chugging, puffing grunts, growls,
squeaks or squawks. A medley of confusion
surrounds
his life from the
cradle to the grave
— unless he is
called by chance or
choice to one of
those queer resorts
in the country
which we call a
village and which
one sensitive artist
has termed a
"paradise of quiet."
It is, forsooth, a noisy age; the assassin
of silence in some one of his various
guises seems always at one's elbow, endeavoring
to split one's ear-drum and
torture sensitive nerves. When I think
of Paris the news vendor's call of "La
Patrie, La Patrie"—the afternoon newspaper—sounds
in my ears with haunting
disquietud e.
Rome, before
the great war
Isn't It One of
Your "Pet Peeves"
to Have Your Restaurant
Table
Within a Few Feet
of One of These
Double - B - Flat
Bass Accomplices
of Chaos?
at least, was
one of the
noisiest tourist
centers of all Europe, with the
street gamins and "facchinos"
who haunt the central station
keeping up their unseemly
commotion all through the night. In
Germany—Berlin—I found less noise
than in any other large city on the continent.
The German authorities seemed to
have some consideration for a sensitive
traveler's nerves.
London noises are hideous and seemingly
age-long in their duration, lifting
heavenward in one great roar from every
part of that huge center. The noises
there were even multiplied by the very
devices which were employed to reduce
noise. It is pointed out, for example,
that in London and other large towns,
but especially in London, the smoothness
and silence of better systems of street
paving, instead of reducing the noise of
at