The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

The Inner Ear

By Kenneth Grahame

To all of us journeymen in this great whirling London mill, it
happens sooner or later that the clatter and roar of its ceaseless
wheels—a thing at first portentous, terrifying, nay, not to be
endured—becomes a part of our nature, with our clothes and our
acquaintances ; tili at last the racket and din of a competitive
striving humanity not only cease to impinge on the sense, but
induce a certain callosity in the organ, while that more sensitive
inner ear of ours, once almost as quick to record as his in the fairy
tale, who lay and heard the grass-blades thrust and sprout, Irom lack
of exercise drops back to the rudimentary stage. Hence it comes
about, that when we are set down for a brief Sunday, far irom ihe
central roar, our first Sensation is that of a stillness corporeal,
positive, aggressive. The clamorous ocean of sound has ebbed to
an infinite distance ; in its place this other sea of füllest silence
comes crawling up, whelming and flooding us, its crystalline waves
lapping us round with a possessing encirclement as distinct as that
of the other angry tide now passed away and done with. The
very Spirit of Silence is sitting hand in hand with us, and her touch
is a real warm thing.

And yet, may not our confidence be premature ? Even as we
bathe and steep our senses refreshingly in this new element, that

inner