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“Tean bear the heat very well,” said a student forced to spend a sum mer in the city, “but I cannot en dure the noise.”” Possibly he did not stop to consider that, in making such a declaration, he placed himself in illustrious company. Thomas Carlyle “could not abide’? a noise especially that of the morning crow ing of cocks. Wallenstein, accustom ed as he was to the din of battle, had an unconquerable dread of the bark ing of dogs, and even the clatter of the large spurs fashionable in his day. In order to ensure quiet, he engaged twelve patrols to make reg ular circuits about his house night and day. Neither Julius Cesar nor the phi losopher, Kant, could tolerate the crowing of poor chanticleer, who, in deed, seems to have very few friends among the studious and sensitive. Schopenhauer exceeds almost all lovers of quiet in the extravagance of his denunciation of noise. He de clares that the amount which a man can bear with ease is in inverse ratio to his mental power. “If I hear a dog barking for hours on the threshold of a house,’ he writes, “I know well enough what kind of brains I may expect from its inhabitants.” A writer in the Popular Science Monthly asserts that noise is one of the most injurious influences of city life. It may not be sufficiently loud to attract attention of those accus tomed to it, but, if continuous,it acts as inevitably upon the nervous sys tem, as water dropping upon a stone. Experiments made upon animals show that when they have been sub jected, for a number of hours, to the vibration of a tuning-fork their nerve centers became irritated, as certainly as muscular fibres would be affected by an acid or an electric shock. The injurious effect of ordinary noises has been recognized by the authorities of European cities, and in some cases, the nuisance has been suppressed. Heavily laden carts are not admitted to certain streets of Berlin, and in others they are only allowed to pass on condition that the horses walk. The street-cars of Munich have no bells and those of us who live in places where these bells are not used on Sunday can testify to the relief attendant on the conse quent “peace and quiet.” The amount of the matter seems to be that the city dweller must re gard noise as one of the necessary evils of hia e condition,—one to be borne philosophically, and requiring a large stock of grace and patience. Happy, indeed,are they who, through the tone hot months, are only disturbed in their morning slumbers by the songs of the birds, or the crowing of cocks.
Newspaper Details
Albert Lea Enterprise
Albert Lea, Minnesota, US
Wed, Oct 03, 1888
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Matt J.
