The Automaton Ear, and Other Sketches

One morning in the Spring of 1867—whether in April or May I am now unable certainly to determine, but think it was in the latter month—I was sitting at the breakfast-table, leisurely reading the morning paper, and enjoying my last cup of coffee, when my eye accidentally fell upon the following advertisement:—

“WANTED—A reliable man to take charge of the Crib. An unmarried German preferred. One who can come well recommended, and give bond for faithful performance of duty, will receive a liberal salary. Apply immediately to the Board of Public Works, Pumping Department, Nos. 15 and 17 South Wells Street.”

My attention was arrested by the thought of so strange an occupation, and whether any one would be found willing to accept the situation and live alone in the crib two miles from the shore. There all companionship would be cut off, and I wondered what effect the utter solitude and confinement in the small round building rising out of the water, with little in the scenery to relieve the eye, and nothing to rest the ear from the continual dashing of the waves against the frame sides—I wondered what effect it would have upon the occupant.

It happened I had been lecturing before a class of medical students in one of our colleges upon the relation of mind to body, and it occurred to me that this crib-tender might prove an illustration of my theory. His mind would have afforded it an opportunity to prey upon itself, and might become perverted. Under certain circumstances the mental exerts an influence over the physical system, aside from the voluntary volition of the will, and it frequently transpires that what is mere illusion in the spiritual nature appears a reality to the material, so closely are the two linked together.

My interest being awakened, I secretly determined that I would try to discover who accepted this situation, and notice, if possible, what effect it would produce upon the keeper. Some time later I learned that the above advertisement had been answered the same day (the exact date I can not remember) by a German, one Gustav Stahlmann, who presented himself at the address indicated, and applied for the situation. After a slight examination he proved satisfactory in every respect. His recommendations were of the highest kind and bore testimony to his strict integrity and upright character.

The position was accordingly offered to him, provided he would be willing to comply with certain conditions. First, that in accepting it he would bind himself to remain in the situation at least two years; and, secondly, that during that period, he would upon no occasion or pretense whatever, leave the crib. He manifested little hesitation in assenting to these requirements, as the salary was good, and an opportunity afforded for resting from the severe labor to which he had been accustomed.

All necessary arrangements were completed, and upon the following day, with his dog for the sole companion of his future home, he had been taken out and instructed in the duties of his office. These were few and light, consisting mainly of attention to the water-gates of the tunnel, opening and closing them as required, and removing any obstructions which might clog their action. At night he was to trim and light the lamp which had been placed on the apex of the roof as a warning to passing vessels. This was all; the remainder of the time lay at his own disposal. A boy might readily have accomplished this labor, and he congratulated himself upon his good luck in securing so easy a berth—one, too, which yielded a good income.

The first time I saw Stahlmann myself was soon after he had accepted the situation. If I recollect rightly, he told me he had been a month on the Crib. I had rowed myself out from the foot of Twelfth Street in a small boat.

At this early period in its history the Crib was not so well finished and comfortable as now, but was bare and barn-like, being in fact nothing more than a round unplastered house, rising out of the lake. The wooden floor, which was some fifteen feet above the water, contained in its center a well about six feet in diameter, around which arose the iron rods of the water-gates. A small room, the only apartment, had been partitioned off by three plank walls from the southeastern part of the circular interior, and furnished for the abode of the keeper. If it were rough, there was all present that he could reasonably desire for his comfort. A sufficient supply of provisions were delivered to him once a month by a tug-boat from the city.

I found Stahlmann to be a man rather above the medium height, with a broad muscular frame, but there were no evidences of sluggishness in his movements; on the contrary, his elasticity and gracefulness betokened great powers of endurance, and indicated to me activity both of body and mind. He was perhaps thirty-five years of age, and his frank, open countenance was marked by regular features of a somewhat intellectual cast; honesty and principle were plainly visible in his face, and a ready command of language betrayed considerable education. He impressed me as superior to the majority of men in his rank of life, and from this conclusion I was none the less driven by the appearance of his coarse and soiled clothing. I engaged him in conversation, into which he was easily drawn, and I was surprised by the native love of the beautiful which he evidently possessed. He seemed to take great pleasure in pointing out the beauties in the scene that laid before our view.

The sun was scarcely an hour high, and we could hardly turn our eyes eastward for the splendor of his rays reflected on the water. To the north the sea-like horizon was flecked by the white sails of retreating vessels, some hull-down in the distance, others uncertain specks vanishing from our range of vision. Stretching along the shore to the westward, Chicago shot a hundred spires, glistening and glorified, into the morning sunlight, while just opposite us stood the grim lighthouse, a motionless sentinel keeping watch over the harbor.

I admitted the attraction of the scene, and made an effort to turn the conversation to his private life. He was easily led to talk of himself, although he did it in a natural and unaffected manner. I gathered that he was born in Bavaria, and that when he had attained his sixteenth year, some difficulty had driven his parents to this country. They were well educated, but misfortune compelled them, on their arrival, to put their son to labor. The instruction he had received in the Fatherland had evidently strengthened his powers of observation and quickened his understanding.

I asked him if he did not find his life at the Crib very tiresome, and what he did to pass away the time. I remarked that I believed, if I were in his place, I would be smitten most fearfully with the blues. He laughed good humoredly, and said he had never been troubled in that manner, that there were daily a great number of visitors, curiosity-seekers, which the Crib attracted, as it was altogether novel, and had but just been completed. Then he said he had his dog for companionship, and that they lived very pleasantly together. He was evidently much attached to this animal, whom he called Caspar, for he frequently interrupted the conversation to stroke it on the head. I was astonished to find him well acquainted with the current news of the day, but he readily explained this, for usually some one who came out carried a paper, which was willingly given to him, and having nothing else to occupy his time he read it much more carefully than we do who are in the turmoil of the city.

Towards the middle of the day I left him, almost envying his peaceful life and happy contentment, yet doubting if this would last long, for, after the novelty wore away, I could not help thinking that he might find his solitary existence less pleasing. I had become wonderfully interested in this man, and determined to pay him another visit when I could again find half a day to devote to pleasure.

It was not, however, until the following September that I could spare time for another trip to the Crib. This visit, as I said, had been prompted out of curiosity to watch the effects of this solitary life upon Stahlmann. Although four months had elapsed, I found him situated just as I had left him, and by the appearance of the surroundings, I might have almost believed it was but yesterday I had looked upon him. When I remarked this to him, I noticed a peculiar smile play across his features, and it struck me that his face had not the same happy expression which had so pleased me before. I observed, too, that he carried himself in a listless manner, very unlike his former erect bearing. I found him, however, just as readily drawn into conversation, although some of his old enthusiasm was gone, and he manifested an evident disinclination to speak of himself, for when I made an effort to bring up the subject, he displayed considerable skill in evading it. This was repeated again and again until I found that he would not be forced to it, but I saw full well by his actions that he had already grown tired of his monotonous life. All my jokes about the solitude, which he had laughed at before, were now received in silence and with furtive glances. Evidently it had become a serious matter, and I dropped the disagreeable subject.

He inquired most eagerly for any news, and said he had not seen a paper for almost a week, as the wet weather had interfered with visitors, preventing any one from coming out. When I left he repeatedly invited me to come again, which I promised to do, as in our slight intercourse we had struck up a mutual friendship. My interest, too, had been increased, as I plainly saw that his life had become distasteful to him, and I had considerable curiosity to ascertain whether he would, according to his promise, remain the two full years upon the Crib; at any rate, I concluded that I would not lose sight of him.

Directly after this visit, business arrangements called me away from home, and detained me in New York City without interruption until last May. During this period, of course, I had no means of learning any thing whatever concerning Gustav Stahlmann. On my return, the first glimpse I caught of the familiar lake recalled him to my memory, and revived the old interest. I determined to renew our former acquaintance, but found, to my great disappointment, that all visitors to the Crib had been prohibited by the authorities soon after I was called from home; yet I did not give up in my attempt to find out if he still remained in his situation. After many fruitless inquiries, I finally learned that he was dead. This was the only knowledge I could gain, and, disappointed by the sad intelligence, I dismissed the subject from my mind.

A week ago I made the startling discovery that the Crib at the eastern terminus of the lake tunnel, within the year following its completion, had been the scene of a tragedy, the particulars of which, when I learned them, thrilled me with horror, and called forth my profoundest sympathy for the poor victim. The whole circumstance had been so carefully kept secret by an enforced reticence on the part of the authorities, that beyond two or three individuals no one in Chicago had the slightest suspicion of the sickening drama which was enacted but two miles from her shores.

I was walking through the Court House looking at the arrangement of the newly erected portion of the building, and while in the rooms occupied by the Water Board, I accidentally stumbled upon an old memorandum book which had evidently been misplaced during the recent removal of this department from their old quarters on Wells Street to the first floor of the west wing. Upon examination it proved to be a kind of diary, and was written with pencil in the German character. On the inside of the front cover, near the upper right hand corner, was inscribed the name Gustav Stahlmann, and underneath a date—1865. A small portion of the book, the first part, was filled with accounts, some of them of expenditures, others memoranda of days’ work in different parts of the city, and under various foremen. But it was to the body of the book that my attention was particularly called. This was in the journal form, being a record of successive occurrences with the attending thoughts. The entries were made at irregular intervals and without any regard to system. Sometimes it had been written in daily for a considerable period, then dropped, and taken up again apparently at the whim of the owner. In places there appeared no connection between the parts separated by a break of even short duration; at others the sense was obscure, and could only be attained by implication. The earliest records in the second part were in June, 1867, and I found dates regularly inserted as late as the November following. In December they ceased entirely; afterward the diary, if such it might then be called, was either by the day or the week, or without any direct evidence as to the time when the circumstances therein narrated had occurred. In fact, throughout the whole of the concluding portion there was nothing to indicate that the matter had not been written on a single occasion, except the variations which almost every person’s hand-writing exhibits when produced under different degrees of nervous excitement.

From this black morocco memorandum book; from the hand-writing of Gustav Stahlmann himself, I learned the incidents of his career after I parted from him. They constitute the history of a fate so horrible in every respect, that I shudder at the thought that any human being was doomed to experience it.

The main facts in this narrative I have translated, sometimes literally, at others using my own language, where the thoughts in the original were so carelessly or obscurely expressed as to render any other course simply impossible.

It seems, as I supposed, that when Stahlmann was first settled in the Crib, he was greatly pleased with his situation. The weather was mild and beautiful; the fresh air blowing across the water was a grateful change from the close and dusty atmosphere of Chicago. Many of his old friends came out to take a look at his new quarters, and almost surveyed them with envy while listening to an account of his easy, untroubled life. At dusk, after he had lighted his lamp, and it threw out its rays, he would watch to see how suddenly in the distance, as if to keep it company, the great white beacon in the lighthouse would flash out, burning bright and clear. Then along the western shore the city lights, one by one, would kindle up, multiplying into a thousand twinkling stars that threw a halo against the sky. Afterwards the soughing of the waves as they washed up the sides of his abode, fell pleasantly on his ear, and lulled him to sleep with Caspar lying at his feet.

But it seemed as if the same day came again and again, for still the waters broke around him, and still night after night the same lights flashed and burned. Then the time appeared to become longer, and he watched more eagerly for the arrival of some visitors, but, if his watching had been in vain, he went wearily to sleep at night with a feeling of disappointment, only to waken and go through the same cheerless routine. Sometimes for a whole week he would not see a single human being nor hear the sound of a human voice, save his own when he spoke to the dog, who seemed by sagacious instinct to sympathize in his master’s lonesome position, and capered about until he would attract his attention, and be rewarded by an approving word and caress upon the head.

Visitors had become less and less frequent until the last of September, when they ceased altogether. Stahlmann in trying to explain this to himself correctly concluded that the authorities must have prohibited them, as he had heard some time previously they entertained such an intention, although he had been reluctant to believe it, and still vainly hoped that it might not be true. But time only confirmed the suspicion which he had been so unwilling to accept, and although within two miles of a crowded city, he found himself completely isolated, cut off, as it were, from the human race.

Then he searched for something that might amuse him and help wear away the interminable days, but he found nothing. He would have been glad even if only the old newspapers had been preserved that he might re-read them, but they were destroyed, and he owned no books. His former severe labor, performed in company with his fellow men, was now far preferable in his eyes to this complete solitude, with nothing to occupy his hands or mind. He saw the vessels pass until they seemed to become companions for him in his loneliness; he had watched them all the Summer, but the winds grew chill and rough, sweeping out of sullen clouds, and boisterously drove home the ships.

Stahlmann found himself utterly alone on the wide lake, and the fierce blasts howled around his frame house, covering it with spray from the lashing billows that seemed ready to engulf it. Crusts of ice formed and snapped, rattling down to the waves. Heavy snow fell, but did not whiten the unchanging scenery, for it was drowned in the waste of waters. Night after night he lit the beacon and looked yearningly westward to the starred city. Then the solitude grew intolerable. It was like the vision of heaven to the lost spirits shut out in darkness forever. He was alone, all alone, craving even for the sound of a kindred voice, so that he cried out in his anguish. The flickering lights he was watching threw their rays over thousands of human beings, yet there was not one to answer his despairing call.

Sleep would no longer allow him to forget that he was shut out from all human society, for he lost consciousness of his lonesome position only to find himself struggling in some nightmare ocean, where there was no eye to see his distress. Then he would be awakened by the dog rubbing his nose against his face, and knew he had groaned aloud in his troubled slumber, and Caspar had crawled closer, as if to comfort his unhappy master. Sometimes the tempter whispered escape—escape from this Crib, which had been so correctly named, for it had, indeed, become a dismal cage. He felt himself strong to combat the waves in flying from the horrible solitude; he could swim twice the distance in his eagerness to be once again among his fellow beings; but his high principles shrank in horror from the thought of violating a promise. He had solemnly given his word that he would remain upon the place, and it bound him stronger than chains of iron. He cast the thought, which had dared to arise in his mind, from him with a sense of shame that it had been a moment entertained.

Early on one bitter cold night, when his house was thick-ribbed with ice, Stahlmann noticed a great light, which increased until it illumined all the western sky. He saw the city spires as plainly as though bathed in the rays of the setting sun, and the lurid glare lit up the waters, making the surrounding blackness along the lake shore appear more terrible. The fire brightened and waned, brightened and waned again. He watched it far into the night, and thought of the thousands of anxious faces that were turned toward the same light, until he fell into a troubled sleep, yearning for the sight of a single countenance. This fire which he witnessed must have been the great conflagration on Lake Street that occurred in February, 1868.

He was sitting one dull, cloudy afternoon, looking out over the dreary waves, when his attention was attracted by the strange behavior of Caspar. The dog was greatly excited; it would jump about him, whining and howling, then run to the door, which stood partly open, and look down into the water, at the same time giving a short, quick yelp. This was repeated so frequently that Stahlmann was aroused from his gloomy reverie. He followed it to the threshold, and saw for an instant some black object that the waves threw up against the Crib. A second time it arose, and Stahlmann plunged into the water with the quick instinct that prompts a brave man to peril his own life in attempting to save another from drowning. In one moment more he had grasped the body, and fastened it to the rope ladder that hung down the western side of the Crib. Then mounting it himself, he drew it up after him on to the floor.

It was the form of a young man, and Stahlmann eagerly kneeled over it, hoping yet to find a faint spark of vitality. A glance showed him that the body must have been in the water several hours, for it was already somewhat bloated; but even then, in his mad desire to restore life, he rubbed the stiffened limbs; but the rigid muscles did not relax. He wrung the water from the black hair, which in places was short and crisp, looking as if it might have been singed by fire. The features were not irregular, but the open eyes had a stony, death-glaze on them, and the broad forehead was cut across in gashes which had evidently been made by the waves beating it against the walls of the Crib. The hands were clenched and slightly blistered.

Stahlmann’s frenzied exertions could not call back the departed spirit, and he sat gazing wildly upon it in his bitter disappointment. Then a startling thought broke suddenly into his mind—What, out in his desolate and watery home, could he do with the dead? Where could he put the stiffened corpse? But as the night came on, he arose to light the beacon; then descended again immediately, taking up his former position by the lifeless form, for it appeared to exert a peculiar fascination over him; he felt a strange kind of pleasure in the presence of the form of a human being, even though it were dead. He seemed to have found a companion, and the thought, which had startled him at first died from his memory.

Hour after hour as he sat beside the corpse; its strange influence increased, until it gradually filled up in his troubled heart the aching void which had so yearned for society. He left it only as necessity called him away to attend to his duties, each time returning with increasing haste. Day by day the spell continued, and he grew to regard the dead body with all the tenderness he would have manifested toward a living brother. He did not shrink from the cold, clammy skin when he raised the head to place it on a stool, but sat and talked to it. He asked why it looked at him with that stony glare, and why its face had turned that dark and ugly color; but when no answer came, he said he realized that it was dead and could not speak. Then the terrible truth flashed upon him. With a groan he saw that he could keep the corpse no longer, and the thought which had startled him once before crept in again with increased significance. Where could he bury it? In the bottom of the lake, where nothing would disturb its peace. He gently let it down into the water, and, as he saw it disappear, he awoke to wild grief at losing it, and would have plunged in to rescue it the second time, but it was gone from sight forever.

Might not this body have been one of the lost from the ill-fated Sea Bird, which burned in the beginning of April, 1868, a few miles north of the city? Stahlmann must have found it about this time.

His grief for the loss of his dead companion grew upon him each day, and rendered the solitude more unendurable. Solitude? It was no longer solitude, for the place was peopled by the phantom creations of his inflamed imagination. Here a part of the diary is altogether incoherent, showing into what utter confusion his intellect had been thrown.

The waves roared at him in anger, and the winds joined them in their rage. Fiendish spirits seemed to rise up before him that were fierce to clutch him and gloat over his terror. The lights in the west danced together and glared at him in mockery, and his own beacon threw its cold white rays over the familiar aperture where the iron rods of the water-gates rose; but that opening had suddenly become an undefined horror to him. The very terror with which he regarded it drew him to its verge. He cast his eyes into its depths, down upon the troubled but black and silent water, and glared at the vision which met his strained sight, for the ghostly face of the man who had been murdered in the tunnel peered at him through the uncertain light.

There was only the dog that he could fly to in his agony, but it, too, had a strange appearance and answered his call by low plaintive howls that sent a shiver through his frame. He repeated its name aloud, and Caspar crawled closer to his master, still at times making moans that sounded sorrowful—almost like the pleading of a human voice in distress, and he thought its eyes had a strange reproachful gaze. While he spoke to it, the dog uttered a prolonged wail. Stahlmann shivered, and a cold chill crept through his blood; all his superstition was roused afresh. The wind lost its rage and died down to funeral-sobs. The sound of the waves fell into a dirge-like cadence, and that melancholy wail which had chilled his blood rang in his ears—it rang with the awful significance of an evil omen long after it had died upon the air. The dog lay perfectly motionless; he stooped to stroke it, but it did not move. He stared at it with a bewildered gaze, when suddenly the horrible reality with the fearful explanation, broke upon his half-crazed brain, and he staggered back with a wild shriek. In the utter misery of his solitude, in his strange grief for the loss of the drowned corpse, and his terror from the hallucinations of a disordered intellect, he had neglected to feed his faithful dog, and had starved to death the only living creature that existed for him in the world. Caspar was dead.

Stahlmann in his agony seemed to hear once more the piteous cry which the dog had uttered with its expiring breath, and to him the wail sounded in its pathetic mournfulness like the mysterious herald of another death.

The diary is so blurred at this point that it is hardly legible. What can be read is incomprehensible from broken, incoherent sentences—the empty language of a lunatic. Save one remaining passage, I could make out nothing further. This entry must have been written in a lucid interval when he realized to what a fearful condition he had been reduced by unbroken solitude. Because it is the last record, I translate it literally, as follows:

“That cry again—what have I come through? Hell with its host of furies can not be worse than this awful Crib—I kill myself.

What remains is soon told. A few inquiries in the proper direction revealed that on the morning of the first of May, 1868, when the tug boat from Chicago made its usual trip to the Crib to supply provisions, the dog was discovered dead upon the floor, and near by—just to the right of the entrance, and about ten feet distant from it—hung the dead body of Gustav Stahlmann, suspended by the neck from one of the rafters. It was at once cut down and the Coroner quietly notified. Among his few effects was found the memorandum book which so curiously came into my possession.

The authorities were in no way to blame for this unfortunate occurrence. On that day they placed several persons in charge of this lonely structure and have changed them at regular intervals ever since. Because if the circumstance were known, they were fearful they could get no one to fill the situation, either on account of the solitude or from the fact that many persons are afraid to live in a house that has been the scene of a suicide—they wisely concluded to say nothing whatever about the melancholy event, and, as I said before, few persons in the city are acquainted with its details.