"On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was bereaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience."

Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud's obmutescence.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \Ob`mu*tes"cence\ ([o^]b`m[-u]*t[e^]s"sens), n. [L.
obmutescens, p. pr of obmutescere to become dumb; ob (see
{Ob-}) + mutescere to grow dumb, fr. mutus dumb.]
1. A becoming dumb; loss of speech. --Sir T. Browne.

2. A keeping silent or mute. --Paley.