The Story of My Life, Helen Keller [best book recommendations .txt] 📗

Few people that I know seem ever to pause in their daily intercourse to wonder at the beautiful bits of truth they have gathered during their years of study. Often when I speak enthusiastically of something in history or in poetry, I receive no response, and I feel that I must change the subject and return to the commonest topics, such as the weather, dressmaking, sports, sickness, “blues” and “worries.” To be sure, I take the keenest interest in everything that concerns those who surround me; it is this very interest which makes it so difficult for me to carry on a conversation with some people who will not talk or say what they think, but I should not be sorry to find more friends ready to talk with me now and then about the wonderful things I read. We need not be like “Les Femmes Savantes” but we ought to have something to say about what we learn as well as about what we MUST do, and what our professors say or how they mark our themes.

To-day I took luncheon with the Freshman Class of Radcliffe. This was my first real experience in college life, and a delightful experience it was! For the first time since my entrance into Radcliffe I had the opportunity to make friends with all my classmates, and the pleasure of knowing that they regarded me as one of themselves, instead of thinking of me as living apart and taking no interest in the everyday nothings of their life, as I had sometimes feared they did. I have often been surprised to hear this opinion expressed or rather implied by girls of my own age and even by people advanced in years. Once some one wrote to me that in his mind I was always “sweet and earnest,” thinking only of what is wise, good and interesting—as if he thought I was one of those wearisome saints of whom there are only too many in the world! I always laugh at these foolish notions, and assure my friends that it is much better to have a few faults and be cheerful and responsive in spite of all deprivations than to retire into one’s shell, pet one’s affliction, clothe it with sanctity, and then set one’s self up as a monument of patience, virtue, goodness and all in all; but even while I laugh I feel a twinge of pain in my heart, because it seems rather hard to me that any one should imagine that I do not feel the tender bonds which draw me to my young sisters—the sympathies springing from what we have in common—youth, hope, a half-eager, half-timid attitude towards the life before us and above all the royalty of maidenhood.

Sainte-Beuve says, “Il vient un age peut-etre quand on n’ecrit plus.” This is the only allusion I have read to the possibility that the sources of literature, varied and infinite as they seem now, may sometime be exhausted. It surprises me to find that such an idea has crossed the mind of any one, especially of a highly gifted critic. The very fact that the nineteenth century has not produced many authors whom the world may count among the greatest of all time does not in my opinion justify the remark, “There may come a time when people cease to write.”

In the first place, the fountains of literature are fed by two vast worlds, one of action, one of thought, by a succession of creations in the one and of changes in the other. New experiences and events call forth new ideas and stir men to ask questions unthought of before, and seek a definite answer in the depths of human knowledge.

In the second place, if it is true that as many centuries must pass before the world becomes perfect as passed before it became what it is to-day, literature will surely be enriched incalculably by the tremendous changes, acquisitions and improvements that cannot fail to take place in the distant future. If genius has been silent for a century it has not been idle. On the contrary, it has been collecting fresh materials not only from the remote past, but also from the age of progress and development, and perhaps in the new century there will be outbursts of splendor in all the various branches of literature.

At present the world is undergoing a complete revolution, and in the midst of falling systems and empires, conflicting theories and creeds, discoveries and inventions, it is a marvel how one can produce any great literary works at all. This is an age of workers, not of thinkers. The song to-day is: Let the dead past bury its dead,

Act, act in the living present,

Heart within and God overhead.

A little later, when the rush and heat of achievement relax, we can begin to expect the appearance of grand men to celebrate in glorious poetry and prose the deeds and triumphs of the last few centuries.

It is very interesting to watch a plant grow, it is like taking part in creation. When all outside is cold and white, when the little children of the woodland are gone to their nurseries in the warm earth, and the empty nests on the bare trees fill with snow, my window-garden glows and smiles, making summer within while it is winter without. It is wonderful to see flowers bloom in the midst of a snowstorm! I have felt a bud “shyly doff her green hood and blossom with a silken burst of sound,” while the icy fingers of the snow beat against the window-panes. What secret power, I wonder, caused this blossoming miracle? What mysterious force guided the seedling from the dark earth up to the light, through leaf and stem and bud, to glorious fulfilment in the perfect flower? Who could have dreamed that such beauty lurked in the dark earth, was latent in the tiny seed we planted?

Beautiful flower, you have taught me to see a little way into the hidden heart of things. Now I understand that the darkness everywhere may hold possibilities better even than my hopes.

A FREE TRANSLATION FROM HORACE

BOOK II-18.

I am not one of those on whom fortune deigns to smile. My house is not resplendent with ivory and gold; nor is it adorned with marble arches, resting on graceful columns brought from the quarries of distant Africa. For me no thrifty spinners weave purple garments. I have not unexpectedly fallen heir to princely estates, titles or power; but I have something more to be desired than all the world’s treasures—the love of my friends, and honorable fame, won by my own industry and talents. Despite my poverty, it is my privilege to be the companion of the rich and mighty. I am too grateful for all these blessings to wish for more from princes, or from the gods. My little Sabine farm is dear to me; for here I spend my happiest days, far from the noise and strife of the world.

O, ye who live in the midst of luxury, who seek beautiful marbles for new villas, that shall surpass the old in splendor, you never dream that the shadow of death is hanging over your halls.

Forgetful of the tomb, you lay the foundation of your palaces. In your mad pursuit of pleasure you rob the sea of its beach and desecrate hallowed ground. More even than this, in your wickedness you destroy the peaceful homes of your clients!

Without a touch of remorse you drive the father from his land, clasping to his bosom his household gods and his half-naked children.

You forget that death comes to the rich and the poor alike, and comes once for all; but remember, Acheron could not be bribed by gold to ferry the crafty Prometheus back to the sunlit world.

Tantalus, too, great as he was above all mortals, went down to the kingdom of the dead, never to return. Remember, too, that, although death is inexorable, yet he is just; for he brings retribution to the rich for their wickedness, and gives the poor eternal rest from their toil and sorrow.

Ah, the pranks that the nixies of Dreamland play on us while we sleep! Methinks “they are jesters at the Court of Heaven.” They frequently take the shape of daily themes to mock me; they strut about on the stage of Sleep like foolish virgins, only they carry well-trimmed note-books in their hands instead of empty lamps. At other times they examine and cross-examine me in all the studies I have ever had, and invariably ask me questions as easy to answer as this: “What was the name of the first mouse that worried Hippopotamus, satrap of Cambridge under Astyagas, grandfather of Cyrus the Great?” I wake terror-stricken with the words ringing in my ears, “An answer or your life!”

Such are the distorted fancies that flit through the mind of one who is at college and lives as I do in an atmosphere of ideas, conceptions and half-thoughts, half-feelings which tumble and jostle each other until one is almost crazy. I rarely have dreams that are not in keeping with what I really think and feel, but one night my very nature seemed to change, and I stood in the eye of the world a mighty man and a terrible. Naturally I love peace and hate war and all that pertains to war; I see nothing admirable in the ruthless career of Napoleon, save its finish.

Nevertheless, in that dream the spirit of that pitiless slayer of men entered me! I shall never forget how the fury of battle throbbed in my veins—it seemed as if the tumultuous beating of my heart would stop my breath. I rode a fiery hunter—I can feel the impatient toss of his head now and the quiver that ran through him at the first roar of the cannon.

From the top of the hill where I stood I saw my army surging over a sunlit plain like angry breakers, and as they moved, I saw the green of fields, like the cool hollows between billows. Trumpet answered trumpet above the steady beat of drums and the rhythm of marching feet. I spurred my panting steed and waving my sword on high and shouting, “I come! Behold me, warriors—Europe!” I plunged into the oncoming billows, as a strong swimmer dives into breakers, and struck, alas, ‘tis true, the bedpost!

Now I rarely sleep without dreaming; but before Miss Sullivan came to me, my dreams were few and far between, devoid of thought or coherency, except those of a purely physical nature. In my dreams something was always falling suddenly and heavily, and at times my nurse seemed to punish me for my unkind treatment of her in the daytime and return at an usurer’s rate of interest my kickings and pinchings. I would wake with a start or struggle frantically to escape from my tormentor. I was very fond of bananas, and one night I dreamed that I found a long string of them in the dining-room, near the cupboard, all peeled and deliciously ripe, and all I had to do was to stand under the string and eat as long as I could eat.

After Miss Sullivan came to me, the more I learned, the oftener I dreamed; but with the waking of my mind there came many dreary fancies and vague terrors which troubled my sleep for a long time. I dreaded the darkness and loved the woodfire. Its warm touch seemed so like a human caress, I really thought it was a sentient being, capable of loving and protecting me. One cold winter night I was alone in my room. Miss Sullivan had put out the light and