The Story of My Life, Helen Keller [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

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.

Today 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 someone 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 anyone 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-être 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 anyone, 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 today, 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 today 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 windowpanes. 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