Library Collections: Document: Full Text

To the vividness of first impression is added the advantage of meditation. Helen has only to withdraw her hand, and the current of communication is cut off. She is then free to arrange her thoughts and ruminate upon her mental store as no appliance of art enables us to do.

But all this would be of little value if she were not gifted with a wonderful imagination. This faculty must be in almost constant use; for her world is a picture gallery, and imagination must paint, from the suggestion of three senses, the things ordinarily supplied by five. The daily occurrences of the home life become history as they pass through spelling to reach her, and imagination vivifies them before she can be responsive. It is no wonder, then, that the fictitious persons she meets in books are almost as real as the friends about her, and that the pages of ancient history glow with as much color as the day just ended.

This nimbleness of the imagination is nature's greatest compensation for her loss of sight and hearing; for, although the remaining senses are quickened, they could not possibly supply the materials she must have for an adequate conception of the universe. A word, a mere suggestion of natural features, and the scene is hers. She goes to Niagara and stands in the presence of the cataract that speaks so powerfully through eye and ear, but has only faint messages for any other sense. Beyond the dashing of the spray and the vibration of the ground we wonder what can possibly appeal to her. At the base of the falls she receives a description of the scene. Imagination is on the alert. The most ardent lover of nature could not be more enraptured than she becomes. An eye-witness thus describes the scene:

"No one whose privilege it was to be there will ever forget the varied emotions expressed in her face. She said but little, yet every action betrayed her excitement. Finally, with her face wreathed in smiles, she said, in a hushed voice, with a marvelously significant cadence: "I feel the tremble." She then unpinned the lovely rose she wore upon her dress that morning, and extending her arm as far as possible beyond the railing, dropped it into the rushing torrent, saying, 'The rose is buried on its passionate heart -- the river carries it away, I can see its grandeur and beauty . . . . I think I have the same sensation that I had when I first stood beside the great ocean -- a feeling of awe and reverence mingled with a little fear. I think I shall feel the same when I stand in St. Peter's and at the foot of Mt. Blanc.'"

With Helen's mental alertness is co-ordinated a great quickening of the senses. This finds practical use in a hundred ways, not the least important being her ability to read a rapid manipulation of the fingers on the back of her hand, on her arm, her neck, her face -- anywhere the speaker may choose to spell to her.

Visitors at the World's Fair may have noticed, in a department of the Anthropological Building, mechanical apparatus for testing memory, accuracy of sense-perception, susceptibility to pain, etc. Helen was subjected to these various tests with very significant results. A minute description of these is impossible here, but their record shows remarkable strength of memory, and an incomparable delicacy of sense-perception through touch.

What light Helen Keller may yet throw on psychology, education, or psychic science we dare not prophesy. But to the layman, unincumbered by scientific spectacles, she is one of the purest and loveliest of nature's children. Whatever diagnosis of her case the learned doctors may make, there will be none more beautiful (nor, perhaps, nearer the truth) than her own given at Niagara Falls: "Do you think it is strange that I should like to be here? No; it is not strange; for God has planted in our hearts the power to feel the mystery unfolding us."