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HELEN KELLER IN HER DOCTOR’S ROBES
AT THE PRIEST’S DOOR, BOTHWELL KIRK

PREFACE

This collection of letters and speeches records chiefly experiences surrounding the Honorary Degree conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow last June. The material has been collected and edited by Dr. James Kerr Love, my friend of a quarter of a century. Dr. Love and other friends in Scotland felt that there should be some permanent record of this most significant event in my life. While I am deeply grateful to Dr. Love for the trouble and thought he has put into this volume, he must, if it should be considered presumptuous and the personal element over-emphasized, accept the responsibility.

When the letters were written I had no idea that other eyes than those of the friends to whom they were addressed would read them. The speeches were composed hurriedly as I went from one function to another. The only reason for printing them is the hope that the story they tell of the general outlook upon the education of the handicapped and the lesson they teach of courage and victory over limitation, may prove of some interest and value to people with unimpaired faculties.

If these utterances and happy memories impart a sense of the marvellous kindness that gave my visit to Scotland the glamour of a royal progress, I shall be content. I should like my friends to think of this book as a garland of enkindling experiences woven to coax them for a little while into the bypaths of the deaf and the blind, and, once there, to keep them glad they came; a book easy to take up and lay down, with perhaps a helpful thought or two for the discouraged, and glimpses of a world of dark silence that is beautiful withal.

As I look over these pages, candour prompts the admission that I may have filched phrases from H. V. Morton’s enchanting book, In Search of Scotland. If so, he will not miss them out of his wealth of golden words. I have had such joy in his book that it would be strange if my thoughts did not often keep time to the music of his spirited narrative.

HELEN KELLER

Forest Hills, L.I., N.Y.

October 24, 1932

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Helen Keller was born at Tuscumbia, Alabama, in June 1880, a quite normal child. At the age of nineteen months she was struck quite blind and quite deaf by illness, and soon all speech and language disappeared. For five years she led the life of a misunderstood and misunderstanding child. Through the agency of Dr. Graham Bell of telephone fame—himself once a teacher of the deaf, and married to a deaf wife—a teacher was found for Helen in the person of Anne Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. Never was happier combination of great need and ability to serve. After a struggle in darkness and silence, light re-entered Helen’s mind through the agency of signs and finger-spelling; rebellion gave place to obedience, and the progress of the pupil was rapid. At the age of ten Helen declared that she must speak. This astonishing proposal was one which it had never occurred to those about her to make. But upon its being acceded to her progress was again rapid. It became clear to Miss Sullivan that she had under her care a brilliant and unusual pupil. In due course Helen entered college and, without favour or concession of any kind, graduated in arts. The story of her life is told fully in her books, The Story of My Life and Midstream, while in The World I Live In she has much to say of her moods and pleasures. Enough has been said here to prepare the reader for the perusal of her book on Scotland.

I have known Helen Keller for over a quarter of a century. There was a long-standing promise that she should visit me at West Kilbride when circumstances should allow. The date of the visit was eventually determined in 1932 by the action of the University of Glasgow in conferring upon her the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws. The late Professor William James, one of her greatest admirers, described her as ‘a blessing’, and offered to kill anyone who denied this. I, too, think her a blessing, and I looked to her visit to help me to convert the unbelieving and make them missionaries for the deaf. She has fulfilled all my hopes.

Looking back upon my knowledge of Helen Keller, I find that it passed through three stages. There was, first, the pathetic or ‘poor thing’ stage—creditable to the heart, but not of long duration.

This was succeeded by a feeling of admiration, for the pluck, patience, and fortitude which have overcome apparently insuperable difficulties. Most people reach and rest in this stage, and do not know whether to admire more Helen Keller or her beloved teacher, Anne Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy.

Finally came the stage of sheer joy and inspiration in the presence of a great and happy personality.

Professor Macneile Dixon sums up the characteristics of the average Englishman as ‘toleration, humour, humanity’. There you have Helen Keller. But I must add one feature which cannot be claimed for the average Englishman—an absolute assurance of spiritual companionship both in this world and in any world which may follow it. It is this element which gives to Helen Keller the fight which dispels all darkness, the ear which hears music everywhere, and a well-balanced mind over-flowing with ‘gallant and high-hearted happiness’.

Here I can hardly do better than quote what Mr. W. W. McKechnie said of her on June 10, 1932, at the ceremony at which she was presented with her graduation robes.

I have by me a unique book—an Anthology to Helen Keller. I like the musical Greek word, which of course means a garland. We are accustomed to anthologies, collections of verses compiled by someone and sold for a certain figure. But this one, called Double Blossoms, is a collection of over seventy poems about or addressed to Helen Keller. I wonder whether in the history of literature such a tribute has ever been paid to a living author? No wonder she was apostrophized by Clarence Stedman, the American poet, in these terms:

Helen Keller’s visit to Scotland in 1932 was not the first she had paid to our shores, as a letter which follows will show; her first visit was in 1930 (see p. 85). But then she came for rest—rest for herself and, perhaps more, for her teacher and life-long friend, Mrs. Macy; and that she was justified in thus seeking seclusion was proved by her experience in 1932, when she received incessant calls to make public appearances. In 1931 Helen visited France and made a journey to Yugo-Slavia, where she was the guest of that country and of its King, and did valuable work for the Blind. Most of Helen’s work has been in the interests of the Blind. I was anxious that she should help the Deaf in Britain so that the interests of these equally afflicted ones should no longer remain in the position of relative neglect which they occupied before her visit.

In reading the book which follows, two questions will strike the reader as requiring an answer: What does Helen Keller mean when she talks of ‘seeing’ things? and, How does she work? I have sometimes been tempted to write on ‘The Mind of Helen Keller’, but I have always been deterred by two considerations: the difficulty of the task, and the fact that in her book The World I Live In, which is shortly to be published in an English edition, she has herself done more than perhaps any author could to analyse and expose her mind.

In answering the first question, then, I will quote from The World I Live In. From a newspaper for the blind Helen Keller cites the following sentences:

‘Many poems and stories must be omitted because they deal with sight. Allusions to moonbeams, rainbows, starlight, clouds, and beautiful scenery may not be printed because they serve to emphasize the blind man’s sense of his affliction.’

‘That is to say’, she comments, ‘I may not talk about beautiful mansions and gardens because I am poor. I may not read about Paris and the West Indies because I cannot visit them in their territorial reality. I may not dream of heaven because it is possible I may never go there. Yet a venturesome spirit impels me to use words of sight and sound whose meaning I can guess only from analogy and fancy. Critics delight to tell us what we cannot do. They assume that blindness severs us completely from the things which the seeing and hearing enjoy, and hence assert that we have no moral right to talk about beauty, the skies, mountains, the song of birds, and colours. They declare that the very sensations which we have from the sense of touch are “vicarious”, as though our friends felt the sun for us.’

Later in the same volume she remarks: ‘Many persons having perfect eyes are blind in their perceptions. Many persons having perfect ears are emotionally deaf. Yet these are the very ones who dare to set limits to the vision of those who, lacking a sense or two, have will, soul, passion, imagination.’ I may add that most of the impressions of us five-sensed people, although based on sight and hearing, are really composite and completed by descriptions we have read and forgotten but on which the imagination continues to work. Further, it must not be forgotten that from birth till nearly two years of age Helen had her sight and hearing, and, although she cannot define it, something remains of that bright childhood. To these possessions must be added a very retentive memory, a very vivid imagination, and something of that incalculable thing we call genius.

Consider her description of Skye (see p. 58), which is really a prose-poem. Starting with the meagre foundation of impressions reaching her through her remaining senses, she derives further information from Miss Thomson, who spells into her hand observations on the scenery. But neither Miss Thomson nor any one else could paint the resulting picture. As Helen has indicated in her Preface, the influence of H. V. Morton may be traced in this piece; but the picture—the prose-poem—is her own.

I can give another instance from personal experience. During a motor run from West Kilbride to Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, talk ranged over many subjects, and occasional references were made by Miss Thomson to the nature of the country traversed, the words being spoken, for our benefit, as they were spelled into Helen’s hand. The day was wet and misty and the scenery not of the striking type of Skye. Helen alone thought of drawing poetry out of a wet day. The same evening she sent me the following:

The second point, How does Helen Keller work? is best illustrated by her preparation of a platform speech. Helen types what she means to say on an ordinary type-writer, and the typescript is then read to her by the fingers and any necessary corrections made. When perfect, the speech is rewritten with her own fingers in Braille, from which version she reads it until she is memory-perfect and ready to deliver it.

HELEN KELLER READING DR. KERR LOVE’S LIPS
AT ‘SUNNYSIDE’, WEST KILBRIDE

The system of finger-spelling familiar to the British public is the two-hand system which is used by the seeing deaf and in addressing the deaf and dumb. But with the blind-deaf like Helen Keller this method is useless. So the one-hand alphabet, spelt from hand to hand, which is probably of Monastic origin, is used by Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson when direct speech-reading is not possible. Helen Keller’s own speech, and her power to read the speech of others by placing her fingers on the lips of the speaker, are perhaps her most spectacular triumphs. This lip- or rather speech-reading she effects by the contact of her thumb on the larynx and her fingers over the lips or lower part of the face of the speaker; by this means, if the speaker speaks slowly, she succeeds in understanding the words (see Plate facing page 14).

My editorship of this book became necessary when, immediately on her return to America, Helen Keller was plunged into strenuous work for the Blind. The work on Part I was trifling, only a few names of places and persons requiring attention. But the letters in Part II had to be collected from their recipients and any unnecessary repetition eliminated from them. This, in several cases, I found difficult; for the letters were written, for the most part, from one address and during a single month, and accordingly repetition was almost inevitable. If, therefore, in my literary surgery, I have cut out from letters passages which their recipients treasure, I hope I shall be forgiven.

My thanks—and I am sure Helen Keller’s—are due to the recipients of the letters for so kindly furnishing copies. Thanks are due also to Mr. D. MacGillivray, LL.D., for reading the manuscript, and to the Rev. J. Wales Cameron, M.A., for correcting the proofs.

JAMES KERR LOVE

Sunnyside

West Kilbride

Ayrshire

As Fate would have it, the honorary degree conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow in June 1932 cheated us out of the greater part of our holiday. Even in lovely Looe, where we spent most of May, we were under a constant barrage of reporters, photographers, callers, telegrams, and telephone messages. Polly^[1] and I rose at six in the morning to get a walk before the fray began. We were literally deluged with invitations of all kinds, and often Polly wrote twenty letters between breakfast and dinner, while I worked on magazine articles and prepared my speeches for the robing and graduation ceremonies.

After our arrival in Scotland the fusillade became more lively, and continued unabated until the end of June. There was some sort of function practically every day. Of course I was glad to visit the schools for the blind and the deaf in Edinburgh and Glasgow about which I had read since I was a child, and to meet friends whose kindness I had so long felt from afar.

Dr. and Mrs. James Kerr Love were the dearest of hosts. They did everything possible to make us comfortable and give us pleasure. The cottage, ‘Dalveen’, at West Kilbride, which they provided for us was adorable with climbing roses and a garden which I shall always remember with joy. There was a tremendous bank of broom at one end of it that filled the garden with golden glory. Teacher^[2] said it looked as if the sun had fallen out of the sky, it was so bright. The mingled fragrances of sweetbrier, fir, and honeysuckle are heavenly! The hawthorn, golden privet, laurel, and rhododendron hedges were breath-taking. They are three or four feet wide and higher than my head. One could walk on the tops of them, they are so compact. And the mists and rains keep them fresh and scintillating. One can’t complain of rain which produces such magical effects. It actually seems as if it were raining wild-flowers upon the hills and larks in the fields of Scotland! Teacher and Polly went into ecstasies over the birds—blackbirds and thrushes kept them happily awake half the night. We had a dear little Scotch maid, Peggy, who kept house and cooked for us and chased our new ‘Scottie’ when she ran away, which she did eight times in ten days.

This troublesome darling was given Teacher as a birthday present by Mr. Anderson. A friend of his, a dog-fancier in Scotland, brought Ben-sith (pronounced Benshee—means Fairy in Gaelic) to ‘Dalveen’ the day after we arrived, and the chase began then and there. Ben-sith is a wild little elf in fur, and prefers the hills and braes to a civilized dwelling. She isn’t a year old. I’m afraid she’s going to break many dog-hearts in America. Teacher is devoted to her and spends much time every day making her black coat soft and glossy. She intends to give her in marriage to our wee Darky, if they please each other.

HELEN KELLER AMONG THE BROOM
AT ‘DALVEEN’

Although I had seen Dr. Love only twice in my life, yet I had the sincerest affection for him. I had read his book, The Deaf Child, and had been enlightened by it. We had written to each other occasionally during twenty-five years, and I know that we both had a warm sense of being of one mind about the deaf and their special problems. It was reassuring to me to know that at least one thoughtful physician in Scotland was studying the causes of deafness and seeking ways to prevent it. Dr. Love, almost single-handed, fought the battle of the deaf in conventions of doctors and medical journals. His devotion was the greatest asset their cause could have. Slowly but surely it overcame prejudice and opposition; it convinced and won where appeal to sentiment would scarcely have raised a tremor of interest. This was nothing more nor less than faith in action. Faith and knowledge and courage combined remove mountains. There is no measuring the importance of Dr. Love’s share in breaking ground for progress in the teaching of the deaf. He set the bacillus of enthusiasm at work in schools, clinics, and private consulting offices, and it changed the attitude of medical men toward the deaf and the method of teaching them.

It was with the purpose of spreading this happy contagion that Dr. Love was so anxious that I should come to Scotland. He felt that, if the University of Glasgow set the seal of its approval upon my efforts not to be defeated by my limitations, it would encourage other handicapped people to make something of their capabilities. It was in this spirit that the distinction was conferred upon me. The thought that Dr. Love’s life-work has been given a little shove forward through me is one of the sweetest satisfactions of my life.

Soon after our arrival we called with Dr. Love on a gentleman^[3] who has a deaf daughter. He has a wonderful place on a promontory overlooking the Firth of Clyde. I never saw more beauty in a garden! The delphiniums grew to a height of seven and eight feet, also the hollyhocks and lupins. There were roses and lilies—Oh, such lilies! The walls were covered with rare vines and climbing roses. We saw even fig and peach trees growing flat against the sheltering wall. We picked ripe figs and peaches on the 5th of June! The conservatories were full of gorgeous calceolarias, cinerarias, and begonias, making such a blaze of colour as to remind Polly of tropical sunsets. Mingled with the blossoms were ferns of many exquisite varieties, and against the glass hung grapes and pears and peaches. As we sat chatting amid all this loveliness, we watched the ships go by, and looked across the Clyde and saw Goatfell climbing out of the sea like Jack on his bean-stalk.

Our first official appearance was June 10th, when the teachers of the Deaf and the Blind of Scotland presented me with the robes I was to wear at the ‘capping’ ceremony. This was a most generous gesture, and I appreciated it immensely. The robes are gorgeous—crimson and purple, and the ‘trencher’ is black velvet. I was moved to the spring of tears by all the pleasant things that were said about Teacher and me.

Mr. W. W. McKechnie of the Scottish Education Department presided.^[4] He made the most brilliant and appreciative speech about Teacher’s work and what she has done for me that I have ever heard.

Dr. Love told the audience in quiet, eloquent words how he had watched my development for twenty-five years, and how by written word and word of mouth he had urged that my teacher’s method should be adopted in the Schools for the Deaf.

The Graduation ceremony took place on June 15th in Bute Hall at the University, which is built on Gilmorehill, dominating the city of Glasgow. The hall is lofty and sombre, and its stained-glass windows give it the appearance of a church. The ceremonies were most impressive, the brilliant robes giving the effect of a religious procession. Degrees, ‘D.D.’, ‘LL.D.’, and ‘D.Sc.’ were conferred upon a number of men who had distinguished themselves in their various professions. Each recipient listened to a eulogy of himself in Latin, and then mounted some steps and knelt on a cushion to receive his diploma from Principal Rait and to be ‘capped’. Very few women have received an honorary degree from Glasgow University, which circumstance gives a special significance to my receiving the degree of LL.D.

The University was founded in 1450, and it has many names upon its roll of honour, among them Adam Smith, James Watt, Lord Lister, and Lord Kelvin.

The assembly gave Teacher a splendid ovation. This pleased me more than the honour paid me.

There was a luncheon where we foregathered with a distinguished company, still in our robes. I made my little speech as best I could; I was terribly embarrassed by a sense of my inadequacy. The other speakers paid Teacher and me handsome compliments, which embarrassed us still more. But the thought that I represented the handicapped stiffened my knees, and I got through safely.

From the luncheon we went straight to Queen Margaret’s, the Radcliffe of Glasgow, and that meant another speech. I spoke on the mission of women to promote peace and enlightenment, as St. Margaret had done centuries before. The women were delightfully cordial, but it seemed as if the day would never come to an end. At last, however, it did come to an end, and, except for the nervous strain, it had all been very easy. It was late that night when we got back to ‘Dalveen’, and I felt as if I should like to sleep for twenty years like Rip Van Winkle. But alas! a few hours’ rest was all that was vouchsafed us. I fully sympathize with Mr. Howells, who said, when he received an honorary degree from Oxford, ‘Such distinction comes rather late in life, and if it does not kill, it cures the desire for more.’

The next day Polly and I went sailing with many hundreds of blind people and their guides down the Clyde to a beautiful estate on Lochgoilhead, a fine picnic-ground, where the blind are taken once every summer for an outing. Again I spoke—and so it was from day to day. Every time I went anywhere the penalty of my appearance was a speech. Teas, dinners, and prize distributions of all sorts continued during our stay in Scotland, and they included a birthday party at Dr. Love’s, where there were more speeches, more compliments, more blushes and thank-yous. There were telegrams and cablegrams and letters from all parts of the world congratulating me and wishing me happiness.

Polly’s brother and his wife and her mother came to see us and had dinner with us. That was about all Polly saw of her family. We had one pleasant week-end with her friends, the Bains, at Stirling. They drove us up into the Highlands as far as Dunkeld and Birnam Wood—places mentioned in Macbeth. One of the great oaks Macbeth knew is said to survive on the banks of the River Tay. Macbeth, I understand, was a real ‘laird’ of Scotland, and not as bad as he is made out to be by Shakespeare.

Another happy memory is of a motor run to Loch Lomond, a loch of a million beauties, renowned in song and story.

On one occasion we were invited by Mr. and Mrs. Sweet, friends of the Loves, to visit the Island of Arran. We crossed the Clyde on a little steamer, and, before landing, had a good view of Goatfell, a rugged mountain that can be seen from a great distance. It is one of the landmarks of Scotland. When our friends met us at the pier, they told us that they were not to have the pleasure of showing us the island after all, as the Duke and Duchess of Montrose wished us to visit them at Brodick Castle. The island, which is about sixty miles in circumference, belongs to the Duchess. Very little grows on it, except heather, but in the spring-time it is a blaze of gorse, broom, and wild-roses. Wild deer, sheep, and cattle browse on it. The castle is ancient, dark brown, and almost buried in a romantic past. The walls are about seven feet thick, and there are holes at various points where guns were formerly mounted to repel invaders. To reach the castle it was necessary to cross a wide open space, which rendered unwelcome visitors conspicuous targets from the battlements.

The Duke and Duchess were charmingly hospitable. We enjoyed our tea and chat with them, and I wished we had more time to see the island with them. The Duke is a handsome man. He wears a kilt, and looks like a Highland chieftain of old in his baronial castle. The Duchess is a fine, active woman. She loves flowers, and has a most beautiful rock-garden which she made herself. Their daughter, Lady Jean, a sweet girl of eleven, picked a bouquet of old-fashioned pinks for me, ‘because they are so sweet’, she said when she presented them. The Duke is hard of hearing, and takes a deep interest in others who are handicapped. In the huge hall of the castle is the rough table at which Robert the Bruce ate venison and wild boar. The worms are doing the eating now. I noticed deep knife-cuts in the wood. In that barbarous age they had no plates, and sometimes the cleaver went clear through the joint to the table.

The Duke of Montrose, by the way, owns Loch Lomond. I believe Buchanan Castle is a marvellous place.

One day Dr. Love drove us to the Burns country in Ayrshire. I was deeply stirred as we passed place after place mentioned by the poet. His birth-place is near Alloway, not far from the ‘Brig o’ Doon’—the ‘clay biggin’ Burns’s father made with his hands. This cottage has three parts: the store-house, where provisions and hay were kept, the barn, where the cow and the horse stood, the ‘but and ben’, consisting of a kitchen and a sort of alcove bedroom. The kitchen has one window and a fireplace. The bed in which Burns was born is built into the wall; and is very narrow. I don’t see how a baby could have been born in such a bed. I sat on the low stool where his mother rocked back and forth as she crooned to him, little dreaming that her wee bairn would be Scotland’s most beloved poet, more famous than any king; and I sat also in the arm-chair where ‘the Priest-like father read the sacred page’. The flagstones of the cottage have been worn flat and smooth by the feet of generations. There is but one door to the cottage. To get out of the kitchen one passes through the cowshed and the store-house.

Beside the humble dwelling stands a modern museum in which all kinds of things associated with the poet are carefully preserved under glass—autographed letters and manuscripts, for example. I put my hand on part of the original manuscript of Tam o’ Shanter, the family Bible, and the spinning-wheel. There were also the pages in brown ink on which Burns described that ‘highland journey, with its birks of Aberfeldy and its milestones of bright eyes’.

I do not think there is another poet in the world who has so sung himself into all the dear common things of everyday life as Burns has. The day spent in the surroundings familiar to him will ever remain in the deep places of my heart.

HELEN KELLER READING AT ‘DALVEEN’
THE BOOK IS THE BRAILLE EDITION OF ‘IN SEARCH OF SCOTLAND’

On our last Sunday in Scotland on this occasion Teacher and I spoke in Bothwell Parish Church, where Polly’s brother is the minister. The church was packed to capacity, and there was an overflow meeting, where we spoke also. The collection was unusually large, and is to be used for the restoration of St. Bride’s. Part of St. Bride’s is very old, going back, I think, to the thirteenth century. The roof is made of stone, which gives it an ancient aspect. The modern structure, which was added during the Reformation, is out of key, and Mr. Thomson is very anxious to bring it into harmony with the older and nobler edifice.

We left West Kilbride on June 30th, for London. ‘It’s hardly in a body’s power’, as Burns would say, to tell how ‘sair’ we felt to leave that bonny, bonny wee countree and a’ the friends we had made there. Tears were in our eyes and a tugging at our heart-strings when we said good-bye to Dr. and Mrs. Love. They had lightened many a hard day with considerate kindness and sweet helpfulness. They made us feel ‘the real guid of life’. ‘There’s wit in their heids and luv in their herts we’ll find nae other where.’

For three days we hid ourselves in the seclusion of the Park Lane Hotel. No one knew we were in Town except Mr. Eagar, Director of the National Institute for the Blind, and Polly’s sister, Margaret. We shopped a little, got ‘dolled up’ by Charles, ‘hairdresser to the Court’, ate strawberries as big as peaches, and prepared ourselves for a plunge into the social whirlpool of London.

We are deeply indebted to Mr. Eagar for his tireless efforts to help us carry out this crowded programme to a fair conclusion. He gave much of his precious time to arranging meetings and interviews. In fact, he put the staff of the National Institute for the Blind at our service, and the force of his fine judgement and tact carried us through. I shall never cease to be grateful to him for his unfailing goodness and serenity while we were in London. He is one of those fine spirits who are ever trying to make straight the path of the handicapped.

The whirl began on July 4th, when I opened a school of massage for the blind under the auspices of the National Institute. There was a luncheon attended by many eminent and interesting men—Sir Beachcroft Towse, a blind veteran of the Boer War, Sir Brace-Porter, Sir William Lister, Surgeon-Oculist to His Majesty’s Household, and others.

At three o’clock I met the British Press. It was one of the most severe ordeals we had yet experienced; for Teacher and I did the talking while they listened and took notes. Afterwards I accompanied the reporters through the massage school, and we had tea with Sir Beachcroft and Lady Towse.

The speed at which we went from one function to another during the next two weeks has made this period a blur in my consciousness. I know that I made three or four or five appearances every day; that I met many distinguished people; that I visited schools and made many speeches and examined the handicrafts of the blind and the deaf; that I lunched with Captain Ian and Mrs. Fraser at St. Dunstan’s, with Lord and Lady Astor, with Lady Paula Jones, and at the Royal Normal College for the Blind, at Leatherhead, Surrey, and at Swiss Cottage, institutions for the sightless; that I had tea with somebody or some group every day; that we dined with the Frasers in the House of Commons, and with Lady Fairhaven and her son, Lord Fairhaven (the daughter and grandson of H. H. Rogers), and that we called on Sir Hilton Young, Minister of Health.

There is always much formality about these official calls in England. Our interview with Sir Hilton Young took place at Whitehall, where Charles I was beheaded—a place where one gets lost and walks miles unless one is properly conducted. One waits in the reception-room of the Minister until the great man is ready. There is an urgency and importance in the manner of the attendants which suggests that a moment’s delay would cause the gravest offence, and be regarded as profoundly disrespectful. However, this feeling vanished when we entered the presence of Sir Hilton Young, who rose from his imposing desk and came forward to meet us, smiling pleasantly. I grasped his outstretched hand, and knew that he was a friend of the unfortunate. We talked about the work for the blind and the deaf; then I told him what I thought should be done for the deaf-blind. He listened attentively, and I believe he will do all in his power to promote their welfare.

The dinner in the House of Commons was most exciting. The lofty halls and corridors stirred me strangely. I was rather confused about the name of the place, as it is sometimes called the Palace of Westminster and at other times the Houses of Parliament. To me neither Westminster Abbey nor the Tower of London is nearly as interesting as the House of Commons; for it incarnates the history of the English race. Here one sees the past continuing into the present. As I sat there, I was conscious of tense faces in the seats of the great hall watching the trial of Charles I and the installation of Oliver Cromwell. From the same seats now, faces not quite so tense are looking upon Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, recently^[5] returned from Lausanne. All the Houses of Parliament, except Westminster Hall, date only from the last century, but the ground on which it stands has been the site of a royal palace since the time of Edward the Confessor. The thought came to me that the habitations of historic ghosts may be often rebuilt, but the ghosts do not depart. Like Japanese ancestor-deities, they watch over the destinies of their country. The House of Commons has always been to me a symbol of something great and glorious, and a thrill went down my spine as I walked on the famous terrace where statesmen and leaders so often discuss measures and policies that reach out to the ends of the earth. Here were fashionably dressed men and women smoking, chatting, and laughing, with a glance now and then at the Thames, the bridges, and the great city that stretches along the banks of the river, with Hampstead to the North and Penge to the South.

There were twenty guests at dinner, among them Lady Pearson and her son, Sir Neville. I was particularly glad to make Lady Pearson’s acquaintance, as her husband had been so wonderful to me.

‘What did Sir Arthur Pearson do for you?’ asked Miss Irwin, a charming Canadian newspaper woman who sat opposite me. ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘whenever I wanted to know anything, I wrote to him; and he had many books embossed especially for me; and his enthusiasm put fighting strength into my elbow when I had a hard job on hand.’

Sir Arthur Pearson has a most able successor at St. Dunstan’s in Captain Fraser. Both he and Mrs. Fraser are a joy to meet. Beside being at the head of St. Dunstan’s, he is an ‘M.P.’, and I shall be surprised if his vigorous, vibrant personality does not make itself felt in Parliament, as it already is felt in the world of the blind.

Ever since I met Lady Astor, I have been wondering why the newspapers give such a wrong impression of her. She is most emphatically not a shrew. She is animated, responsive, eager, and keen. She is very slight and youthful-looking. She has a sweet, friendly way of taking your hand and telling you she has always loved you because you are a southerner. She is as charged with energy as an electric battery. She told me she works fourteen hours every day. She must be heartily sick of people who want to discuss all manner of subjects with her, but there is no impatience or resentment in her bright, courteous, intelligent replies. Perpetually in the public eye, she hates publicity, and avoids interviewers like the plague. ‘No matter what you tell them,’ she said, ‘they will get it all wrong,’ but she smiled good-naturedly as she said it. She agreed reluctantly when I said publicity must be accepted along with the rest of the evils we moderns have fallen heirs to. I had heard Lady Astor described as aggressive and opinionated. She is nothing of the kind. She is a delightful hostess, and draws about her many interesting people. At her luncheon we met Lord and Lady Cushendun; Mr. Foote, Minister of Mines; Miss Ellen Wilkinson, who was known as ‘the Spitfire of the Labour Government’; Miss Brisbane, the daughter of Arthur Brisbane; and Lady Astor’s fascinating daughter, Lady Violet.

On another occasion at Lady Astor’s house we met a representative of Soviet Russia and Bernard Shaw. Lady Astor told us her son had become a Communist, and that they were arranging to send him to Russia in the belief that what he saw there would cure him.

Bernard Shaw was as bristling with egotism as a porcupine with quills. His handshake was quizzical and prickly, not unlike a thistle. Lady Astor tried to interest him in me. ‘You know, Mr. Shaw,’ she said, ‘that Miss Keller is deaf and blind.’

‘Why, of course!’ he replied. ‘All Americans are blind and deaf and dumb.’

I asked him why he had never come to America.

‘Why should I go to America,’ he answered, ‘when all America comes to me?’ He consented to have his picture taken with Lady Astor and me, and the long anticipated meeting with an author whose books I had read with the liveliest pleasure came to an end in as short time as it takes to write it.

After ten days of dashes, rushes, and flurries we three were utterly exhausted. Doing everything at top speed isn’t the way to enjoy a holiday. Polly and I stayed in bed for two days. We were too weary to eat—I actually couldn’t raise a strawberry to my lips! If the lure of Memory Cottage down in Kent hadn’t been so strong, I know not how long we should have slept.

It took two hours on the train to get to Canterbury, which is six miles from Ickham. We had understood that it was much nearer to London. But it was a lovely day, and while the country wasn’t interesting, the smell of the earth was intoxicating, and the life in our veins seemed to respond to its teeming vitality. We found ‘Memory’ a paradise of roses, lilies, carnations, and syringa. The garden is divided by little stone walks bordered by low box hedges. At the beginning and the end of each path the box is cut in the shape of peacocks. It was a delight to have tea in the garden with innumerable birds as our guests. As soon as they saw the tea table being set, they made such a dive we had to scatter crumbs on the box hedges and ground to keep them quiet.

The cottage is picturesque, and oh, so quaint! It has a Saxon foundation and thick, mossy walls. One can touch the ceiling easily, and a tall person must duck or bump, especially on the tiny, steep stairway. The casement windows are very small, and open outward. The only large thing in the cottage is the fireplace, which is huge! Two people could sit in it comfortably and toast their toes. It would all have been pleasant enough if it hadn’t been so dark. The dense foliage obscured the sunlight when there was any, and when it rained, a twilight darkness filled the cottage. Teacher couldn’t read at all, and we three felt imprisoned and smothered in roses! I was reminded of what a townsman said of a house taken by Thomas Hardy: ‘He have but one window, and she do look into Gaol Lane.’ Moreover, every available bit of space was filled with curios and souvenirs from everywhere, so that it looked more like a museum than a dwelling-house.

It was like us—large persons requiring much space to turn in—to take this kind of small-house, almost invisible. The ladies who own the property did everything possible for our comfort. During two weeks we tried to make the best of our mistake. We tried to interest ourselves in our surroundings. We visited Folkestone, looked longingly at the French coast, bathed at Sandwich Beach, and explored Canterbury.

Canterbury is an enchanting old town, even if Wordsworth and his sister were disappointed in it. The Cathedral alone is worth taking a long journey to see. The trouble is that the historical associations which cluster around it are so many and varied and important, it would take years to learn about them. Teacher and I spent a long time in the courtyard surveying the vast structure of the Cathedral, while Polly and Captain van Beek went through the interior. Several tame sparrows and two saucy doves alighted at our feet, and twittered and pirouetted prettily by way of asking crumb alms. Dare I confess that they interested me more than the misty uncertainties that enshroud the building of the venerable Cathedral?

The town is a cluster of irregular, narrow, winding streets. The houses are nearly all built of stone or rubble, softened by time and weather. One catches glimpses of quaint, fantastic gate-ways and gardens. Not a corner, not a gable, but would make an interesting etching. The ancient walls and fortifications fill one with a sense of vanished pomp and terror.

‘Memory’ amused and interested our friends. The only people who weren’t pleased with it were ourselves. We gave a tea to the American Uniform Braille Committee and their wives who were in London, conferring with the National Institute with regard to matters of printing for the blind on both sides of the Atlantic. We were enjoying our tea in the garden when down came an English shower, driving us to shelter precipitately; but it was a merry party ‘for a’ that’. Every one was enthusiastic about the cottage. Mr. Ellis, of the American Printing Press, made sketches of it, and copied the quaint inscriptions and legends on the seats and doorways and over the fireplace. Imagine ten of us crowded into the tiny living-room, tea-cups precariously poised on the arms of chairs and shaky antiques.

We had Mr. Migel to lunch one day. He is one of the most kindly souls I ever met. He is perfectly sweet and patient under the burdens his generosity piles upon him. He was full of friendliness and gay talk at lunch—in short, a most charming person. Captain van Beek also paid us a visit. We are fond of him, and enjoyed his dignified, thoughtful talk on many subjects and his sunny humour. On a rainy Sunday Dr. and Mrs. Love, their daughter and her husband and little girl, Betty, motored out to see us. Again we all huddled together like sheep in that ‘wee housie’ and perilously consumed tea and sandwiches.

If it had been possible to work at ‘Memory’ (I had articles and three months’ correspondence on my conscience!) we should have stuck it out the rest of the summer, especially as we had three important meetings in London later. But the dim religious light worked havoc with Teacher’s nerves, and her sinus gave her a lot of trouble. To make matters worse, both she and Polly fell ill with severe colds which they couldn’t shake off. We were anxious and melancholy, and Teacher must needs add to the natural gloom by sitting up in bed at noon-day and reading De Profundis with the aid of an antique lantern! That made Polly and me realize how imperative it was that we should get out of Kent.

It was arranged that Polly’s sister should take ‘Memory’ for the remainder of the summer.

On the eve of our going to London to attend a meeting of the National Union of Guilds for Citizenship, we received a telephone message from the American Embassy that the Queen especially requested our presence at the Royal Garden Party to be held at Buckingham Palace on July 21st. This was a tremendous compliment, but we didn’t see how we could attend, as we had a public meeting the same afternoon. We were informed by the Embassy that such a request is in the nature of a royal command, taking precedence over other engagements. Very much perturbed, we started for London on the 9.50 a.m. train. We stopped at the American Embassy and learned that tickets had been left for us by the Lord Chamberlain, and that Lady Cynthia Colville, the Queen’s Lady-in-waiting, had called them up three times to ask if they had located us, and if we were coming. We rushed to Margaret’s in Hampstead and dressed for the garden party (we had taken our chiffon frocks in our case). Polly and I had a luncheon engagement with Lady Paula Jones. We hurried the taxi man out of his wits, and he left us at the wrong house! When we greeted the strange lady into whose drawing-room we were ushered as Lady Paula Jones, she smilingly told us there was some mistake. There certainly was. She ordered a taxi for us, and we dashed off to Lady Paula’s, arriving half an hour late! From there we went to the meeting.

Incidentally, I had left the hat I should have worn that afternoon at ‘Memory’. So as soon as the meeting was over, we tumbled into a beautiful Daimler car which Teacher and Margaret had engaged to take us to Buckingham Palace, and asked the driver to take us to Dickins and Jones. He looked bewildered, but obeyed. We bought a hat in five minutes, and then rushed away to the garden party.

Arrived there, we felt like lost sheep in the vast multitude which was assembled in the Palace grounds. It was truly a magnificent spectacle, the ladies resembling flowers in their bright, fluttering gowns, the gentlemen all wearing ‘toppers’, as they call the silk hat in Britain, and morning dress, and gay boutonnières. Mr. Finley, of the American Embassy, guided us to a position opposite the receiving tent. We were informed that their Majesties would be told of our presence, and, as they passed, would pause and speak to us. We could see the King and Queen under a golden and crimson canopy, where they greeted gorgeously apparelled potentates from the East, Parsee ladies in brilliant native costume, and distinguished men from the Dominions overseas. While we waited, a number of the King’s equerries stood near us. One of them asked Teacher if we had had tea. She replied No, but she would give her kingdom for a seat. He said he was sorry he could not provide us with seats, and reminded us that their Majesties had been standing as long as we. Just then Lady Cynthia Colville came up—a lovely woman in dove grey. She asked one of the equerries to introduce her to me. She greeted us pleasantly and said that her Majesty would be pleased that we had come.

While we were speaking, an equerry came and said that the King and Queen would now receive me, Mrs. Macy, and Miss Thomson. So down the sloping lawn, under the eyes of eight thousand wondering people, marched ‘The Three Musketeers’ to the Royal tent and shook hands with Their Majesties. They were both most cordial. The King asked Polly if she could understand everything I said. She replied that she could, and he expressed a wish to see how people communicated with me. Teacher gave a lip-reading and spelling demonstration. Their Majesties were both deeply interested in everything we did. The Queen turned to the King and said, ‘It is wonderful!’ and he replied, ‘And it is all done through vibrations—how extraordinary!’ The Queen asked me if I was enjoying my visit in England. I said it is a green and pleasant land, and told her how I loved the beautiful English gardens. She wanted to know how I could enjoy flowers when I could not see them. I explained that I smell their fragrance and feel their lovely forms.

The Queen was dressed in beige ensemble, with fur collar and cuffs and a turquoise toque. Her left hand rested on a sunshade of the same colour. We liked her very much, she was so direct and friendly, and her quiet stateliness was most queenly.

After a few more questions and answers, Their Majesties shook hands with us again and bade us ‘Good-bye’. Two equerries escorted us through a human lane that had been made especially to allow the King and Queen to pass. Again we braved those eight thousand pairs of eyes. On all sides we could hear a buzz of comment and ‘Who are they?’

Margaret and the car met us at one of the great gates of the Palace, guarded by soldiers in scarlet coats. We drove with all the speed the dense traffic permitted to Mrs. Waggett’s, where we had been invited to tea.

We were two hours late! All the guests were gone. But Mrs. Waggett knew what had happened, and was as sweet as she could be. She and Dr. Waggett are close friends of Lady Fairhaven. We had a cup of tea with her, and sped away to the Grosvenor Hotel, where Mr. Migel and his lovely daughter, Parmenia, had waited for us half the afternoon. There was time only for a hug and a sip of the cup that cheers, and we were off to our own hotel, where Mr. and Mrs. Robert Irwin were wondering if they had made a mistake and come to the wrong place. (We had invited them to dine with us that evening.) We missed the last train to Canterbury, but, to tell the truth, we were rather glad to snuggle down in comfort at the Park Lane Hotel in an airy room and a bed as fresh and sweet as ‘the flowery beds of ease’ in the old hymn.

On July 27th I spoke before the section of the British Medical Association whose pathological provinces are the ear, throat, and nose. Sir St. Clair Thomson presided with great dignity. His beautiful face and noble personality gave a special charm to every word he spoke. Turning to me on the platform he said,

I was deeply touched—as who would not be? And exquisitely embarrassed—as who would not be? I spoke on the necessity of a physician’s taking a humanitarian as well as a professional interest in the deaf child. I urged that when the child’s hearing cannot be saved, the aurist should be able to suggest the right school or method of education or the special training which may develop him into an intelligent and useful human being. It was profoundly gratifying to speak to so many intelligent men and women on a subject of vital importance. We were delighted to have Dr. Saybolt, of Forest Hills, and his pretty wife with us—they were on a holiday trip through Europe, and stopped in London for a few days. After the meeting we lunched with Dr. and Mrs. Love at Frascati’s, a well-known Italian restaurant where many foreigners foregather.

That afternoon we drove with the Saybolts to Hampton Court. (I have written about Hampton Court before.) They were amazed at the beauty of the gardens and the vastness of the palace. We had tea on a fascinating little island in the Thames. As is usual in England, the birds joined us, uninvited, but nevertheless welcome. It is enchanting to see everywhere birds perched on park benches, enjoying their ‘tea’ with friendly picnickers. We returned to Park Lane through miles of London’s thoroughfares and parks, crossing and re-crossing the Thames, which kept getting in our way. I was especially fascinated by Richmond Park, where the kings of yore hunted. There are still herds of deer, but they are now so tame that they come right up to the car and feed from your hand.

On Thursday, the 28th, Polly and I lunched with Sir St. Clair Thomson at his house in Wimpole Street, almost opposite the Barrett home, where was enacted that beautiful love drama of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. Teacher was too ill to go with us. Beside Sir St. Clair Thomson and Dr. Love I met Dr. Jones Phillipson, Dr. Brown Kelly, who was ‘capped’ before me at the Graduation ceremony, Dr. Weill-Hallë from Paris, and an Egyptian surgeon, Ali Mahum Pasha. Sir St. Clair was a most interesting host. There is about him a benignant sweetness that wins all hearts. He turned to me all the hour with luminous attention and talked in the most engaging way about books, where he is as much at home as he is in medicine.

That evening we had one of the surprises of our lives. Just as we were sitting down to dinner, the door opened, and who should walk in out of the dusk of the hall like a ghost but ————! We hadn’t seen him for more than two years. We knew he was in London, and of course he knew how to reach us, but as he didn’t call or write or make any sign of remembering us, we didn’t look him up. His friendship seems to lie dormant for months or years, like mummy-seed, and then flower again. At first he seems to have changed very little, but as he talked we realized that he had lost some of his enthusiasm for life. He is still working on the compass. Polly and I went to bed and left poor Teacher, who was feeling very wretched indeed, to listen as sympathetically as possible to the old story of effort and disappointment. The children are well and happy in their English environment. The compass seems to be a beautiful instrument. It is in high favour with the British Admiralty, but of course there is no sale for nautical instruments at present. Teacher said there was a kind of remote, melancholy grandeur about ———— when he said good-night. I wonder when we shall see him again.

On Friday evening I made my last public appearance in London. We were given a reception by the International Teachers’ Convention. Again Teacher was not able to go; so I represented her at the meeting. She was to have addressed the teachers. What group of men and women, since the world began, has deserved more of our gratitude? What amazing patience and ingenuity is required to open the mind of a child, especially when he lacks one or more of the faculties through which he gathers knowledge! Certainly, teachers have done their best to build bright forts against ignorance and physical disaster in all lands. Our friends, realizing how exhausted we were, permitted us to leave without the usual formality of hand-shaking. Their sweet considerateness turned what we feared would be an ordeal into a pleasant occasion which will long be remembered.

How thankful we were not to have any more engagements or speeches for two months! We were free, we could go where we liked. Where should we go? To Paris? That would be lovely! We had promised Mr. Migel to meet him there, but Teacher wasn’t well enough to enjoy Paris. The doctor said she should go to a higher altitude to break up her cold. The Highlands of Scotland had been calling me for years. Wasn’t this the opportunity I had waited for? The idea of a real holiday in the Highlands appealed to the other members of the Triumvirate as much as to me.

So Saturday morning found us on the ‘Flying Scotsman’, light-hearted and expectant. What a train it is, flying from London to Edinburgh in seven and a half hours without a stop! All the way the English country is beautiful and rural. People who aren’t pleased with its quiet, cultivated loveliness must have blind souls and no power of observation. From Newcastle on there is a fine view of the North Sea and the undulating hills of the Border.

Polly’s brother and Somers Mark met us at the station and welcomed us back to bonnie Scotland.

The Caledonian Hotel, where we stayed, is opposite Castle Rock and in Princes Street. We spent three delightful days there. Edinburgh is one of the most fascinating cities I have ever explored. Teacher could lie in her bed and look up to the sinister Castle Rock and down into the ravine with its famous gardens. Some one has called Princes Street ‘the finest street in the world’.

Most of the time Castle Rock is enveloped in a grey mist that comes in from the ocean, but in the early morning the sun will break through the greyness, revealing the stupendous mass of the rock and a phantom-like city of spires, pinnacles, and towers, which still seems to bristle with swords. This is ancient Edinburgh built on the steep hill. There is a majesty about it that makes one bow one’s head. As we looked up to old Edinburgh a hundred times a day, so old Edinburgh looks down from its commanding height upon new Edinburgh marching along Princes Street. We imagined the ghosts of bygone generations leisurely viewing from their cliff-like abodes passing tram-cars, automobiles, and bustling throngs that tramp up and down the level land. Truly, the ancient city, wrapped in its shroud of mist, is like a dream city built of clouds.

The stretch of pavement between Castle Rock and Holyrood Palace is known as the Royal Mile. From it radiate narrow, straggling lanes called closes, leading up medieval stone steps to the dwellings of the old nobility. Dark, grim dwellings they are! One cannot but shudder a little, sniffing into shadowy corners and up secret stairways where terrible things have happened in the darkness.

One rides or walks down the Royal Mile from Castle Rock past St. Giles and the house of John Knox to the sombre palace; and always in one’s mind is the image of the ill-fated unhappy Mary, Queen of Scots, whose story still touches the world’s heart. One sees her shrinking from the hard eyes and denunciatory tongue of John Knox, and one rides with her on the moors where she sought peace in solitude and the stars.

One glorious afternoon we drove through the great gates of Holyrood out to the Salisbury Crags and the moors. We got out and stood for a long moment listening to the sound of burns, the rustling of bracken, and the twittering of birds. We came back through the Pentland Hills, where Stevenson loved to ramble and sleep under the sky, waking to the little breezes of dawn and the quiet feeding of the cattle in the dewy fields, and watch the sun blinking on cool, silvery streams. For me every hill and lane and dark wood spoke of him and breathed his unfaltering courage.

Speaking of courage brings to my mind the National War Shrine in Edinburgh. It rises above every other building in the city. It faces north, and has an east-and-west transept. Its walls spring from the jagged rock. It is in the style of a sanctuary, and holds the names of the Scots who fell in the World War as the Temple of Jerusalem held the Ark of the Lord. As I stood silent and shaken beside the casket that rests on the altar, guarded by four kneeling angels, I felt that it symbolizes not only the sacrifice and courage of a hundred thousand Scotsmen, but also the sacrifice and courage of the youth of the world who have died in a thousand wars.

On August 3rd we set out for the Highlands, not with harp and pipe, but with glad hearts and a new zest for adventure. About six miles from Edinburgh we went over the Forth Bridge which flings itself across the river to Fife. I felt the train swaying as it rumbled over the vibrating bridge suspended between sky and firth. My friends tried to describe the tremendous structure to me, but without a model of it I couldn’t form a very clear conception of its vast proportions and intricate construction.

The first stop the train made that I can remember was Dunfermline, where Andrew Carnegie was born, and in which stands the Abbey where Robert the Bruce lies buried.

Dunfermline was the capital of Scotland before Edinburgh emerged from the dim twilight of minstrelsy and legend. When her multimillionaire son returned from the Eldorado of the West, the gentle old town must have stopped her spinning-loom and looked about her. It was as if a prince had awakened his old mother from a peaceful dream. I can imagine the bewilderment of the simple folk of Dunfermline when libraries, schools, swimming-pools, public parks, and colleges sprang up in their midst like mushrooms in a field overnight. Even to our ears, jaded by modern miracles, it sounds like a fairy tale!

I have many reasons for being grateful to Mr. Carnegie. Well, I am more grateful to him for giving his native town Pittencrieff Park than for his generosity to me personally. In Mr. H. V. Morton’s In Search of Scotland an old Scot tells the author the reason for the gift.

‘Ye see,’ he said, ‘when the late Mr. Carnegie was a wee lad, he wasna pairmitted to enter the park—it was a private property—and he never forgot it. When the time came, he gave it to Dunfermline, so that no wee child should ever feel locked oot of it as he was. Aye, it was a graund thocht!’ Aye, it was!

Our train did not carry us to Stirling, but I had been there in June, when I had seen the Castle and the Wallace monument, and driven through the Ochils, over the wood-hidden Bridge of Allan and under the shadow of Ben Ledi. If one hadn’t seen Castle Rock in Edinburgh, surely Stirling Castle would hold the first place among one’s pictures of ancient grandeur. It rises abruptly from the lusciously green meadows. My friends did their best to describe to me the marvellous panorama they viewed from it, but I fear I received a fragmentary idea of it which it would take many days and drives and walks to fill in.

After leaving Perth we caught our first glimpses of the Grampians, whose very name conjures up pictures of wild plunging horses. O the wind sweet with bracken and heather as we approached the mountains, which began to surge and tumble about us like a green ocean! No wonder Coleridge called it ‘the dance of the hills’. O the bees making honey in the clover! O the utter solitude of sky and earth ‘in Caledonia stern and wild’! As we climbed up and up, I was both soothed and excited. I thought how once the fiery cross of the clans had leaped from tree to tree and peak to peak, until the air was filled with the sound of charging horses and the clash of claymores. Now all is quiet, but the country is still wild and teeming with romance. I was glad we had Mr. Thomson with us to repeat again and again the names of the peaks in his rich, expressive voice, the names made music in my fingers—Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, Ben Vorlich, Ben Lawers—all giants among the Highlands of Scotland.

We arrived at Inverness in the late afternoon, our spirits as heavy with beauty as bees with honey. We languished over a cup of tea at the station hotel, too sated even to look at Inverness. ‘The River Ness!’ ‘Tarbet Ness!’ ‘Cromarty Firth!’ ‘Moray Firth!’ ‘the Caledonian Canal!’ slipped through my fingers like ordinary water through a sieve. ‘I will visit Inverness another time’, I told Mr. Thomson, and clambered into the little railway carriage that was to take us up to Tain, where we intended to stay at the hotel until we found a nest of our own somewhere in the hills.

Tain is one street and smells of heather and of the sea, and is a place where one’s sleep is deep and sweet. The Thomsons spend their holiday at Tain every summer.

We drove up to Altnamain with Mr. Thomson, where there is a pleasant inn.

The moor begins at the inn door-step. Imagine, if you can, miles and miles of gently rising and falling plain, where the heather stretches like a purple carpet, with naked rocks or little piles of stones on curving knolls over which the indomitable heather rolls like ocean waves.

Even in the bright sunshine I felt like a lovely wild grouse in ten thousand miles of moor. On the moor one’s thoughts go deep, and one is silent. But in the embrace of the heather there is intimacy and nearness to the heart of Mother Earth and her wild children.

We went deeper into the bracken-fronded solitude and we flung ourselves into rough, sweet beds of heather which fluttered in the wind like a curtain that will not rise. Only those who have lain in the heather can know the delicious quietness with which it steeps body and mind.

Out of all this mass of blossoming fire breathes the racy smell of damp bog-land, the energy of fresh, cool dawns, the rapture of wind and rain, throbbing silences, old romances and songs. As my body drank in strength from the arm of the heather about me, all my soul seemed scented with it as the mist of dreams crept over me, and my thoughts wandered off to the land of Immortal Youth.

It was extremely difficult to find the sort of place we wanted at this season of the year, as all the world comes to Scotland during August to shoot grouse and catch trout, and every available dwelling is engaged months in advance. We were almost on the point of returning to England when a friend of Mr. Thomson’s, Dr. McCrae, persuaded his brother to let us have his farm-house at South Arcan, on the little River Orrin, in Muir of Ord, about eighteen miles from Inverness. We transferred ourselves and our belongings to it so quickly one would have thought all God’s beasties were pursuing us.

We love it here. Places, like people, have personality—a vibrant, living quality. When one meets such a personality in a human being or a place, something happens. It is like lifting a shade—the sun pours in and floods you; or like lighting a fire in a cold room. That is what this dear old farm-house does, it radiates cheer, warmth, and gladness.

We are surrounded by great fields of ripening wheat all shimmering gold in the sunlight. The River Orrin runs through the pastures, and the sound of it is like rain on leaves. The drive to the house, which must be about a mile long, is through bracken, gorse, and broom, tall ferns and meadow-sweet. There are clumps of blue harebells that look like patches of the sky fallen on the roadside, also a yellow weed that resembles golden-rod. At every gate-post there are superb oaks, beeches, larches, and silver birches; next the house there are arbor vitae trees, the finest I have ever seen; and just outside the sitting-room window grows a splendid yew-tree.

The pleasantest time in the day is when, our work laid aside, we sip tea under the trees and chat with our genial landlord, Mr. McCrae. He tells us the news from the world beyond the gates, he brings us delicious buttermilk, fresh butter, and eggs just laid, and yesterday he brought us a brace of grouse. We sit out until the evening breeze springs up full of a fresh sweetness from field and moor, and a serene peace fills our hearts and minds.

Sometimes we walk in the sunset glow. Polly can see in the distance the firths of Cromarty and Beauly, and the hills piling to the North-West, range on range, the colour of purple grapes in the darkening atmosphere, she says. They must be like that deep swooning blue which Chinese artists love. We pass farm-steads, the cottages of the farm hands, black Angus cattle grazing contentedly and curlews flying towards the river, their lonely cry disturbing the other birds; dusky lanes, hedges and stone walls mossy with age. Soothed by the silence we go to bed without even a thought of the world of rush and noise in which we so lately moved.

In the morning our walk is quite as interesting. The sun sends long fingers of molten silver through the branches of the trees, whose leaves drip with dew or rain-drops. The corn is a conflagration of gold. A filmy mist hangs over it like a russet veil. The odours rising from the earth are very strong. The birds are active; they flutter out from their leafy dwellings to look at the weather. The robins chirp their good-morrow to the sun, the crows hover over the grain cawing. The monarch of the poultry-yard reminds the hens that the ladies expect fresh eggs for breakfast. I feel like Horace on his sunny farm at the foot of the olive-covered hills of Tivoli. Like him, later on I intend to do a little hoeing and fruit-gathering, that my descriptions of farm life may not be all sentiment.

One glorious sunny morning we motored to Inverness to shop (how shockingly prosaic!) and to see as much of the town as we could. It is, indeed, a unique and romantic town. For while it is quite modern in its life and enterprise, it has managed to preserve an air of great antiquity. The smiling river Ness flows through its heart, and the Firth of Moray curves away to the north of it, reflecting like a mirror the wooded shore and Black Isle and the blue hills. The firths of Cromarty and Beauly lie sweetly cradled in the curving arms of the land. From a window in the highest turret of Urquhart Castle (which is supposed to be the site of Macbeth’s castle) they told me one looks out upon an indescribably magnificent landscape of mountains, forests, lochs, firths, and moors. Below, the broad Ness flows through field and meadow to the sea.

We intend to pay at least one more visit to Inverness before leaving Arcan.^[6] There is still the bridge of Inverness for me to walk over; and a stroll to be taken through the park by the river, which is made of a number of wooded islands linked together by rustic bridges, so that you can walk from one to the other, always seeing and hearing the river; and we may go for a sail on the Caledonian Canal.

LORD ABERDEEN WITH HELEN KELLER IN THE WOODS, HOUSE OF CROMAR
MRS. MACY AND MISS POLLY THOMSON ON LEFT

We have taken during our stay two long trips, one to Tarland, Aberdeenshire, to visit Lord and Lady Aberdeen; the other to Skye.

We enjoyed ourselves immensely at Tarland; they were all so dear to us, and there was so much to see and hear and do. The house of Cromar is delightfully situated amid gardens, woods, and meadows shining with bloomy grasses, and with all around a chain of beautiful hills. One day after a heavy rain we went out on the terrace to see the view. To the West the sky was aflame. It was as if all the sunsets I had ever heard of had been caught and held in an amethystine net. Seven rainbows had fallen out of the sky and hung themselves round the shoulders of the hills, the fields at their base were the clearest gold, the hedges were an ecstasy of vivid green.

Lord Aberdeen has made a lovely sequestered walk in the woods, and there we walked arm-in-arm like two lovers, drinking in the fragrance of the pines and firs, mingled with odours that drifted from the gardens of thyme and lavender, carnations and mignonette. I planted a spruce-tree among what his Lordship calls his ‘green mementos of friendship’. The King and Queen, the Prince of Wales, and many other members of the Royal Family have planted trees,^[7] which they particularly admire, in the Memory-Chapter of the lawn.

The other trip was, as I have said, to Skye, that amazing saga of mountain cliffs, mists, and vast shadows. The ‘Cuillins’ have a majesty of their own. When they are wrapped in dense fog, one is oppressed by their solemn stillness. No footfall is heard on their lofty steps. This is not solitude, but the desolation that knows only stars. There they stand range on range (I felt them on an embossed map), inarticulate, dumb, tremendous, and lonely, even when the sun lights golden fires upon their brows. One also sees lochs that beguile the hearts of the wild deer, deep valleys carpeted with heather and bog-myrtle where thousands of sheep find shelter, and shaggy Highland cattle grazing in the glens that go down to the sea.

Skye! Skye! Thou art Nature’s mighty laboratory of rain and mist and wind, where mountains split asunder, and black chasms go down to the sea. Thou art truly a paradise of burns and lochs, with majestic peaks towering aloft, grazing among the clouds like horned Highland cattle. With the thousand eyes of my mind I gaze up at thy vast frontling cliff-mountains scarred by fire and tempest, coloured with the elemental hues of sun and storm. Before thy sheer precipitous rocks I shrivel and shrink, and am dumb like the sheep. What fantastic shapes flung up against the sky—towers, spires, pinnacles, dimly seen through silver webs of mist, rock-walls bare and bold, facing the sea defiant! Are they not dreams of Vikings painted and made visible on the canvas of Skye?

Like eager children men sail their little boats in and out between the feet of the Hebrides, continually glancing upward, expectant that the veil of fog will part and show them the giants’ dizzy brows filleted with clouds.

O Skye, sombre and majestic! How deep thy valleys go! With my fingers I hear the babble of burns, like a tumult of musical rain falling down into ‘caverns measureless to man’. Under my feet is a carpet of purple heather and bog-myrtle. About me nibble the sheep, moving softly in the grey mist. How bravely green are thy pastures sloping to the sea, dotted with shaggy mountain cattle! Ever the odours of peat-smoke, ripening corn and cottage-plots sweet with flowers curl upward, and always as the white line of road climbs past glen and mountain, so faith and courage ascend out of the Valley of Despond to the Hills Eternal.

At night the mountains sing together the threnody of ancient sorrows—older than the first child rocked on its mother’s knee. They have lived so long—the ‘Cuillins!’ Before the records of man on earth began. Death huddled them together on Skye. Fantastic Death! Long shadows flow down from them, spread over the land, rest upon the waters, and, shivering, light upon the sails of ships.

After a hurried picnic lunch on the moors we visited Dunvegan Castle, a magnificent sight, surrounded by the waters of Loch Dunvegan, with a view of the sea in the distance. It is probably the oldest inhabited castle in Great Britain, and is of unknown antiquity. Even more than most ancient strongholds, this seat of the powerful MacLeod clan is marked with strange histories and weird superstitions. A MacLeod still owns it, and there is a saying that it will remain in the family as long as there are three MacLeods to row a boat across the loch. We did not see the interior or the traditional fairy flag, because the castle was occupied; we saw some people walking about and did not like to intrude.

As we waited to be ferried across Loch Alsh to the mainland, we turned to look at Skye once more. We were all silent with emotions too deep for words. The ‘Cuillins’ had taken hold of my imagination in a gripping way. In my mind Skye is a portal to wonderful domains of fancy where the fresh verdure and purple heather never fade, where mists of a deep mysticism cast a veil upon the dim, distant heights of the ‘Cuillins’, making them seem the seats of strange gods.

‘The mountains shall depart,’ I thought, ‘and the hills be removed, but My Kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the Covenant of My Peace be removed from thee, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.’ And I trailed my fingers in the icy waters of Loch Alsh.

It was eventide when we reached Loch Duich Hotel, where we enjoyed a delicious dinner of Scotch broth and black-faced lamb. There were no beds for us at the hotel; so they ferried us across Loch Dornie to a neat little cottage where a dear couple took us in and made us comfortable. I fell asleep murmuring William Blake’s lovely lines:

After breakfast at Loch Duich Hotel we crossed the loch again and began to climb. Suddenly the mountains rushed and swirled from either side of the world, keeping the lovely lochs between them. Up and up they shot, splitting the sky in places. They charged and ran through in a relentless race for what trophy I know not, unless indeed it be the golden Apples of Beauty. Countless ranges each with a separate course—at least the mountains know where they are going.

I snatched at horizons while under me billowed torrents of hills covered with purple heather, but the great mountains ran swifter, sweeping, soaring, dipping, jutting rock upon rock, heaving billows of grey, and side by side other mountains crowded them. Beyond the blue and glistening lochs they swarmed; neck to neck, height upon height they raced us. Beautiful it was to see them, all tangled in heather and fir, and rushing like thunder!

I saw above me and below me how the whole earth swung with the rhythm of mountains that shouted and clapped their hands for joy when they saw the rowan-trees climbing up their broad chests, their branches jewelled with bright fruit like little clustered suns, and the bog-cotton trailing a milky way through the heather. Down from the sides of the mountains I could ‘hear’ cascades tumbling and pouring themselves into the lochs, and all things alive were pulsing with beauty. Beauty soaked into my soul, as sun and rain into the bud. Climbing enchanted, we saw at our feet broad valleys for miles and miles, dotted with forests and streams running all ways, valleys walled on two sides by Grampians curly-headed against the blue, and here and there waterfalls leaping off cliffs into soft, deep, green dells out of which the roads and rivers wind. Circling, dancing, sweeping along, river and road laughed together.

Sometimes pine-woods joined in the race, tossing their fragrant hair. At other times bright-faced flowers peeped over the hedges as if curious to know who would win—sweet peas, honeysuckle, delphiniums, dahlias, gladioli, and geraniums. Looking below, my friends exclaimed, ‘O the glory of the greenness reflected in the loch! O the intense saffron of the seaweed along the shore!’

For many hours we speed along, our motor panting with the climb. We rest and begin again, following Loch Morriston to Invermorriston. From our feast of grandeur heavy and weary, we are yet thrilled by the greater beauty each new turn reveals.

After lunch and a rest in a lovely garden, we take to the road, a road under construction for miles and miles. Mighty walls, rugged and broken, shaded by a dark forest, rise above Loch Ness, with here and there a lone tree hanging precariously over a ledge, or clinging to a crevasse, and shooting stones dislodged by great tractors tearing down the mountain. All round the loch are sweet green meadows, beautiful cattle, the white tents of campers and timid sheep feeding in flocks. Peat-smoke, curling and drifting spicily from lonely cottages in the glens, makes one a bit homesick.

What little paradises the glens are! There the fairies dance and take you by the hand, and while your ears hearken to words you cannot understand, your heart listens spell-bound to their whispered speech, ‘Come away! come away’! I saw them lean over laurel hedges to dip their fingers in the dew and hold them up in the sun, sapphires trickling back to the green below. What traffic they had with amethysts. Cairn Gorms, the red wine of heather, the silver-beaten burns for their wrists and cups of gold hanging at their belts!

Here a stretch of forest where daylight lies green, liquescent under the leaves, and everything is drenched with rain-drops.

Oh! the glorious rest we have had here—deep sleep through silent, fragrant nights; sunny hours, drowsing in beds of fragrant heather, soft, most soothing to tired nerves; and brisk sea-breezes blowing in from the firths! Without exerting ourselves we see something every minute to charm or interest us. The birds—grouse and partridges—come to our very doors for crumbs. There were twenty partridges last night! The bush teems with rabbits, whose twinkling tails in the grass make us dizzy as they scurry hither and thither. The hares play round the stooks at twilight, and the red deer dart in and out of light and shadow. Wood doves with soft grey wings and rosy breasts, wild geese, ducks, and even gulls come in flocks and alight upon the grain like snow. Always the black Angus cattle move from one succulent patch to another, a bonny sight by day, picturesque in the moonlight like mounds of onyx. And all this within eighteen miles of Inverness and civilization!

All too soon we must be leaving the most satisfying place of rest we have yet found for a strenuous winter in America. Over there already a heavy campaign is being planned for us to raise money to keep the American Foundation for the Blind going another year. But, like a dog of the chase, I shall get on the scent of fresh adventures and uncover as many dollars as ever I can until the hunt is over in April or May.

Wrentham, Mass.

March 31, 1910

My Dear Dr. Love,

I am glad that the physicians who meet in Washington are to consider the deaf child. Surely much good will result from a conference between teachers who have to deal with the deaf child as a pupil and physicians who understand the pathology of deafness. It will be a great step forward when the physician takes part in the work for defectives who have heretofore been entrusted wholly to teachers in schools. I have heard of children who were under medical treatment, and were allowed to remain in ignorance for years—that is, the doctor tried to do something for the diseased organ, but he gave the parents no practical advice about their deaf child. I have received letters from the parents of children who were either deaf or feeble-minded, the parents could not say which. The doctor did not know, or else he did not tell them the truth.

I do not wish to complain of the great brotherhood of physicians. I believe with Stevenson that a physician ‘is the flower of our civilization’. We look to him, not only to alleviate blindness and deafness, but also to teach us how to prevent these dark infirmities. Now we greatly need information gained by unbiased, scientific study of the deaf child, and we are asking that the physicians tell the public the truth—that is, as much truth as they know.

As you say, most of my little work has been done for the blind. But that is largely an accident. Workers for the sightless have asked me to help them, and have given me many opportunities to say a word in their behalf. Perhaps the reason that I have done little or nothing for the deaf is, I am not competent. I hardly know where to take hold of their work. But I am deeply interested in them. I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness.^[8] Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus—the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thought astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.

I wish I could be present at the meetings. But for the last year or so my Teacher and I have received so many invitations to public gatherings that we have felt obliged to decline them all.

We are much disappointed that we are not to see you during your visit. It is only one night’s journey from Washington to Boston. Why can you not use one night in travel and give us the day?

With cordial greetings from your friends in Wrentham, I am,

Faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

Wrentham,

Massachusetts

October 26, 1912

Dear Dr. Love,

I was indeed glad to hear from you. I had looked forward to seeing you again at the Otological Congress, and I was sorry that you could not come. I felt sure that your presence would mean much for the cause of the deaf child in this country.

We sincerely wish that we could see our way to attending the convention of the teachers of the deaf in Glasgow next year. But Mrs. Macy and I feel that a trip to Europe at such a time would be too much of a burden. For we have not begun to do justice to the meetings to which we are invited here, or to our opportunities of promoting good causes.

I am eager to read all that you say about the prevention of deafness. I have long desired to see this work started, and now that I can get ideas from one who understands the subject, I will endeavour to help the movement forward. If it is difficult—more so than the prevention of blindness—that is all the more reason why we should wage a determined campaign against the still greater evil of deafness. I thank you for your two articles on this subject, which I shall have read to me as soon as possible.

Mr. and Mrs. Macy send you their kind remembrances. With cordial greetings, I am,

Faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

Wrentham,

Massachusetts

September 26, 1916

My Dear Doctor Love,

I was very glad to hear from you again and to learn that the general madness that is afflicting the world has not abated your interest in the welfare of the deaf and blind. I am sorry that the all but universal misery caused by the war has taken public attention from this work, but the large numbers of men being deafened and blinded in battle will require a hearing after the peace is established, and I hope that among the few benefits to be gained through the world’s present loss will be the establishment of better public agencies for the education and care of persons who cannot see or hear.

Work in this country is fairly active, especially in the direction of passing laws and teaching the people the danger of ophthalmia, which still causes a large percentage of our blindness. I speak in Chicago in November for a new organization that is working to obtain legislative action from the Illinois legislature. Many new schools for the blind are being established by the various states, and all branches of work for the deaf and blind are being carried forward as rapidly as can be expected.

I think sympathy aroused by the funds for relief of the soldiers deafened and blinded in the war is reacting to a certain extent to benefit our own deaf and blind.

No, doctor, I am not teaching the little Spanish prince. That story has been in circulation for almost three years. There is no foundation whatever for it, yet it seems to persist in spite of anything I can do to contradict it.^[9]

During the past year I have been lecturing, speaking for the aid of schools for the blind and for blind relief funds, and campaigning against the ‘preparedness’ mania that is our share in the madness of Europe.

With sincere regards,

Helen Keller

Montgomery,

Alabama

April 19, 1917

Dear Dr. Love,

I was indeed glad to hear from you again. It makes me happy to be remembered so cordially by friends, and there is nothing in the world like the friendship of one whose life is a blessing to mankind.

It is good to know that you are a happy grandfather. Children seem to be the only sunshine in ‘a dark world and wide’ at this time. I have been spending the winter here in Montgomery, Alabama, with my sister and two lovely little nieces, and they have been an inexpressible comfort to me.

I wish I could give you news as pleasant as yours. But life has been hard for my Teacher and me the last year. We worked more than usual lecturing, and when we returned from our tour last summer she was quite worn out. Then she became ill, and her physician ordered her to go away for a complete rest. She has been in Porto Rico all winter. She has enjoyed her stay there immensely amid the palm and orange groves, the tree-lilies and countless brilliant flowers, under the most wonderful sky in the world, she says, and we have had more encouraging news of her lately. She is now on her way back to Wrentham, and my mother and I are leaving to-day to join her. This is the longest time I have been separated from her, and I can scarcely wait till I see her and find out what I can do to help her get well as quickly as possible.

I was comforted by your assurance that a large number of those who come back deaf from the battle-fields recover their hearing. I have not felt so discouraged, or come so near losing my faith in humanity, as at present.

It seems as if everything good, beautiful, and sacred may be swept away in this horrible maelstrom of war. My heart is constantly wrung by the accounts I read of myriads upon myriads of useful men who are maimed, blinded, and crazed—and nobody any better off for all the misery of a breaking world. But I keep hoping that we shall soon see the end of the War, and I believe that men will come out of the struggle with new ideas, nobler sentiments. They will come back knowing that the ‘me and mine’ theory is a failure, that a truly civilized society can never exist until every man and woman works for the common good, and sets it above his or her own desires. Then shall they wipe the dust and blood from their eyes and behold in each other, not enemies or destroyers, but brothers, co-workers in the upbuilding of a better society. The shadow of man-wrought death, the ignorance, the cruelty, the slavery of the past shall at last be converted into the glory of life, light, love, and liberty for all.

Hoping that I may see you again when you come to America, I am, with warmest greetings,

Sincerely your friend,

Helen Keller

93, Seminole Avenue,

Forest Hills,

Long Island, New York

June 20, 1923

Dear Dr. Love,

I hope this will reach you in time for you to arrange to call on me on your way through New York. When your letter came, I was away filling a vaudeville engagement in Pennsylvania. On my return I went to the hospital to have a lame finger straightened. It had given me trouble for a long time, and it would not get better until it was operated on. I am just beginning to use the type-writer again. I did not know where Bellsville was until it occurred to me to ask the Wright Oral School for the Deaf if they knew of the convention there. They did, and gave me the address.

I was indeed glad to get your letter, and to know that you were on this side of the Atlantic. Of course I shall be delighted to see you here in Forest Hills.

We no longer live in Wrentham. We left our home there six years ago, and since then we have lived at the address given above. We have a cosy little nest on Long Island, only eight miles from the city, and about fourteen minutes by train from the Pennsylvania Station. Our telephone number is Boulevard 6588. Please let me know the train you will take, and we will meet you at the Forest Hills Station.

I do wish it were possible for you to come here next Sunday to my birthday party. I am having twenty-five of my deaf friends, and it would be just lovely to have you meet them. My birthday is not until the 27th, but it is more convenient for some of my friends to come on Sunday, as they work other days. You will also receive a cordial welcome from my teacher, Mrs. Macy, and my secretary, Polly Thomson, a Scot, who has been with us nine years.

I remember delightfully your visit to Wrentham, and how happy I felt in your understanding sympathy and gentle words of wisdom.

With warm greetings, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

Trout Hall,

Wendens Ambo, Essex

August 4, 1930

Dear Uncle Walter,

Your letter came this morning, and the trio read it with pleasure. We love to get your news.

I am glad you have weathered the terrific heat as triumphantly as you seem to have done. Your letter sounded as if you were feeling fine, and might reasonably look forward to your hundred and fiftieth anniversary. When one has attained to that age, five, ten, or twenty years more is a mere trifle. If my own expectations are realized, I shall be with you, Uncle Walter, on that happy occasion, and we shall probably tell the world that we feel a hundred and fifty years young. I have just had my fiftieth birthday, and I didn’t feel a day older than when the hand on the clock of time pointed to twenty-five. As Emerson says, there are thoughts that make and keep us young, and that is the richest gift I have received from the years. Although you and I look forward to a grand age, yet I hope no one will say of us that our days are as grass. That would imply that we had been hanging about for an insufferable length of time. I don’t want to live until people weary of my little tricks and conceits, do you?

I believe I was speaking of the weather when I got side-tracked. We have been reading about the intense heat in the London papers. I think I detect a note of satisfaction when a Britisher gives a long casualty list of people dying from sunstroke. He has an air of patting his bad weather on the back and saying, ‘You’re not too bad, old Chap.’ Personally, I have no complaint to make of the weather here. It has been delightful ever since we landed the middle of April. The past week or two it has rained, but not continuously. I have been able to take a walk in the garden every day.

Here we are deep in a circle of cool, sweet Old World hamlets, and I have but to step outside the door to be surrounded by fine trees and lovely blossoms. The country round here is given over to golden wheat-fields and darling lanes, where one meets sheep and cows more often than human beings.

I can’t help feeling that I am in a fairy tale of some kind. Trout Hall is so unlike any place I thought of being in before we left New York. It is a smiling, kindly house that seems to take you into its arms and make itself comfortable for you. Part of the house is four centuries old. A French window down-stairs opens on to the lawn, and there are casement windows all over the house that let in all the sun and the beauty of everything. I am writing in the old sitting-room which overlooks the garden. It has a fireplace, large sofas and chairs, a low ceiling and an undulating floor that makes me think I am walking on a deck of a ship. At one side of the room is a casement window about eight feet long, with a deep seat where I love to sit and enjoy the odours that float up to me from the garden and lawn.

It is very delightful here, but so hard to work! Open windows and sunshine seem to be the enemies of concentration. Garden smells gladden the heart, but undoubtedly they put an end to thinking. I have a wonderful walk half-way round the garden. I start at the front door and find my way by touching a big laburnum-tree which shakes its thousand seed-tassels in my face. (What a blaze of golden glory it must be in the spring!) Then comes a stretch of ivy-covered wall and all kinds of shrubs, arbor vitae, box hedges and rose bushes, and at the end a giant sycamore-tree under which we often have afternoon tea. There are many magnificent trees scattered about. In the centre of the drive-way stands a walnut-tree which must be older than the house, and there is the African maple that forms a vast dome under which I sit and read.

The flower gardens have a box border, and O, how lovely they were when we first came, rioting in roses, Madonna lilies, larkspur, and all kinds of annuals tumbling over each other! We have had a long spell without any rain, and just now there isn’t much in the way of flowers, except phlox, Shasta daisies, gladioli, and French marigolds. But the rain of the past two weeks has freshened everything up, and there will soon be roses, dahlias, and more lilies. And, would you believe it, Uncle Walter, there are still beautiful sweet peas! The vegetable garden is entered through rose arches, and at the end of it is a pretty little river with a rustic bridge and shadowed by trees on both banks.

We are pampered with the freshest of vegetables, raspberries, currants, eggs, butter, and thick cream. If we stay until the fruit ripens, we shall have pears, apples, plums, and peaches from trees which are trained to grow against the wall like vines. I have to exercise three hours daily to prevent ‘My Body the Ass’ from getting so fat that it will be unfit for the pack.

I don’t think, Uncle Walter, you would approve the Trout Hall kitchens. They are huge, with beamed ceilings, stone floors, large ovens, and queer contrivances for heating. The arrangements for preparing and cooking food are primitive and clumsy. Fortunately, however, we have two little maids who work under Polly’s direction, and have never known anything about modern conveniences. The gardener and his family live in the gate cottage, and look after the place.

All this sounds very grand, doesn’t it, Uncle Walter? You will be thinking a millionaire uncle has died and left me a fortune. Nothing of the kind has happened; but we have been lucky in another way—to have friends who knew about this place and got it for us. We pay only forty-five dollars a week for all the beauty and delight I have described!

And we are only thirty-nine miles from London! We have been there only four times, and each time I have felt as if I were being rushed through a vibrating chaos. It is too immense even to think about. I shall not dare drag my impressions out into the daylight; I know so well they wouldn’t add an iota to the sum of your knowledge about London. In fact, I have about as much idea of that city as a mole has of the earth it burrows in. London turns and twists in a way to make one dizzy. Teacher nearly jumps out of the car every time one of the buses bears down upon us—and that is about ten times every second. I tell her she is a veritable jumping jack-in-the-box.

Essex is one of the most historic counties in England—a country where nearly every county is celebrated for something. One burrows into so many layers of civilization here, one feels like a small currant in a big plum-pudding! If I attempt to tell you about Essex now, my letter will grow into a book, and you will marvel how I learned so much history in such a short time. There is quite as much to tell about Essex as about Cornwall, and sometime, when I get you into a cosy corner at 93, Seminole Avenue, or at ‘No Care’, I will begin at the beginning, which was about 500 b.c., and I shall try to make each layer of civilization stand forth as solid as the Roman walls and Norman castles. This will be by way of punishing you for thinking that my Cornwall letter was meant for the general public. My idea in writing it was that perhaps you might use parts of it in the Ziegler. We found Cornwall so interesting, I thought the blind might like to visit it with me.

I am sending you some pictures which we had made before leaving for Ireland. They will prove that some of the things I said weren’t the exaggerations of an enthusiast. I really visited every place I mentioned in the letter, and touched everything I described, except Old Artful and the saints who have departed this life.

My vanity requires that I set you right about another matter. When we landed at Plymouth, I thought Cornwall was an interesting name, and no more. Once or twice, when I had come across the name in books, I had wondered why Cornwall was called that—and that is something I am still in doubt about. But that Cornwall is one of the loveliest spots on earth there isn’t the shadow of a doubt. But that’s no reason why I should write a book about it. I must try to break myself of this bad habit of writing too long; and with this in mind, I think it will be no ill thing to make an end of my letter before you say, ‘Helen has done it again’.

We three send our love, and hope the weather will have mended before now. You didn’t say a word about your flowers, or the birds at ‘No Care’, or whether you were having a holiday. I see in the Ziegler that you attended two conventions, which doesn’t sound much like a vacation.

Affectionately yours,

Helen Keller

93, Seminole Avenue,

Forest Hills, New York

April 6, 1931

Dear Dr. Love,

*        *        *        *

As for our news, I give it tremblingly. For I have a confession to make—a conspiracy of silence. Mrs. Macy, Miss Thomson (Polly), my secretary, and I sailed for England last April and spent six months wandering through Cornwall, Ireland, and Essex without breathing a word to any of our friends of our whereabouts. Only Polly’s family and Miss Prince, the librarian of the National Institute for the Blind, London, knew that we were in England, and they kept our secret faithfully. Even my publishers did not know I had crossed the ocean.

Seriously, dear Dr. Love, it was a time of absolute quiet and relaxation for us three, and we did not attempt to do much sightseeing or meet people. My teacher had been ill a great deal as a result of overwork during many years, and a severe inflammation of the eyes had caused her acute suffering. Two operations on her eyes had failed to bring relief, and she was so nervous and depressed, we realized that something must be done at once if she was ever to get better. I begged her to go away with me for a long holiday. At first she refused to leave the boat she had so faithfully steered—bless her heart! and it required much persuasion to overcome her reluctance. But once we found ourselves aboard the President Roosevelt, the change in her was gratifying. Her interest in life revived, her love of beauty in sea and sky asserted itself, and by the time we landed at Plymouth the ‘Wanderlust’ was upon her.

First we went to Looe, an adorable small fishing village on the south coast of Cornwall. Some friends of Polly’s sister had recommended to us a cosy bungalow perched high above the Looe River and looking out to sea. There we spent ten care-free weeks, thinking serene thoughts on the cliffs, walking, I should almost say, hand in hand with the spring flowers, so constantly did we touch and love them, or motoring to Land’s End or Penzance or up through Devonshire. Cornwall is mapped for ever in our heart’s geography as a home of friendly folk living close to nature, a world of flowers, a land of healing for troubled minds and tired nerves.

From Cornwall we sailed across to Ireland for a two weeks’ visit. I was eager to set my feet on the soil, and feel the air of the land that gave me my Teacher. Our impressions of Ireland were too brief and mingled to express adequately, but I felt as if I was putting my arms about the neck of that dear, sad, smiling, baffling land, and grieving with her and blessing her as the mother of the one who gave birth to my soul.

MRS. MACY AND HELEN KELLER
AT LOOE, CORNWALL

Then we boarded a cargo boat and sailed back to England, where we spent the rest of the summer in Essex. It was everything lovely, soothing, and satisfying to our sense of beauty and harmony! For three months on end we were enthusiastic about Essex, its historic associations, its charm bequeathed from ancient days, its wheat-fields and the sunshine softened with sweet showers.

Edinburgh (we went up to that regal city in September for one week) came in for its share of our admiration and love. The Memorial Shrine overpowered us, Princes Street fascinated us, the Royal Mile, Calton Hill, and the Firth of Forth seen afar on a clear day made us resolve to come back to Scotland for a whole summer at some future time, and almost before we knew it we were crossing the ocean back to New York.

Since our home-coming, we have been working constantly, intensely, for the American Foundation for the Blind. The economic depression prevalent throughout the country renders it extremely difficult to raise money at present, and it has been a desperate struggle for the Foundation to meet current expenses. In ten days we shall have a world congress of workers for the blind here in New York City—about a hundred foreign delegates! Having attended many congresses, you can imagine what it means to have these workers for the blind with us from the 13th to the 30th of April. My great hope is that they will bring the blind of other countries closer together, and establish an international agency that will carry aid and comfort to every corner of the dark world of the sightless.

I am called down-stairs to see someone with whom we are arranging to talk over the radio on the prevention of blindness. But I have enjoyed this chat with you, and I feel more like facing the endless tasks that never let me alone, except when I play truant in England.

My Teacher sends her kindest remembrance with mine. Easter is here. May the ‘Kewd Kreestha’ abide with you, as the Irish say.

Faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

Concarneau, Brittany

September 20, 1931

Dear Dr. Love,

Your much travelled letter has at last found me here in this remote town of medieval peasants and fisher-folk on the coast of Brittany. I read it with mingled feelings—genuine pleasure because it was from you, and regret because keeping so quiet in England last summer had made me miss seeing you. That was the penalty I paid for vagrant instincts that caused me to flee from the hundred-eyed Argus of publicity.

The holiday which my teacher, Miss Thomson, and I took by stealth was the first vacation Mrs. Macy had had in forty-five years! Her ill-health and failing sight seemed to justify our hiding in pleasant places where we could enjoy seclusion and quiet. I still feel keen anxiety about her. If it were not for Polly Thomson, we should be quite alone and unequal to our burden. I cannot tell you how sorry I am, dear Dr. Love, that you were so disappointed not to see me. It would have been wonderful to be your guest at West Kilbride, and have you as a guide through the parts of England and Scotland you like! The pleadings of my own heart are potent to draw me to the British Isles again, and if all goes well, I shall return thither with May and the hawthorn blossoms. Yes, I must see you and the Clyde and walk over the heather-clad moors. I must sit in the nooks of beauty that impart to the land such a sense of friendliness and peace.

You may be wondering why we came to France this summer instead of to England. The answer is that during the extraordinary rush of my winter campaign for the American Foundation for the Blind and the world congress for the blind which met in New York last April my correspondence shot up skyward—a veritable Mountain of Difficulty, surrounded by deep Valleys of Despond. It was clear to me that if this mountain was ever to be levelled, I must find a secluded spot where my Wanderlust would not tempt me to go anywhere or meet people. So here I have been four months, buried in the fogs of Brittany, but I shall emerge thence Tuesday morning, go to Paris, and sail for New York on October 1st, with a clean slate and my friends placated. That means mental serenity and energy to throw myself into what will perhaps be the hardest winter the American Foundation has known since it came into existence. It is going to be extremely hard to raise money for any cause other than the relief of unemployment.

I wonder how you view the dark situation of Europe, and, indeed, of the whole world. Sadly and apprehensively I read the news from Britain. I can only hope that the courage, firmness, and vision of the people will carry them safely through this fearful crisis. My letters from home bring tidings of more and more gloom, cut salaries, increasing unemployment, and discontent.

Hitherto I have tried to bring a message of cheer and faith to the discouraged. It has seemed that such a message was a kind of nourishing good, like our daily bread. It pleases, sustains, and may be relied upon to meet most human situations. But at present I feel that something quite different is imperative. Looking facts squarely in the face is like a sovereign medicine, potent to invigorate and heal. I find myself forced to administer this medicine to many who ask for a bright message in a weak effort to shun the responsibilities that the time imposes upon them.

My Teacher sends her kind regards with mine, and so does Polly. She feels that she knows you very well, since she reads your letters. Please greet Mrs. Love for me. With the hope that kindlier days will smile upon you both—and a great many of them, I am,

Cordially yours,

Helen Keller

Forest Hills

Christmas Day, 1931

Dear Uncle Walter,

One day while we were in Edinburgh we went on a shopping expedition. Princes Street has some of the most charming shops I was ever in. At Forsyth’s my prying fingers lighted upon this rug. It felt so cuddly and warm, I said to Teacher, ‘This was surely made for Uncle Walter!’ Edinburgh is the City of Predestination. I know, because John Knox’s house is round the corner from Princes Street. So your Christmas gift, dear Uncle Walter, was foreordained from the beginning. Polly, the canny Scot, said, ‘How are you going to get it into the States?’ I answered, ‘That is arranged for too. If a thing is predestined to go to America, there it will go, even though “the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing”.’

If the rug is somewhat the worse for wear, it got that way crossing the Atlantic Ocean. I wrapped myself up in it when I sat on deck—that was part of the predestined plan to get by the Customs unchallenged. But if some of the newness has vanished, something has been added to it. At least we have tried to leave in its meshes the warmth of our affection.

We send you every wish for a Christmas of happiness and rest. And may everything you wish be yours in the New Year 1932!

Lovingly your friend,

Helen Keller

Forest Hills

March 11, 1932

Dear Uncle Walter,

I don’t know offhand how many letters I owe you, and I haven’t the courage to count them. The truth is, the days aren’t long enough for all the things that must be done. Polly and I are pretty constantly on the jump, going from one meeting to another in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Almost every day in February was taken, and March is being filled up rapidly with diverse engagements. I find it impossible to write all the ceremonious letters I should.

I did not write to Mrs. Ziegler as you requested. I have, as you know, sent her a number of notes thanking her for what she has done for the blind. She must realize the happiness and encouragement which the magazine has brought during twenty-five years to the dwellers of Darkland. Thousands upon thousands utter with affection her name, written in letters of light upon many hours that would be dark indeed without her generosity. No one in the world could be more grateful to Mrs. Ziegler than I am. When you see her, will you please give her my love and the blessing that is always in my heart when I think of her?

Why don’t you put some of your good intentions of calling on us into action? We shall be glad to see you. Just telephone and let us know if you are coming to dinner or lunch or breakfast or tiffin or tea or ‘snack’ before we go to bed.

I’m glad the readers of the Ziegler liked what I wrote about Cornwall. I wish they might all experience the delight of being actually there, picking primroses, wild hyacinths, and hawthorn blossoms, and hearing the gulls shout over the bay! We are thinking of going to Looe again this spring. Our plans aren’t completed yet. . . .

I’m glad you didn’t know that we three were tossing about in a sea of tribulations during the Christmas holidays—Polly in hospital with her fashionable appendix, our two precious dogs lost, Teacher not able to read or shop or do anything festive, even if we had felt inclined to celebrate. I missed the patter of dog-feet terribly, and the house was as silent as a tomb.

However, it all passed, as everything else passes. Polly came back, and was soon her plump self again. All kinds of gaiety followed her home-coming. Darky escaped from his prison and somehow managed to find his way to us—the most bedraggled, pitiful object you ever saw. Helga fell into the hands of forty racketeers, and was held for a big ransom. When she was recovered after eight days, all her luscious rotundities had been flattened, and in her eyes there was a lean and hungry look which soon vanished. The house began to hum and dance, and we looked the New Year in the eye with renewed energy.

I wonder if you know, Uncle Walter, how your cheery letters blow away troubling thoughts. Dr. Johnson said it was ‘worth a thousand pounds a year to have the habit of looking on the bright side of things’.

To-night Polly and I are to speak for the Japanese Ladies’ Aid Society. This is my brief moment of quiet before I’m thrown to the golden dragon.

Here I am at the end of the day and my chat with you, and not a word about your Christmas remembrance! I felt you near as I opened the box and drew out a dainty morsel, then another and another. I kept on nibbling until my figure was done for, and when Polly got back from the hospital she began to diet me in earnest. ‘How could you devour so many sweets!’ she expostulated. This quaint bit of Saxon verse will tell you how I felt about them.

Then I took a praline fresh from Miss Means’s skilful hands, and it brought me a warm, sunny thought of you, and I forgot the heavy tale winter was telling. In the heart spring blooms eternal.

It’s almost time for me to be handed over to the dragon; so with due solemnity I must bid you farewell. With our united love and Easter greetings, I am,

Affectionately your friend,

Helen Keller

7111, Seminole Avenue,

Forest Hills, New York

March 24, 1932

Dear Sir,

I do not at all know how to express to you my gratitude or my pleasure in accepting the distinguished honour which Glasgow University will confer upon me on June 15th. It fills me with awe to be complimented by a University at whose altar of learning scholars have lighted their candles through the centuries.

All my life I have delighted to visit Scotland in books and in imagination. In dreams I have climbed its purple Bens, followed the sparkling burns tumbling into the lochs and tramped the heather-clad moors; and ever my heart has leaped at the heroism of ‘Scotia’ and the noble lives that ‘stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle’. Two years ago I visited Edinburgh and breathed its historic atmosphere, and touched with my hands that sublime Iliad in marble—the Memorial Shrine.

so here a grateful people remembers the brave youth who died before their blossoming. Now comes your invitation, and I shall be in Scotland again before long! It will be another of ‘the two and thirty palaces’ in my amazing voyages over life’s sea.

I bow my head humbly as I think how little I deserve such recognition, but since you wish to show your approval of my endeavours, I accept the honorary degree. I am happy to feel that it may mean encouragement to others who have unusual limitations to overcome.

Will you kindly convey to the Faculty of the University my sincere appreciation of their beautiful gesture toward me, and believe me, with high esteem,

Cordially yours,

Helen Keller

7111, Seminole Avenue,

Forest Hills, New York

March 26, 1932

Dear Dr. Love,

This is to thank you for another expression of a friendship which I have long cherished, and to tell you how the prospect of seeing you in June smiles upon me. My Teacher and Miss Thomson are as pleased as I am by the offer of your hospitality conveyed to us with such charming warmth, and we look forward to being with you in the peace and beauty of West Kilbride when stream and moor and hill ‘are apparell’d in celestial light—the glory and the freshness of a dream’.

I have no words to express my astonishment when one morning, while I was at breakfast, the cablegram came from the University of Glasgow saying that the Faculty wished to confer an honorary degree upon me. In many ways I have gained a strong impression of the large-hearted generosity of Scotland. For eighteen years I have had a Scot by my side whose loyal service has smoothed out many difficulties for me. Truly, I am proud to know that my name will be included among those honoured by a great Scottish University. The thought of you being there makes me all the happier.

I confess I tremble at the idea of facing you and those distinguished scholars with such a sense of my inadequacy. Nevertheless, I am most grateful. I feel encouraged also to think that this event may help to arouse more interest both in the blind and the deaf. I have always looked upon my limitations as a possible channel through which wider sympathy and service may flow toward the handicapped.

We three are sailing for England on April 27th. We shall spend May in Cornwall and come up to Scotland in June. After the ceremonies we shall be happy to stay with you; then we shall visit Lord Aberdeen and other friends in Scotland, and return to England on July 1st, where we shall pass the rest of the summer quietly, regaining the energy and interest so necessary to carry us through the wearisome winter round of tasks.

My Teacher is almost totally blind now, and she is very sensitive about going anywhere and meeting strangers. I want her to be quiet and happy in some nook of dear old England. Miss Thomson was in hospital most of December, recovering from an operation for appendicitis. Now I am taking my turn at being ill. The despotism of the doctor has kept me in bed for more than a week, and obliged me to cancel all my engagements until October. All this means that we must rest if we are to be fit for next year’s up-hill work.

This has been a discouraging winter for all of us. Depression has seriously curtailed the means of the American Foundation for the Blind and I have tried with little success to raise sufficient funds to meet its current expenses. Any failure is disagreeable, but I try not to be unduly cast down. When one door is closed, another is sure to open. That is the thought that sustains me.

I hope you and Mrs. Love have kept well, and not felt the world depression too heavily. My Teacher and Miss Thomson join me in kindest greetings to you both.

With bright anticipations of England and of our visit with you, I am,

Cordially yours,

Helen Keller

Editor of the New York Times

Looe

May 1932

Dear Dr. Finley,

The wish to write something worthy in answer to your beautiful letter about the Empire Building kept me from writing at all. Now I come humbly and confess that I never could have fitly acknowledged it, and that I should have known I couldn’t. Why, I don’t even know how to thank you for the charming compliments you paid me! I felt as if I had been given a coronet or something. Of course you had my happy concurrence with all you did about the letter. I am proud that you were pleased with it.

We had a delightful crossing. Neptune was in a wonderful mood—or perhaps he was taking a holiday himself. It was good to sit in our steamer chairs and let the sun soak into our tired bodies. By the time we reached Plymouth, all the ills that flesh is heir to had left me, and I was ready to enjoy the glorious welcome Cornwall gave. We eagerly joined the spring parade—primroses and violets, whistling blackbirds and bleating lambs, silvery streams and shouting larks.

The drive from Plymouth to Looe is one of the loveliest in lovely England. It is lovely even when it rains, and the mist comes rolling in from the sea. O the many fragrances that drift from tree and bush and hill! I wonder if you know the scent of gorse? It gets hold of my heart, and will not let me go. Just now it glows like golden fire in the green landscape.

How kindly the undulating pastures are to nibbling sheep and cattle and the feet of those who enjoy long walks as I do! The spirit of friendliness abides in Cornwall. There is no end to the things that I can touch here—lambs, frisking colts, and the farmer’s dog. And even the birds are so tame, I often feel the flutter of their wings. When we go on a picnic, they come in flocks for the crumbs we scatter from the basket, and they actually hop on the table-cloth if we are slow with our bounty.

It is a delight how every one here loves birds and flowers. Workmen pick primroses and tie them on their bicycles or carry them home in their hands. It is rare to see a cottage which has not a small garden-plot filled with sweet-smelling flowers. Every member of the family takes pride in weeding and watering it.

HELEN KELLER FEEDING THE SEAGULLS
AT POLPERRO, CORNWALL

It is a joy the way the cottages snuggle down in the green hollows of the hedges like swans on their rush-hidden nests. Many of them are so low that by standing on the door-step I can touch the chimney-pots and the thatched roof. Indeed, every Cornish lane is an exquisite poem written by the Hand of God, and, joy of joys, I can read it with my fingers!

Looe, lovely Looe, is a gem of a fishing-village in an extraordinarily interesting setting of land and water. The Looe River divides it in two. Precipitous cliffs rise on both sides. The houses climb them hazardously, pushing their feet into the rocks so as not to slide off into the river. And always there are the gulls—thousands of them, sweeping in and out of the harbour, so that they give the effect of a great whirl of wings, opening and shutting like April clouds. I never tire of hearing about their goings and comings—their pirouetting among the rocks, their graceful pursuit of the fishing-boats, or perching on the roofs or swooping down on the hill-pastures to feast upon luckless rabbits. Hundreds of them alight on the edge of the quay and look at themselves in the moving mirror of the water, not, I think, to admire their reflection, but in search of a bit of plunder.

When we came here two years ago, Looe was ‘The Threshold of Quiet’ for us. Nobody knew where we were, except a few friends who kept our secret. For ten weeks we drifted with the days and the tides in a dream of delight, securely hidden from the hundred-eyed Argus of publicity. But this time the newspapers have shouted our coming from the house-tops, and lo! letters, telegrams, requests, interviewers, photographers, have descended upon us like an Alpine torrent. As a result of the publicity given our doings in England, we are receiving countless invitations to visit places of interest as well as all kinds of schools and institutions.

The other day we had tea with Mr. C. C. Morley, of Trelawne. The mansion was built in 1610, and for three centuries it was the home of the Trelawneys. Mr. Morley bought it recently, I believe. We spent a long time wandering through the rooms, and I expected to meet a ghost at every turn of the corridor. As Mr. Morley is an Irishman, he is of course very hospitable to ghosts. He told us there are three ‘honest-to-God ghosts’ in the house. One is a dog which roams up and down the stairs howling distressfully, so that no one can sleep in that wing of the mansion. The second ghost is a lady who, after the death of her son, shut herself up in the tower and refused to leave it. In the dim light of the candles she worked on tapestries which are to be seen to this day. The third ghost is a hunchback who occupies a small bedroom, from which a very narrow flight of steps leads to a secret chamber. Whatever happened in that chamber apparently keeps the spirit of the hunchback in a state of unrest. I wish it would give up the secret, so that the poor man might rest peacefully in his grave.

I examined the arches, the elaborate carvings on panels and furniture so highly polished that the tables and wardrobes felt like marble! Mr. Morley said that the hand detects fine wood more quickly and surely than the eye. The library is superb. I should like to spend days in it, and also in the chapel, feeling the altar and other sanctities.

In the spacious drawing-room the terrible Judge Jeffreys used to hold court for this part of the Duchy. Tradition has it that once, when a witness refused to answer his questions, the Judge became so infuriated that he cut off the man’s head with his own sword. We were assured that there are blood-stains on the stones under the polished boards which now cover them. When the tea-gong sounded, we discovered that we were lost; we had wandered so far into the past! Truly, these old places in England bring the past with its pangs and wounds and heartaches very close.

But I must tell you of our pilgrimage to Thomas Hardy’s country.

Dorset is a day’s journey from here. Every inch of the road we traversed was beautiful beyond my powers of description. The trees along the way kept us in a flutter of pleasure—alders, birches, rowans, elms, and oaks that made us catch our breath, to say nothing of apple-orchards all through Devon in full bloom, actually tinting the atmosphere a rosy pink! The trees were wonderful enough in themselves, one would think, but nature in England has a way of painting the lily. Each tree had its bird, often many of them, and the hedges were alive with them. We even saw a cuckoo! His wings and tail were tipped with white. We stopped the car a number of times to enjoy the bird concerts which were ‘on the air’ all the way from Looe to Dorchester—and not one sign of the march of factories, no reminder of the victory of mechanism or the triumph of materialism!

First, we went to the little cottage on the edge of Egdon Heath where Hardy was born. Awed and humble we stood at the gate in the wall of green that surrounds the cottage and garden. The lady who now lives there was on her knees working in the garden. We asked permission to look at the cottage, and she very graciously more than granted our request—she invited us to enter, and showed us every corner of the charming cottage. She took us up a wee stairway, through an arch so low that she warned us not to bump our heads, to the room where Hardy was born. It hardly seemed large enough to turn round in, but the view from the narrow window reached up to the sky and down to the climbing roses and honeysuckle.

I do not know how to express my emotions of pleasure and reverence as I stood in the little bedroom-study where Hardy wrote Far from the Madding Crowd and Under the Greenwood Tree. His desk stood near the deep window-seat, from which also there is a view of the garden; and I could imagine how Hardy loved the flower-scented sunshine that came in through that narrow window. I wish that all men who spend their lives in toil and care in crowded cities might have a glimpse of nature as we had through that tiny casement.

The living-room has a wooden floor where the young people used to dance long ago. The floor of the kitchen is stone, and the little pump which supplied the family with water is still there. I washed my hands in the sink where Hardy so often washed his. The knocker is still on the old green door, just as Hardy described it. Our guide told us that once an occupant of the cottage put a modern knocker in its place. When Hardy heard of it, he made the man put the old one back. A rambler rose climbs over the low door and reaches up white fingers to the study. It was brought to Hardy from America by an admirer. One has to smile when Americans beg a spray of it to carry home as a souvenir!

As Egdon Heath is just a few steps from the cottage, we walked a little way on it to get the feeling of its mystery and desolation. It hardly seemed possible that my feet were in the paths of clutch and conflict which I had so many times followed through Hardy’s books. The sun, warm and golden after a heavy rain, shone that hour, and the heath was a place of tranquillity and beauty—no suggestion of lashing wind and blinding storm. We said to ourselves, ‘Out of this heath came Hardy’s tales—solemn litanies of loves and martyrdoms’.

Where the road stops at the heath Dr. A. Newton, of Philadelphia, and a few American admirers erected last year a tablet to the memory of Hardy and the two books he wrote there. We felt that the English nation should own the birth-place of one of her greatest sons. Naturally the place is visited by many people in the course of a year, and it is somewhat of an impertinence to ask the tenant of the cottage to show it to them.

From the cottage we drove through winding lanes of bluebells, ragged robins, and showers of baby’s-breath to the little church, dating back to 1196, so poetically associated with the name of Hardy. Like so many English chapels it stands in a private park. When I stepped into the burying-ground, my hand reached out, and on the white face of a stone I read, ‘Here is the Heart of Thomas Hardy’. The sun shone upon it caressingly, and flowers garlanded it with living sweetness. All round the birds in the hedges were singing their joyous life-song in the presence of death—as if they knew it was not death, but the beginning of life. The thought came to me, ‘The bludgeonings of fate were powerless to make Thomas Hardy flinch; he received them with lifted head like a free spirit. Now Strife has passed with all its drums, and his heart rests here among his dear ones—his mother and father and neighbours—in the Heart of Peace.’

As we drove farther on, it seemed as if we were reading Far from the Madding Crowd writ large in moor and pasture and sheep, a great, living book throbbing with the mystery of lonely hearts, grey lives, and the ambushed secrets of fate.

But I must stop now, my Teacher and Miss Thomson are calling me to pack my case for Scotland. Perhaps some celestial day we shall meet and I can tell you more than I can write now.

Of course you know, Dr. Finley, that the University of Glasgow is giving me an Honorary Degree on June 15th? I rather dread the ceremony; however, when the day comes I shall be sustained by the thought that there is to-day a rising tide of sympathy in the world for the broken and the disinherited. In giving me a degree this grey old University of Glasgow is raising the standard of achievement for the handicapped everywhere.

When I finish what I will say on the 15th, I shall send it to you.

Hoping that all is well with you and our good friend the New York Times, I am,

Very sincerely Yours,

Helen Keller

PS.—Bless my soul, I find my letter to you has come to Scotland with me—a stowaway among my papers. It goes to you now with the scent of Scotch firs and sweetbrier.

H. K.

Dalveen,

West Kilbride

June 4, 1932

Guid morning, dear Lord Aberdeen!

This is one of the divine days you know so well, when the fragrance of Scotch fir and sweetbrier floats over roads that are paths of Paradise. As Thoreau says, this is ‘a morning when man’s sins are forgiven’.

This gives me courage to write to you after an all too long interim. Without the reassuring thought of sins forgiven I should be overwhelmed with remorse at not having sooner acknowledged Lady Aberdeen’s and your telegram of welcome which was handed to me before we disembarked at Plymouth. My only excuse for not writing to you from Looe you will readily understand.

Ever since I set foot on English soil, I have been under a barrage of interviewers, photographers, letters, telegrams, and the fusillade continues here in West Kilbride, reinforced by conferences with officials of the University of Glasgow. To-day there is a lull which I eagerly grasp to greet my friends.

I should love to visit you in August, and to see through your eyes the Highlands of romance and minstrelsy. I should also adore walking with you under the trees of Cromar. But alas! I am afraid it is not to be. We are staying in Scotland only until the end of June, when we shall return to London for a week of visits to the institutions for the blind and the deaf. After that we shall go to Kent, where we have taken a little cottage in the village of Ickham, near Canterbury, for three months. I believe Kent is a long way from Aberdeen.

The thought of not seeing you and Lady Aberdeen is a shadow upon my visit to Scotland. Is there a possibility of your being in London in July? If you are, I can run up some afternoon or evening to see you. Or if you should return to Scotland before we leave, we might motor to Aberdeen to at least shake hands with you.

Dalveen is a charming cottage covered with roses and when I stand at the window, I imagine I can feel the buds opening in the sunlight. Every morning I step out into the garden for a finger-glimpse of the beds of forget-me-nots and anemones or a whiff of sweetbrier. I hope we shall soon find a little leisure to explore other parts of Scotland. Dr. Love has promised to take us to Arran and to the Burns country. As a result of the publicity given the University degree, I am receiving countless invitations to visit interesting places and meet people, but I have so many speeches to prepare and so many schools to visit I fear I shall not see as much of Scotland as I could wish. Still, such work is our portion; it is sweet to work with Nature singing, humming, and blooming all about us.

I hope the summer will bring you and Lady Aberdeen many bright days and precious satisfactions. My Teacher and Miss Thomson send their kindest greetings with mine to you both. Keeping in my heart the desire and the hope of seeing you before I leave Britain at the end of September, I am,

Affectionately yours,

Helen Keller

Arcan, Muir of Ord,

Ross-shire

August 21, 1932

Dear Dr. and Mrs. Love,

Our inner selves have come together so closely, you cannot mistake my silence, or I yours—if you should ever be silent, dear friends—and so I will not pretend to apologize for my forced silence. Ever since we returned to Scotland, Teacher has been ill, tired, and nervous, and Polly and I have been paying in weariness for having enjoyed ourselves too much. Now we are quite naturalized in the Highlands, and are beginning to feel the benefit of the change.

Thank you most truly for all your letters. Teacher was moved by what you said to her, and it was quite as precious to me as your kind praise of myself—you realize, now that you have seen us together, how wonderfully she is a part of me. It seems so strange that few people understand the interwoven quality of our lives, and yet so imaginable, all her life she has refused to take her share of appreciation.

Your last letter is mingled for us of joy and grief—grief that your hearts are sad, and joy that the dear sister you have ministered to so long has at last been released from her pain. How thankful you must be that she no longer suffers! And, believing in immortality as we do, we think of her as having entered a new life more beautiful and joyous than anything of our dreaming. We shall indeed think of you both most tenderly to-morrow afternoon. I also have read Plato’s wonderful discourses on immortality, and have been lifted up by his splendid certainties. It is, indeed, regrettable that so few moderns have the brave, imaginative faith which sweetens the Marah of this life and surrounds the Life beyond with an aureole of happy anticipation. My personal faith is so deep-rooted that I am afraid of nothing. I am certain that I shall continue to live when I depart from earth. Often when I wake in the night, the room is so bright with spirits, it takes a moment’s reflection to convince me that I have not already stepped over the Border into Heaven.

I was sorry to hear that you had such a tedious journey home, but glad that your visit in London had been so pleasant and full of interest. What a memorable meeting that was with the doctors! I agree with Stevenson that the true physician is the flower of civilization.

Yesterday I finished a long letter to my sister Mildred, telling her all about our doings since our arrival in Britain the 5th of May. When Teacher and Polly read it, they said it had material in it for the article you suggested I should write. The two Vandals went to work, cut out family references and titbits of personal news, and hustled it off to Somers Mark to be copied! I will send you a copy when it comes back. If you like it, Teacher suggests that we might incorporate some paragraphs from your notebook and call it ‘I Discover Scotland’. What vexes me is, I must now write my sister another letter—as if I didn’t have enough letters on the waiting list!

We adore the Scottish Highlands. What magic of healing there is in the divinely pure air! We are all feeling better and more energetic—not for work, but for searching out the lovely spots of Scotland. I have had the joy of burying myself in the heather with little Ben-sith.

We were most fortunate to find this delightful farm-house, a hundred and thirty years old, in the midst of cornfields and unbroken rural seclusion. We feel a delicious remoteness from the ‘hurryings’ of the world. The only sounds we hear are the singing of the little River Orrin as it meanders through the pastures, the bleating of lambs, the mooing of Angus cattle, and the flutter of wings.

Yes, we are happy here. We are glad to write to our friends at last, to let them know that, despite our omissions and delays, the affection we have for them burns ever bright. Always we bless them for their goodness to us and the pleasures they have shared with us.

We wish you and the sweet children of your hearts, Jean, Muriel, and Marjorie, with their little broods of children with charming names and darling ways, could drop in upon us this heavenly fragrant morning. There is in my heart a different tenderness for each one of them, and in my memory a happy picture of them picking flowers for me or hanging daisy chains about my neck or playing ball with Kim on the lawn. Please embrace them for me, and pat Kim^[10] for the three of us and Ben-sith. I hope he has recovered from his attack of puppy-love for her. Of course the three ‘in-laws’ are also remembered with affection and bright memories.

I am grieved beyond words that I cannot attend the teachers’ luncheon on the 17th of September. It is a pity to disappoint them, especially as their arrangements are all completed, but it would mean a longer stay in London than seems reasonable. Naturally they feel that they should have been informed of our change of plans sooner. As a matter of fact, our plans were belatedly changed on account of Teacher’s illness. If the teachers find it in their hearts to invite us to speak to them another year, we shall be only too happy to foregather with them.^[11]

We three send you both our love. Accept it again with all the gratitude in the world for your precious friendship.

Affectionately yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

August 23, 1932

Dear Lord Aberdeen,

What is to be said unto thee by this nomad trio? When I telegraphed you from the Station at Inverness, we were on our way to Tain, where we stayed at the hotel until we found this delightful retreat in South Arcan.

We had no idea how difficult it would be to find a nest of our own among the hills of the North. We did not know that all the world comes to the Highlands to fish and hunt at this season. It was ten days before we heard of this place. We were on the point of returning to England when Dr. McCrae of Bonar Bridge persuaded his brother to let us have a farm-house in Arcan. We came here so fast you would have thought all God’s beasties were pursuing us! All we wanted was quiet to work part of each day and mountain air to refresh our weary bodies and minds. We had had three months of strenuous activity in Britain. The publicity given to the honorary degree conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow brought upon us a deluge of requests and invitations to do all sorts of pleasant things and meet interesting people. Naturally I wanted to visit institutions for the deaf and blind about which I had read since my childhood.

After the first meeting it was not seemly to refuse to comply with other requests; so, almost before we knew it, we were swallowed up in the ‘hurryings’ of the world. For two weeks in London we attended three, four, or five functions every day. It was all intensely interesting, but, oh, so fatiguing! I do not see how Their Majesties stand the ordeal, year in and year out! I shall have a great deal to tell you about the people I met at the places I visited when I see you, which I hope may be soon.

I understand that we can drive from here to Aberdeen in about four hours. If Lady Aberdeen and you can manage to give us a little time in this crowded season, we shall be happy to come. We sail for New York on the 29th of September. We shall probably leave here on the 26th.

In the meantime you may think of us in the middle of great golden fields of corn, with never a sound but the bleating of lambs, the mooing of Angus cattle and the wee Orrin singing its way through the pastures. I feel very close to the hushed Soul of Things in the sunny seclusion of the hills. I am writing this letter in sunshine as warm as June. The smell of the newly stooked hay is intoxicating as it floats over the fields bright in the heat. Yes, I am soaked in a raining honey of fragrance, and peace enfolds me like a mother thrush’s wings around the new-born.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson unite their cordial greetings with mine to yourself and Lady Aberdeen.

Affectionately yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

August 23, 1932

Dear Mrs. Carnegie,

It is quite incredible that I should be writing to you from a charming nook in the Highlands of Scotland! Yet it is not a dream; for I am wide awake, and enjoying inexpressibly the peace and loveliness of South Arcan.

It would take too long to tell you all the circumstances that brought me here. You may have seen in the newspapers that the University of Glasgow conferred an honorary degree upon me on June 15th. The publicity given to this event brought upon me a deluge of requests and invitations to do something, go somewhere, or meet somebody. It was all very pleasant, but extremely fatiguing. When the ordeal came to an end, Mrs. Macy was ill, and Miss Thomson and I were exhausted. We went to a little cottage in Kent which we had taken for the summer. Although the cottage was most picturesque and quaint, yet it was too small and dark—there was so much foliage, it shut out the sun when there was any, and when it rained, a green twilight filled the place. Mrs. Macy could not read at all. Her sight has greatly failed of late, and she can do nothing unless she has good light. Miss Thomson and I felt imprisoned and smothered in roses. Miss Thomson’s sister took the cottage, and we three came back to Scotland. The Highlands had been calling me for years, and this seemed to be the opportunity I had waited for so long.

We came up to Tain, where Miss Thomson’s brother and family were on a holiday, to stay until we could find a wee nest among the hills and moors. We had no idea how difficult it would be to find what we wanted, as we did not know that all the world and his wife come to the Highlands every year to fish and hunt grouse. We were almost in despair when Dr. McCrae, a friend of Mr. Thomson’s, persuaded his brother to let us have his farm-house at South Arcan. As soon as the arrangements were made, we rushed out here, and oh, what a heavenly spot it is—wild and secluded, yet within easy reach of civilization!

Here the golden hours are slipping past. The days never seem long enough for all the pleasant things we want to do. I am trying to catch up with three months of belated correspondence and yet miss nothing of the beauty that surrounds me. Morning and evening I walk beside a stone wall overshadowed by oak trees, stumbling over pebbles down the road to the pastures where Angus cattle browse contentedly, and lambs bleat, and the curlew grieves over lonely places until he comes to the tangled bracken where his nest is hidden beside the little River Orrin. Along my path are patches of fairy harebell which look as if they had fallen out of the sky when its heart was warm with summer.

I wish you would step into your lightning chariot and whisk around green lanes, by heather-sweet glens and across gurgling burns to South Arcan some bright day and have a cup of tea with us. Then I should know that it is all true and not a fairy tale. It sounds too good to be true, but wonderful things do happen in this fascinating land.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson join their cordial invitation with mine. With the grateful love that ever abides in my heart, I am,

Affectionately yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

August 24, 1932

Dear Mr. Eagar,

You make me proud! I am immensely pleased that the Council of the National Institute for the Blind should have unanimously invited me to become a Vice-President of the Institute. I accept with pleasure. I do not see how I can be of special service to the Institute, but I can give it my sincere sympathy and comprehension, and I do. Will you kindly convey to the Council my thanks for this gracious token of their approval and regard?

Gladly I seize this opportunity to express my appreciation of the assistance you and the staff of the National Institute gave me while I was in England. We could not have managed that crowded London programme without you and your secretaries. Your fine judgement and tact carried us over the top on more than one occasion. Your serenity was charming all the way through. We shall always bless the days that brought us together and prove your friendship.

I hope you and Mrs. Eagar have had a restful holiday. We have at last found a retreat to our liking, a dear old farm-house among the hills and moors of the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by fields of ripening corn, all shimmering gold, and pastures where black Angus cattle feed contentedly. I am trying to catch up with three months of belated correspondence, and yet not miss any of the beauty that makes this place such a joy. I walk every day beside a stone wall down to the pastures where the wee River Orrin murmurs with a sound like rain on leaves. The lanes are delightful—all twisty and shady, with lichened walls and lovely patches of harebell that look as if they had fallen out of the sky; and ever the meadow-sweet follows me like a happy memory.

To-morrow we go to Skye—we seem to be extending ourselves all over Scotland as if we were John Knox or John O’Dreams. I am excited at the thought of visiting Skye—Skye of a thousand songs and tales. In Search of Scotland, which I borrowed from the National Institute, and The Holywood Collection of Scottish Verse, which was presented to me at the Craigmillar School for the Blind, have tremendously enriched my impressions of Scotland.

We hope to see you again before sailing for New York. We shall stop over in London en route to Southampton. Miss Thomson will telephone you, and if you are in town, perhaps you will dine with us. There will be much news to hear and to tell.

Please remember the trio most kindly to Sir Beachcroft and Lady Towse when you see them. What a fine man Sir Beachcroft is! I have the most sincere admiration for his gentle courage and indomitable will.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson join their cordial greeting with mine to yourself and Mrs. Eagar.

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

August 29, 1932

My Dear Duke of Montrose,

Your Grace must let me tell you how much pleasure your letter gave me, and how good of you I thought it was to write to me when I had not thanked you and her Grace for your beautiful hospitality to my friends and myself. The blushes mantle my face when I think how long it is since we visited Brodick Castle. It was so like an angel-visit, bright and brief, that I hardly know whether it really took place. Perhaps I only dreamed of meeting your Grace, and am now startling a distinguished gentleman with an audacious letter. No! I won’t pretend that an event which left me permanently richer and happier never happened at all.

For days we all talked about Arran, the castle, Her Grace’s rock-garden, and Lady Jean’s sweet flowers. The wish to write to you has been in my mind constantly, but there has not been a quiet hour for its fulfilment. For weeks every moment of my time was taken up with meetings and correspondence relating to the degreeing formalities and visits to institutions for the deaf and the blind, both in Scotland and in London. During ten days after we left West Kilbride I attended three, four, or five functions every day. Dashing from one place to another came to have almost the zest of a vice. We did all kinds of pleasant things such as dining in the House of Commons, visiting Hampton Court, and meeting Their Majesties. It was a wonderful experience to stay in so ancient a city as London. It is a city of a thousand dreams and a thousand illusions. Old cities, like old castles, have about them the glamour of heroic romance. Their charm lies in an inscrutable combination of mystery, beauty, and tragedy.

When the dashing about in London slowed down a bit, we rushed off to a rose-embowered cottage in Kent to rest and catch up with three months of neglected correspondence, but alas! an unkind fate was ambushed in that wee cottage. In the first place, it was too small for us, being large and requiring much space to turn in. The ceiling was so low, one must duck or bump, and, to add to our discomfort, the foliage framing the windows was so dense it shut out the sun when there was any, and when it rained we were in the situation of moles milling around in the dark. We became homesick for bonnie Scotland. As soon as we could dispose of our picturesque prison, we fled as deer unto the Highlands.

We have been three weeks in this morning-glory land of purple hills and shining streams. We look out of our windows upon a lovely rural landscape—fields of golden corn, and the wee River Orrin murmuring its way through broad pastures where black Angus cattle graze contentedly, and in the blue distance one with good eyes can glimpse the firths of Cromarty and Beauly.

I wrote the above a week ago, and could not finish it because some friends carried us off on a three days’ trip to Skye. Skye! How shall I put into words the emotions stirred in me by that mysterious isle of rain, mist, and wind, where the mountains split asunder, and black chasms go down to the sea! With the thousand eyes of my mind I gaze up at frontling cliffs, scarred by tempest and fire, shaped by elemental forces until they look like towers, spires, pinnacles flung against the sky. Are they not dreams of vikings painted and made visible on the canvas of Skye? How deep the valleys go! With my fingers I hear the babble of burns, and my feet press into a carpet of purple heather and bog-myrtle, while about me the sheep undulate softly in the veiling mist. How bravely green are the pastures sloping to the sea, dotted with shaggy mountain cattle! Ever the odours of peat-smoke, ripening corn, and cottage-plots of bright flowers fill the air with spicy sweetness, and always the white line of road climbs upward and onward, as faith and courage ascend out of the Valley of Despond to the hills eternal.

HELEN KELLER WITH ‘BEN-SITH’
AT ‘DALVEEN’, WEST KILBRIDE

We had glorious weather. Skye mists and fogs in the morning, breaking into glorious sunshine at noon-day. Suddenly the veil of mist would part and reveal the giants, their dizzy brows filleted with clouds. How many times I got out of the car to feel a crag or the billowing heather or a little burn bedded in soft moss and moor-grass, or leaping from rock to rock like a deer in flight! But I must not go on and on like the burns. You know Skye well, I imagine, and have been enchanted by its sombre beauties and its jutting headlands drenched in mist or in sunlight.

Will you please tell Lady Jean I should like to know if she believes in fairies; for I do—in Scotland. I cannot help it, the glens seem full of them. I am sure they have touched my hand and whispered, ‘Come away! come away!’ and I certainly have seen them leaning over laurel hedges to dip their fingers in the dew and holding them up in the sun, sapphires trickling back to the green below. What traffic they have with amethysts, Cairn Gorms, the red wine of heather, the silver-beaten burns for their wrists, and cups of gold hanging at their belts! I am positive Lady Jean has seen them too.

I remember, she is interested in dogs. Of course, dogs are wonderful too. I have a darling ‘Scottie’, named Ben-sith, which they tell me is Gaelic for mountain fairy. She is not as black as she should be, and she has funny ‘bow-legs’, but her eyes are black diamonds, and her little heart is pure gold. God was very good to us when He made dogs; they are the only beasties that truly love us. They share our moods, they make every pleasure sweeter, and when we are sad, they wipe away our tears with their silken ears. They ask no questions, they make no criticisms, they are happy loving us.

I loved the little sermon you sent me. I have already pilfered a part of it to enrich one of my messages to the handicapped.

If your Grace will permit me to write to you sometimes, I will tell you more of my impressions of Scotland. I have taken both the high road and the low road to Loch Lomond, and looked longingly at Buchanan Castle. If you only had been there, I know you would have shown it to me. Perhaps I shall be more fortunate the next time I visit the loch. Scotland has taken such a hold of my imagination, it must needs draw me back again; for it has made all other holiday prospects a bit flat.

May I ask your Grace to remember me very kindly to Her Grace? I still feel her warm hand-clasp. The friendliness of you both will remain among my pleasantest memories of Scotland.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson join me in every good wish for your good health and happiness.

With sincere apologies for both the length and the belatedness of this letter, I am,

Faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

PS.—I am taking the liberty to send Lady Jean a picture of me with my golden Dane, Helga, because she loves dogs, and because she was so sweet to me.

H. K.

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord

August 31, 1932

Dear Mrs. Carnegie,

I shall make sure of your letter this morning by writing first to you. I wish human beings had a beautiful way of expressing gratitude to their friends like flowers that pay their glad debt to the sun with lovely hues and fragrance. Mere words seem conventional when the heart is full.

I loved every minute of my visit with you yesterday, you have such a dear art of giving pleasure in everything you do. Your manner of leading me into the drawing-room to meet Margaret and her husband and their beautiful children was intimately sweet with your spirit. How delightful it was to come near to you in that bright gathering of children and friends! You have no idea how often I have wanted to see you and Margaret. It is one of the saddest experiences in the world to believe one has lost a friend. Emily Dickinson’s lines express what I mean:

Yesterday brought me a sense of happy reunion and understanding.

As we walked among the roses or sat hand in hand under the soft, quiet sky, I felt that Mr. Carnegie was very near indeed. The heavenly-sweet leaves you put into my hands were like his generous heart. Their sweetness pervaded the atmosphere, as his kindness has pervaded my life, giving it breadth and richness of opportunity to serve others. In that hour of peace and loveliness I learned really to know you, dear Mrs. Carnegie—the beautiful soul of you, and for that I am profoundly grateful. The Skibo garden, which the centuries have made a marvel for all eyes to behold, will ever be a perfect setting for the picture I have of you in my heart.

Our pleasant chat ‘over the tea-cups’, the handsome young Highlander playing his spirited welcome to Skibo, the bunch of white heather bound with a tartan ribbon the children brought me, the drive home through the ineffable splendour of light and shadow in the woods and on the moors—these are memories that will always smile back at me as I turn the golden pages of remembrance to the chapter on bonnie Scotland.

I look forward eagerly to reading the new life of Mr. Carnegie. I hope Mr. Kendrick has the insight and imagination to understand Mr. Carnegie as he truly was. He was more than a sincerely good man with a live wish to help everybody; he was a poet in his dream of great things. I remember when he offered to buy off a war by paying the debts of a nation. Only a poet could think such ‘a graund thocht’. There was poetry, too, in the blending of the British and American flags—poetry and vision. The material eye, be it ever so keen, fails to penetrate the world of spiritual will where the elements at work are invisible and silent. The Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes together symbolize an invincible alliance for peace and progress.

My Teacher sends you her love. Needless to say, her disappointment at not being one of the party yesterday is very keen. The flowers you sent are helping to make her feel better.

Miss Thomson wishes me to thank you most warmly for being so kind to her. We three unite in every good wish for yourself and for the happiness of all your loved ones. How blessed it is to think of you surrounded by such affection and beauty of face and heart!

Lovingly yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 1, 1932

Dear Sir,

I have received your letter of August 3rd, informing me of the unanimous wish of the Board of Examiners and Council of the Educational Institute of Scotland to confer upon me the highest honour in their power, the Honorary Fellowship. I am proud—as who would not be?—that the finest intelligence and ability of Scotland should deem me worthy of such a distinguished compliment. Their generous thought is not only an honour to me, but also a recognition of the achievement of my beloved Teacher. I am but a cup-bearer of the hope she has created for those who dwell in the dark silence, and I am grateful for every praise that carries the hope farther.

I regret that it will not be convenient for us to stop over in Edinburgh on our way to Southampton. We are spending one day in London, where we have some business with the National Institute for the Blind. We leave here by the night train on the 26th of September, arriving in London the next morning. We would be pleased to meet the representative of the Institute, as you suggest, on the afternoon of the 27th at the Park Lane Hotel in London, unless the Council should think it advisable to wait until next year to confer the Fellowship upon me.

With a heart glowing with memories of the wonderful kindness that has made my bright journeyings through this pleasant and bonnie land, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 6, 1932

Dear Friends with Seeing Hands,

I have been wanting to write to you for weeks, but in the hurrying sort of life I have lived this summer it has been difficult to settle down to a quiet pleasure. If I did not know that you have kindly understanding of the circumstances, I should be quite overwhelmed with remorse at not having long ago acknowledged a gift into which you wrought your generous thought of me.

I received the dress when I was in London, where I had returned the last week of July to fill several engagements before taking my Teacher to the Highlands of Scotland. She had contracted a severe bronchial cough in Kent. The doctor thought a higher altitude would benefit her; so we gave up the cottage in Ickham, and here we are in the midst of a hundred acres of golden cornfields, interspersed with purple moors, wooded hills, and laughing streams.

I first wore the dress, which fits me perfectly, in Tain, where we stayed at the hotel until we found this farm-house. It was much admired, and oh, how comfortable it was on the long drives we took through the hills and moors looking for a nest of our own! The mornings and evenings were cool, and I loved the warmth and cosiness of my pretty dress. It seemed as if your dear arms were sheltering me from the sea-mists and hill winds.

How I wish I might have you all here with me! You would love the bens and glens, the heather-drowsy peace of the moors and the pastures ‘where nibbling flocks take delight’. You would enjoy the odour of the corn, which has been cut and stooked in the great field opposite our door. You would hear the whirr of many wings; for there are many birds here. When we walk through the field, our little ‘Scottie’, Ben-sith, startles into flight partridges and grouse, grey wood doves with soft rose-tinted breasts, pheasants and the plumpest thrushes we have ever seen. Evenings we hear the mournful cry of the curlews as they pass on their way to the little River Orrin, where their nests lie hidden in the bracken. We are eighteen miles from Inverness, the city of lochs and firths and old castles. Gulls come in from the firths and feed at our door like chickens.

Here in the house I am cosily seated near a bright fire, with Ben-sith sitting beside me on the sofa while I write. From the kitchen come delicious smells of food being prepared for dinner. If you were here, I would shut up the type-writer and hasten away with you to picnic under a greenwood tree or beside a sparkling loch!

I walk every day alone, following old walls covered with lichens, mosses, and ferns. The fingers of the bracken catch my dress as I pass, as if they would hold me fast, like the Highland princess bound in the fairy glen with a spell not to be broken. But, much as I should like to remain their prisoner, I must disengage myself and move on to chat with the foxgloves and harebells, which look as if bits of blue sky had fallen on the roadside.

Last week Miss Thomson and I lunched at Skibo Castle with Mrs. Carnegie, and had a wonderful time. The garden is seven hundred years old, and oh, what an enchanting place it is! High walls completely buried in ivy and delightful paths bordered with box, and gladioli, roses, and carnations. In the middle of the garden is a holly-tree which St. Gilbert planted seven centuries ago. It is so large it takes the arms of three people to encircle it. The day I was at Skibo, everything was drenched in sunshine. In the distance Miss Thomson could see Moray Firth and range upon range of mountains. How often the dwellers in that castle, when they look out from their windows, must think of the psalm, ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’!

I shall ever remember the dear welcome you gave Miss Thomson and me to your shop, the cup of tea and the delicious cake over which we chatted, the thrill in my fingers as they touched the work which is your bright fort against dull hours. People who think they see often wonder what good there is in life for us who are blind, but you and I know we are happy when we are given a task we take pride in, or when our hands are plunged into a good book. These are the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures which God has provided for His creatures. They will make our days pleasant to us as long as we live.

Long may you find satisfaction in useful accomplishment, is the affectionate wish of

Your friend,

Helen Keller

Chairman of the Executive Council, St. Dunstan’s

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 6, 1932

Dear Captain Fraser,

I hope you won’t think me the graceless wretch I appear for not thanking you and Mrs. Fraser long ago for your delightful hospitality while we were in London. The truth is, since I saw you I have been rushing hither and thither, ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’, except that my correspondence got so far ahead of me I simply gave up the chase until I came to this quiet farm-house in the Highlands of Scotland.

CAPTAIN IAN FRASER, M.P., AND HELEN KELLER
AT ST. DUNSTAN’S

But even if I had written immediately, I could not have been more appreciative of your kindness than I am now. I was very happy at St. Dunstan’s—happy to find a place I had read about for years as interesting and beautiful as I had imagined. What a blessed circumstance that St. Dunstan’s has Regent’s Park with its gardens and fountains at its very threshold! I wonder if you realized how sweet and restful the quiet of your home was to us that day. I loved sitting out on the lawn and chatting with Mrs. Fraser and Miss Greenwood, while the odours of a thousand roses drifted over the hedge, soaking us in their honeyed fragrance. We talked about that visit for days afterwards, and we were still full of it when we saw Mr. Migel later. He expressed great admiration for Mrs. Fraser. You seem to have given him a wonderful time. He was in quite a glow when he told us how much he had enjoyed being with you both.

But this is a digression. What I started to say was that dining in the House of Commons was the event of my London visit. The House of Commons has always been to me a symbol of something great and glorious; for it incarnates the history of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is like an arm of the past continuing into the present and reaching out to the ends of the earth. You would have been amused if you had guessed what was in my mind that evening. Dare I confess it? I was seeing ghosts passing in and out among the living—ghosts of those who, in the words of Goethe, were ‘controlled by the demonic afflatus of their genius’: Milton thundering against censorship, Hampden denouncing Charles I, Burke pleading the cause of the American Colonies, Wilberforce breaking the chains of slavery, Disraeli presenting India to Queen Victoria on a charger as it were! And there was Byron turning the heads of women, and Tennyson inviting all the Mauds of the world to come down into the garden! Never were such things seen with the naked eye, never were such things heard with the naked ear, but I saw and heard them, and was stricken with wonder—as who would not be? And at the same time enjoying a delicious dinner and the distinguished company at table! Between bites and Miss Thomson’s repetition of a clever bon mot my mind was taking part in the amazing vicissitudes the House of Commons had survived. I heard mobs milling round it and bullets whizzing by, I saw members driven out of it to prison or to death, but there it was, serene and mellow. And there you were, making a modest, humorous little speech. How I envy you that happiest of Nature’s gifts, humour! I would part with my little bunch of virtues to possess it. What do many words avail if we have not humour?

Old palaces, old churches and monasteries, indeed all the old seats of the mighty have had a fascination for me. I have been carried away by their combination of mystery, beauty, and the long series of romantic events that surround them. But an experience I had this summer has cured me of a long-cherished desire to live in one of those famous old houses.

I think I told you we rented an Elizabethan cottage in Kent for the summer without having seen it ourselves. After all the engagements, parties, receptions, teas, and divers other affairs in London were ended, we dashed off to Ickham to recuperate in our precious antique cottage. It was, indeed, a lovely thing to look at. Everything about it was quaint, picturesque, and fragrant. But living in a historic house is different from looking at it in the charm of its ancient setting. Memory Cottage bespoke a civilization that is gone for ever, and with it, I am thankful to say, many inconveniences and dark corners.

I am fully convinced now that we ourselves should make the history of the house we live in. What history we cannot make it is as well to do without. Places where things happened—‘where the lightning came once down’, as some one has said—are enormously interesting to visit. A fully developed sense of humour would have prevented us from such a blunder as Memory Cottage. However, it sharpened our hunger for Scotland, and here we are, in the midst of golden cornfields, interspersed with purple moors, delightful twisty lanes, wooded hills, and laughing burns—a wild, shy, sweet place that we love, secluded, yet within eighteen miles of Inverness.

Dunvegan Castle, from time immemorial the seat of the chiefs of the MacLeod clan, is a magnificent sight. The oldest portion of Dunvegan is of unknown antiquity, and the history of the castle is marked even more than most Highland fortresses by legends of weird superstition. It is probably the oldest inhabited castle in Great Britain.

We came home through the Grampians, crossing and skirting Lochs Alsh, Duich, Dornie, Garry, Moriston, and Ness. For miles and miles we passed steep walls of green and purple, with scattered forests and clinging pastures between boulders where black Angus cattle and even deer and timid little flocks of black-faced sheep grazed; and on all sides silvery streams and the whole lines of roads going deeper and deeper into chasm and glen. I left my heart on every peak of those prancing, galloping Grampians.

I am near the end of my letter, and not a word have I said about your letter which I received just before I left London. I am glad you think some good has come of my visits to the schools for the blind. Your praise makes me very happy.

We appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending the clippings and photographs. My friends love the pictures taken with you among the roses and on the edge of the fountain in Regent’s Park.

I am sorry that Winston Churchill’s Early Days is not in Braille, but I thank you for your wish to give me the pleasure of reading it myself.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson join me in kindest remembrances to Mrs. Fraser and yourself, also Miss Greenwood when you see her. Hoping that you, too, have had a happy holiday,

I am,

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

Scottish Education Department, Edinburgh

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 7, 1932

Dear Mr. McKechnie,

It is three months since that memorable robing ceremony at the Institute for the Deaf, and you have probably forgotten our existence. It is time, however, that we reminded you of it, as the day approaches for our return to New York. I should have written to you ever so long ago, had it not been for an unusual pressure of duties, personal and public.

The publicity given to the honorary degree conferred upon me by the University of Glasgow galvanized all kinds of institutions into a violent desire for me to visit them. It seemed ungracious not to gratify them as far as was humanly possible; so for many weeks ‘The Three Musketeers’ were kept on the run. We were sorely banged and bruised in the process of making everybody happy. We pushed on with indefatigable zeal to London, until exhaustion outflanked us, and we surrendered to our nerves.

But I must not dwell on those crowded days, they are in the realm of oblivion behind the moon, and already, as I look back on them, I see far more pleasure than pangs.

We are now settled in the most balmy repose of Scotland’s moors and hills. The good Lord is letting us be lazy! . . . Not too lazy of course, that would be a sin, but lazy enough to enjoy the heavenly air in the Highlands and to be glad when meal-time comes, glad also of the beauty that surrounds us. . . . If ye want a pairfect holiday place, ye’ll find nane better in the wor-r-ld than South Arcan, with the river flawin’ by sae softly, and the Hielands at your back and a flash o’ Cromarty in your ee!

But I must not let the bonnie fields and braes of Caledonia beguile me from the true object of this letter, which is to thank you for your beautiful address at the robing ceremony. It gave me a lasting flush of pleasure, especially what you said about my Teacher. You have the clairvoyance which looks beyond the unthinking, ignorant adulation constantly heaped upon me and sees her unwavering devotion and patient, constructive labour to retrieve my life from the ‘bush’, and give it form and comeliness. No slight task this! No chance, the opening of my mind, but a prophet’s vision and a teacher’s spell of bestowing light. That day you gave our struggles and triumphs the dignity of divine things. We are both very grateful to you, and we rejoice that you serve in the teacher’s high calling with wit and eloquence. Not often in these uninspired days does one listen to words of such understanding and beauty. Listening to you, I felt

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson send their best wishes for everything that can bring you satisfaction and happiness.

I am,

Ever faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

Principal of the Royal School for the Blind, Leatherhead, Surrey

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 7, 1932

Dear Mr. Griffiths,

My visit to the Royal School for the Blind was of the greatest possible interest to me, and I should have written at once to thank you for a delightful day, had it not been for an unusual pressure of duties. . . .

The beautiful dress which the blind women of Leatherhead made for me followed me to Tain, where we were staying at the hotel while house-hunting. I am delighted with it. Every one admires its thrush-like shades of brown, and I love its warmth. It fits perfectly. I wore it the other day when I visited Inverness. It was a satisfaction to me to be appropriately clad in that regal city of bright waters. I thought with gratitude how much kindness had been knitted into its soft texture by the skilful hands of my blind friends. I cannot thank them with words, but with my heart I do.

That was a memorable day at Leatherhead. The memory of the cordial welcome accorded me by the School, the charming music and the sweet flowers I received from the deaf-blind, the many gracious compliments paid me by yourself and the other speakers give me a lasting flush of pleasure. How good you all were! Every word you spoke about my Teacher was penetrating and beautiful. So many unthinking people talk as if I had overcome my difficulties single-handed—sprung, as it were, like Pallas Athene full-grown from the brain of Zeus. The truth is, I have been tremendously helped in countless ways by others, and especially by her who has devoted her whole life to me. I wish the people at home could have heard all the illuminating phrases spoken of her at Leatherhead, and the constructive, sympathetic things you said about the deaf-blind.

We shall leave here on the 26th of September, and sail for New York from Southampton on the President Roosevelt on Thursday the 29th. Already a formidable campaign for the blind looms upon the American horizon. A lot of money must be raised next winter if the work of the Foundation is not to go on the rocks—an unthinkable disaster. I can hear the lash of Necessity crack over my bowed shoulders, but you know the saying of Goethe, ‘He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds work to his hand’.

It is pleasant to think of you all in Surrey with its rural beauty and peace. I feel I could work more effectively in such surroundings than in the hurryings and flurryings of New York.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson unite with me in the very kindest remembrances of you, Mrs. Griffiths, and the School.

Ever sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 8, 1932

Dear Mr. Sweet,

Ever since I received the snap-shots you so thoughtfully sent and your gracious, understanding letter, I have been holding back my gratitude with both hands, loth to let it go into a hurried note, lest it should lose in going some sense of the very great kindness I felt you and Mrs. Sweet had done me and come faint and halt to your door. Your kindness was unexpected because I was intensely conscious of not having written to you after that visit to fascinating old Arran. This world of ours would be a much nicer place to live in if there were more people in it like you—generous and forgiving.

That drive with you was tantalizing in its glimpses of wild beauties to be explored, and hints of more interesting things to be heard. We were all sorry we could not have more of the day with you. The pictures impart a welcome reality to a pleasure that was so fleeting, it seems almost like a dream.

I have had two pleasant letters from His Grace about my visit to Brodick Castle. What an unforgettable experience of meeting Happiness round the Corner of the Street of Life! I did not think I would meet Their Graces or visit the castle, but it happened, and I am two friends the richer. So the history of our lives is made, friend upon friend, joy upon joy.

We have been here in South Arcan one month, and it seems like three months. . . . We have been deliciously idle, lying in the soothing quiet of deep heather or walking through lanes lovely with ferns and silvery birches, reddening rowan-trees, and whistling larches. I have not time to tell you all I have enjoyed. I shall mention only a few of the trips I have taken between naps. Forres, which we did not see ‘in thunder, lightning, or in rain’, but drenched in sunshine. The hills about Inverness, glorious beyond my powers of description: the roads leading north beautiful with pine-woods and glimpses of blue waters; in the distance Skibo Castle, where I lunched with Mrs. Carnegie and sat in the seven-hundred-year-old garden with its immense holly-tree planted by Gilbert—the trunk is so large it would take the arms of three persons to encircle it. Skye, with its grim saga of greens and purples and vast shadows flowing down from the mountain-summits to the sea. The glens, where shaggy cattle and timid sheep graze, and lonely cottage-plots are bright with flowers. The fascination of Caledonia is something I never dreamed of. There is not in the world, I think, a land more beautiful, more peaceful, or richer in legend and romance. Is there in all history a more adventurous and enchanting hero than ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’? Is there a battlefield that quicker makes our hearts swell to our very throats than Culloden Moor?

Next week we shall visit Lord and Lady Aberdeen, and then, all too soon, we shall be sailing for home. Over there a formidable campaign for the Blind of America awaits me, but I know our thoughts will often recur to the happy days we spent in Scotland, the delightfullest country on earth, and a hundred memories of the many friends and their generous Scottish hospitality will come crowding through our busy days to make them glad. Yes, I shall carry in my heart a sense of their affection and appreciation. Such warmth of feeling, such depth of love I have seldom experienced.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson join me in very kindest remembrances of you three joy-bringers. Mountains may divide us, and a waste of seas may lie between us, but your kindness will reach across to me like a strong hand, and from the distance my thoughts will come leaping back to you in happy gratitude.

Cordially yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 8th

My dear Duchess of Montrose,

This is to thank your Grace for your note and also for Lady Jean’s sweet letter. I am glad she likes my photograph. The dog’s name is Helga. She is a golden Dane, and we adore her.

I have just received from my publishers in New York some copies of Midstream, a continuation of The Story of My Life. I am venturing to send you and His Grace one; you have both been so beautifully kind, I am sure you will not mind. It will carry to you my gratitude, as it were, in my own hand.

We often recur to that happy day at Brodick Castle, and we hope we may have that pleasure again when we come back to bonnie Scotland, which we think is the delightfullest country in the world. Alas! we have only a few more days in which to enjoy it—we sail for New York from Southampton on the President Roosevelt on September 29th.

HELEN KELLER WITH THE DOGS
GREAT DANE AND ABERDEEN TERRIER

Truly, this holiday in the Highlands is one of the most glorious experiences of my life. I love it all—the moorland peace and hills of beauty, I love the mountains when they are cloud-capped or when soft veils of mist, spun of wind and dew and flame, are drawn round their shoulders, and I am happy in the woods and their heavenly aroma which I call greenness. If I am ever born again, I know I shall be a Scot. Already the root of the Scot is in me.

With my love to Lady Jean, and with kindest greetings to yourself and His Grace, I am,

Faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

Langside School for the Deaf, Glasgow

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 10, 1932

Dear Mr. Haycock,

For more than a month after my visit to the Langside School for the Deaf I was in such a whirl, I had not time for the plainest duties, one of which was to write and thank you for the pleasure Miss Thomson and I had seeing the School and distributing the prizes to those dear children. Their loving greetings made me very happy as I put a prize into the hand of each winner. I only wish I could have stayed longer and seen more of your work.

Although my thank-you for your pleasant letter and for the enclosed cheque is extremely belated, yet I am sure you will understand, and believe that my gratitude could not have been more intense if I had written immediately. I tell you the simplest truth when I say, no present could have pleased me better than to receive from the teachers of the deaf and the blind the robes I wore at the degreeing ceremony! It was a princely gift, a delicate and precious act of friendship. It revealed to me the limitless kindness in the heart of this bonnie land. You Scots seem pre-eminently sent into God’s earth to be a friend to man. The robing day stands out golden-bright among the many beautiful things which happened to me this summer both in Scotland and England, and which I recall in the sweet quiet of this Highland retreat.

After rushing to and fro at top speed in London, trying to fill all kinds of engagements, we came up here in a feverish and agitated mood, but since then I have been blown through and through by the strong mountain winds, and I begin to feel like an entirely new creature. O the wonderful month we have lived in this charming farm-house, in the midst of an environment that has every delight for a lover of nature! Seclusion and silence unbroken, except for the whirr of wings and the River Orrin, now ‘in spate’, babbling noisily over its stones. . . .

I have never enjoyed so much the society of corn, birds, and heather-honey! The birds come to our very door to pick up the crumbs we throw out for them. Last night there were sixteen partridges at the same time! It is heavenly to drowse in the heather or lie under hedges, while bees hum, and time is not. But soon we must be up and flitting back to America, where a heavy programme is being planned for us to raise money. . . . I am glad I shall have these serene days with the gold and purple of Scotland’s beauty to look back upon when I need mental refreshment for my routine tasks.

You and the School have my every wish for a pleasant winter and the satisfactions of accomplishment. Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson send their very kind remembrances with mine.

Faithfully yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 11, 1932

Dear Miss Pringle,

I beg you not to measure my delight in your sweet letter and the gift of books from the Glasgow Local Association of the Educational Institute of Scotland, by the belatedness of my acknowledgement. This has been an extremely crowded summer for me.

After our June visit in Scotland, we went to London, where we were overwhelmed with engagements for two weeks, with scattered meetings to the end of July. The efforts I made to write to my friends in bonnie Scotland who had been so kind to me were frustrated one way or another. Not until we fled from the ‘hurryings’ of the world to the peace and quiet of the Highlands did I find myself in an environment and a mood to write.

I cannot tell you truly, without seeming to exaggerate, how very much I have enjoyed the books with which the Glasgow Association presented me. I’d like to know what little bird or pixie told you that they were the books I particularly wanted. I had intended to purchase them for my library.

I have always felt with Emerson that we moderns should read more books like Plutarch, of a tart, challenging and universal quality. You know Plutarch ‘had mankind for his province’. I had read snatches of Epictetus’s sayings, but I was eager to own the book so that I might read and re-read it to my heart’s content. It seems almost as if the ‘Discourses’ had been written for me, so full are they of gropings through dark vales of experience, repressive circumstances over which the spirit must rise, and boundless faith in the resources of will and imagination. As Epictetus was banished from Rome across country, and found himself, so I believe I have been exiled from the light so that I may help, if ever so little, to demonstrate the power of mind to overcome limitation. And, strange to say, I have never read all of Shakespeare’s sonnets! It is a perfect joy to have them at my finger-tips to quarry into and carry away gems of thought.

God be praised for books! They are the voices of the great; they bring the distant near; they make the humblest of us heirs to the spiritual life of all times.

Mrs. Macy, Miss Thomson, and I were very tired when the rush in London was over, but since coming to South Arcan—to the hills and the golden acres of cornfields, the sea-winds have blown away all the cobwebs and taken I do not know how many years off our shoulders. If we could stay here for ever I think we should grow younger day by day, and happier too, until it could truthfully be said of us, ‘Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’. You know the story of the pipers of Tomnahurich who played reels for a fairy dance that lasted a century; and when they returned to Inverness no one knew them, and they were surprised at everything—no wonder! But alas! we cannot stay here a century or even another month. In two weeks we shall be sailing back to America, where a heavy campaign is being planned for us to raise money to keep the Foundation for the Blind going another year.

I am not, however, thinking of that campaign any more than I can help. I want to enjoy every minute of the autumnal glory about me—the breath of purple heather and ripening barley and corn spreading over the fields in cloth-of-gold. It seems that everything of beauty the heart of man desires is at one’s door in the Highlands.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson are very proud of their books. We have all had a good time with In Search of Scotland; it is a joy of a book. The Story of San Michele is going to enliven our sea-voyage.

Now, while the fair-haired angel of the evening spreads his wings over the mountains and smiles down upon our radiant nest, I will finish my letter. Will you please express to the Glasgow Association my sense of their very kind thought of me?

With kindest greetings, in which Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson join,

I am,

Cordially and gratefully yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 11, 1932

Dear Sir St. Clair Thomson,

In the rush of your crowded days you may well have forgotten me and the delightful luncheon at your house in Wimpole Street. . . . I like to write the name Wimpole Street, because it has about it the aureole of genius. One can never hear the name without saying, ‘Oh yes, the scene of the love-letters of Robert and Elizabeth Browning’. Now the name has other precious associations for me because of you.

Ever since the happy hour I spent with you, I have been trying to make some acknowledgement of your gracious hospitality which should have the quality of the fact and the grace of it, but it was impossible for me to compose my thoughts in a letter while I was dashing from place to place and jerking my mind from one kind of speech to another. Not until I came to the peaceful seclusion of the Scottish Highlands did I find an environment and a mood in which to write to my friends. Even now I shall never be able to say how noble and good I felt you to be. I can only with all my heart beg you to believe that no slightest circumstance of our meeting was lost upon me, and that the pleasure of knowing you will be among the most precious experiences of my visit to England.

There are personalities to whom one’s thoughts turn gladly, as leaves to light, and that is the way Miss Thomson and I felt all the time we were with you. What a delight it was to listen to you as you touched luminously upon one subject, then another, and to feel your responsive sympathy to all high aspirations!

You and the distinguished physicians gathered round your board gave a reassuring confidence that progress is being made in the preservation of human faculties. I am sure your influence will go far towards winning allies among medical men for those who struggle against soul-crushing silence and darkness.

Thank you ever so much for the card with the reproduction of Sargent’s portrait of you and for your charming address to me at the meeting of the British Medical Association.

Mrs. Macy and Miss Thomson want me to tell you how gratefully they will always remember your kind words to them. My teacher regretted exceedingly that she was not able to go to your house with us. Will you kindly remember me to Miss Thomson and your sweet niece?

With our united greetings, and with every good wish for your happiness, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 14, 1932

Dear Lord and Lady Aberdeen,

I shall make sure of your letter by writing to you this morning, before even reading the mail of the past two days. I am writing to you both because ‘We Twa’ are one in my thoughts, and I have a dear, intimate picture of you with your heads together reading my letter.

We made the hundred and twenty-five miles comfortably. There were heavy showers now and then, but little traffic on the road. As we approached Inverness the sun pushed back the clouds, and we beheld Moray Firth suffused with the blended colours of the sunset, and in the distance the mountains seemed one great amethyst pendant hanging against the sky! We had dinner at the Station Hotel in Inverness, and felt refreshed for the last stretch of our journey.

We were surprised, coming out of the Hotel, to find the moon shining brightly. The road from Inverness to South Arcan is very lovely with fields, woods, and rivers. As we drove along a mist of rain lay upon the fields like a silver cloud, and the delectable aroma, which I call greenness, from pine, fir, and larch pervaded the air. When we opened the first gate to the farm, the cattle rose out of sleep like mounds of black onyx in the moonlight, and the ground was alive with hundreds of rabbits—their tails twinkling in the grass made us dizzy as they scurried away to their warrens. As the car pushed through the ‘bush’ we heard the plaintive cry of awakened curlews, and wild ducks on the tiny loch turned their heads and moved a little deeper into the shadow. Then utter silence descended upon us, and we were in bed by eleven o’clock. Five minutes afterwards I had covered the distance between South Arcan and Tarland in my dreams, and was embracing you all again.

It seems quite incredible that only yesterday we lunched all together. The aura of your loving-kindness enfolds me as if we were still in your presence. I seek vainly for words that shall carry to you the sense of joy I had with you. I can but feel how good and noble you are, and dwell on the charm of everything you did and said. What a delight it was to be admitted into the bright circle gathered about you! The happy laughter, the pleasant talk so full of tolerance, humour, and breadth of view; your Ladyship’s sensitive spirit, all colour and fire, yet strong and silent; your Lordship’s wealth of anecdote and story! Then your protective tenderness, Lord Aberdeen! A glow of happiness fills me as I recall how you guided me along the terrace where we stood looking across a meadow-land shining with bloomy grasses up to Lochnagar, silhouetted against the sky, with all round us a murmur and perfume of flowers. A happy pair we were, arm-in-arm, wandering through an autumn day, each following some star-track of his own!

Do you know, Lord Aberdeen, you are a great wizard? I was oddly bewitched by your conjuring of walks, trees, sweet grass, and paths with cathedral effects of light and shadow. You say I am a poet. I wish I were, then perhaps I might express more truly^[12] the loveliness I felt and breathed while under your spell. I might also find words living and sparkling enough to thank you for everything. As it is, I can only remember and be glad.

After all, it is not one thing, or two or three or any number of things that makes a visit a blessed memory, it is the indivisible totality—an enchantment, an experience that fills the soul with deep content. Yes, like bees in purple heather, I gathered a rich store of the honey of memory at the House of Cromar that will keep my thoughts sweet during a busy winter when I must live at my finger-tips without dreams or wings.

How far and wide we pursue the quest for spiritual sustenance! Into what scented gardens we stray, up what steeps of endeavour we climb through forests and down into deep valleys of Despond, when so often what we seek lies close to us in the hand of a friend! I love Keats’ image. After communing with a friend, we find our sails set for one of those high voyages of the spirit which give to life its meaning, and bring back as cargo inspiration and courage for the struggle against the eroding sameness of the work-a-day world.

My Teacher and Miss Thomson send their affectionate embraces with mine, and join me in the hope that life will be kind, and bring us all together again with the spring flowers and birds. Please give our cordial remembrances to your family and guests.

I am, with every good wish,

Lovingly and gratefully yours,

Helen Keller

PS.—The wee holly-tree is looking up at the sun and wondering, a bit homesickly, why it was taken away from its sweet nook in your walk.

H. K.

PS. No. 2.—The gate to my heart is wide open to admit my little friend of sheep and men.

Affectionately,

H. K.

PS. No. 3.—Please do not worry about the little holly-tree being sad. I see that the warm rays of the sun have wiped away all its tears, and it is now smiling up at its friend in the sky.

H. K.

September 13, 1932

Little spruce-tree, I plant thee in the soil of bonnie Scotland. May’st thou grow and wax strong with the strength of the hills!

I bid thee send thy roots as deep in earth as Lord and Lady Aberdeen have deep hearts of love.

I bid thee raise thy face to the sun whence cometh thy beauty and to the rain for thy renewal, and spread thy arms hospitably, that many birds may lodge therein, as innumerable human beings have been sheltered in the House of Cromar.

I plant thee to the end that, resisting wind and storm, thou may’st be a symbol of steadfast faith and courage. For in the years to come thou shalt see many changes in the world and much heroic striving, and at last shalt thou behold peace on earth, goodwill towards men, no longer a dream but a glorious reality.

Helen Keller

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 19, 1932

Dear Sir Nevile Wilkinson,

Would I had your elfin art of putting into visible form exquisite things! A thousand ‘delicate Ariels’ are imprisoned in my mind, but no Prospero is near to liberate them. If you had the casket in your workshop, you would find the fairy key to unlock it and release the words of my letter, all in their ‘liveries’ of flower-petals and sapphire caps and golden moth-wings on their sandals, with breath of violets and lily-bells in their hands. That is the kind of letter I’d like to write to you who suggest all loveliness—fragrance and stars and birds, crystal pools, ferny dells, and little winds with silver feet running through grassy glades at dawn. For what is Titania’s Palace but God’s Message in an Ark of Beauty?

I have been with you among the fairies at the roots of the sycamore-tree and the roots of the stars. I have voyaged with you and Yvette and Marietta to far countries which Her Iridescence has visited, giving, as she journeyed, her treasures of fancy to the world, that some might look upward from despair and come to know the releasing power of imagination. Her royal progress has been a shower of greenness upon desert places, a full measure of beauty and joy to all who chanced to pass.

I am glad the threatening towers and savage turmoil of New York did not keep Her Iridescence out of that amazing city. Her presence in its dark canyons was a startling protest against a machine-tethered society. How very truly Her Iridescence spoke when she said, ‘Fancy is in grave peril in the United States!’ The march of ugly suburbs, the victory of factories, the systems commercial and mechanical which accumulate fortunes, have overwhelmed the souls of millions and silenced the voice of Fancy. As a consequence, our humanity has degenerated, our love of freedom, of justice, of truth, of beauty has begun to wither at the root. Our pride of material progress is destroying us. Lack of imagination is apparent everywhere. Nowhere is there evidence of a living spirit. No great artist is moulding in his leisure some tiny detail of beauty, no great voice is speaking out of the heart of this generation. I do not cry down the material world, I know that it is the nurse and the cradle of the spirit. What I deplore is the fading out of the fairy charm that alone gives grace to the dull substance of earth-life.

More men like you are needed with a magic wand to break the fetters of routine and conjure back the fairies to hedge and wall and workshop. With every exhibition of Titania’s Palace we should go down thankfully on humble knees, because it is a challenge to the powers that feed the pocket and starve the heart.

Since I met you and the fairies, I have paid a visit to Lord and Lady Aberdeen. In the House of Cromar we talked about you; and in the lovely sequestered walk his Lordship has made in the woods the fairies seemed very near. I planted a spruce-tree beside a rustic seat which I hope will grow and witness many a happy dance of elves beneath its branches. This reminds me, the other day I came across this quotation from Blake:

‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.’ As a man is, so he sees.

By the way, Lady Aberdeen suggested that I write for Her Iridescence an autograph in Braille, the system of raised dots used by the blind for reading and writing. The idea pleased me very much. It would be wonderful if I might have a part, if ever so tiny, in a work so radiant with vision and beauty. But I am not quite sure that I can coax the sprawly dots on to a Lilliputian sheet of paper. I will try when I finish this letter, and if I am at all successful I will enclose the autograph. Whether Her Iridescence can find a place for it in her Palace or not, I hope she will see in it a token of my gratitude for the joys she has created in my world of shadows and silences.^[13]

With all best wishes for your own happiness and the success of your Good Intent expedition of aid and cheer to little crippled children, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

St. Vincent School for the Blind and the Deaf

South Arcan,

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire

September 23, 1932

Dear Sister Joseph Duff,

Thank you so much for your little note and snap-shots and Life of St. Vincent.

I often recall how dear you all were to me the day I visited St. Vincent’s School. Every time I think of you and the sweet Sisters and the children so bravely trying to overcome manifold obstacles, I am warmed by the rays of your courage, and in the days to come, when tasks irk and accomplishment lags, I shall be spurred on to greater effort because of you.

I am glad to have St. Vincent’s Life. What a noble, light-radiating personality! What a precious example of sweetness and fortitude. He makes me feel that nothing is beyond our powers, if we have the will to make harsh circumstances serve us, instead of magnifying them and being bitter. If we look resolutely, I will not say at the bright side of things, but at things as they really are, and avail ourselves of the blessings we have, we shall come to realize the greatness of life, and, like St. Vincent, we shall find so much in the world to do for others that there will be no time to dwell on our own difficulties. His life is a lesson and a challenge to all of us.

With affectionate greetings to each and all of you and with the knowledge that God keeps you tenderly always in the hollow of His Hand, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

Sir,

During my visit this year to Great Britain I have witnessed with deep gratitude what is being done to bring cheer to my fellows who dwell in a world of darkness and silence. I rejoice to see what wide provision is being made for the blind and for the deaf, but I cannot avoid noting that much still remains to be done for those who are both deaf and blind, and I hope that you. Sir, will allow me to address a few words to the readers of The Times in behalf of this lonely and isolated group of human beings whose double handicap I share.

Every cup of blessing put into my hand reminds me that there are others who thirst for knowledge and human intercourse, and are unsatisfied. Can your readers imagine themselves plunged into a double prison—the prison of the body which is blindness, and the dungeon of the brain which is silence—and then picture themselves feeling through the sense of touch that there exists a living world, seeking desperately an escape into it from their empty desolation, and finding none! What would they not give for a friend to break the immobility which makes the dreadful days in the minutest detail alike—to take them for a little walk—to put sweet flowers into their hands—to spend an hour with them in bright talk, or even to write them a newsy letter that they could read with their fingers!

I am told, Sir, that there are about seven hundred people in England who are waiting for such aid. Hundreds of friends have learned the hand alphabet and Braille in order that they might communicate with me, and I am confident that those who take the trouble to befriend their most solitary fellow-creatures will be richly rewarded, when they see the seeds of kindness and service they have planted put forth blossoms of courage and happiness in hearts that were sad before they knew them.

The Counties Associations for the Blind are keenly desirous to find friends for each of the seven hundred individuals to whom I refer, and if any of your readers who are interested will write to me at the above address I will with deep joy and thankfulness put them in touch with the association which is in the best position to make use of their offer of service.

I am, Sir,

Very sincerely yours,

Helen Keller

The Robing Ceremony was performed by Mrs. Kerr Love. Miss Keller’s speech came in reply to the address by Mr. W. W. M’Kechnie quoted in the Introduction (page 4).

Dear Friends,

As I stand before you in these glorious garments I feel like Judith, who, before presenting herself at the tent of Holofernes, arrayed herself in her richest attire—her bracelets, her earrings, her necklaces, her fillet of purple, her pins of gold, and her jewelled rings. So you have decked me out in splendour for the ceremony at the University of Glasgow. Out of a very full heart I thank you.

Since I was eight years old I have been present and taken part in many forms of exercises,^[14] and I want to say to you very sincerely this is one of the most touching occasions I have ever attended. I could not have received a more precious token of appreciation from the teachers and friends of those whose limitations and difficulties I share. And it makes me happy also to have Dr. and Mrs. Love here, so beautifully linked with an event deeply significant in my life. For with you I hold in affectionate regard one who has long been interested in the deaf especially, and generally in those whose handicaps multiply the difficulties of life.

Your hands, dear Mrs. Love, have adorned me with bright feathers not of my own plumage. But I will wear them as if they were mine, and hope that in Scotland fine feathers will make me a fine bird.

The warm gratitude I feel for my own teacher makes me love all teachers whose work is a staff of hope to the deaf and the blind. What patience, what perseverance, what ingenuity are required to open a child’s mind, especially that of a handicapped child! When I look back over the difficulties through which I have come, I marvel at the sustained effort that is exerted to combat the disorganizing, confusing, isolating effects of deafness. And what shall I say of the skill and devotion of those who open doors of opportunity for the sightless! When teachers awaken the dormant faculties of a deaf or blind pupil, Prometheus-like they must steal the fire of heaven, and with it put life into what is inert and light up a darkness that has no end. Generations rise up and call them blessed because they have lighted the lamp of thought in many minds. When I consider how the deaf and the blind are led out of the house of bondage by the work of their teachers, I realize what shall some day happen to mankind when the highest education is attained.

Again I thank you, dear friends.

ADDRESS AT THE GRADUATION CEREMONY

Glasgow University, June 15, 1932

The Graduation ceremony took place in the Bute Hall of the University. The Dean of the Faculty of Law, in presenting Miss Keller for the Honorary Degree of LL.D. to the Vice-Chancellor, thus addressed the graduand:

Which may be translated:

In reply Helen Keller said:

Dear Friends,

I greet you out of a very warm heart. We have foregathered here not only for hospitality, but for better knowledge and love of each other.

I do not know how to thank the University of Glasgow for its gracious gesture toward me. I can only say, I am very proud, and very humble too, that the University should consider me worthy of its regard. I feel that this high compliment has been paid me not only for what I have accomplished as an individual, but for the encouragement of those whose limitations I share. It is an expression of intelligent sympathy recognizing all who, ambushed by fate, rise in their pride, determined not to topple in defeat.

What would human life be without the sympathy of our fellow-beings? And yet compassion for the broken and the disinherited is of modern growth! For ages and ages, far through the greater part of its life, the world has scorned them. David refers to the blind and the lame as hated of his soul, and Job speaks of the poor as despised of their brethren. Not until Jesus looked with pity upon the shunned and the outcast did men begin to give a helping hand to the afflicted.

How far to-day pity reaches down to rescue the lowliest creature! Love lifts the rim of vision, and gives mind a glory of meaning that it never had before. The parchment which I hold in my hand is a sign that the race is not always to the swift. This is a happy chapter in the history of the handicapped, for it embraces them as co-workers in the world of living men and women. This beneficent act shall stand for ever a deed of generosity from the masters of knowledge and light to those who live under the covert of denial.

When I think of the rich history of the University of Glasgow since 1450—a history so full of the wealth of mind and spirit, and a long line of noble personalities, my imagination is stirred. As showers creep from mountain heights into parched valleys, so the men of Glasgow University have carried new ideas, spreading a sweet light among the dark shadows of man’s ignorance. Henceforth the University of Glasgow will carry still further the Christian ideal of service by its friendly attitude toward the handicapped. There is no counting the seeds of sympathy it will sow among normal people who still doubt the power of the mind to triumph over physical limitations.

This is education of the highest order—that which reveals the infinite possibilities of life and mutual helpfulness. When I think what one loving human being has done for me, I realize what will some day happen to mankind when hearts and brains work together. That is why there is such a glow in my thoughts as I accept the declaration of Glasgow University that darkness and silence need not bar the progress of the immortal spirit.

ADDRESS TO QUEEN MARGARET COLLEGE, GLASGOW.

Afternoon of Graduation Day, June 15, 1932

Young women of Scotland, life is before you. Two voices are calling you. One comes from the marts of selfishness and force where success is won at any cost, and the other from the hill-tops of justice and progress where even failure may ennoble. Two lights are in your horizon for you to choose. One is the fast-fading, will-o’-the wisp of power and materialism, the other the slowly rising sun of human brotherhood. Two laws stand to-day opposed, each demanding your allegiance. One is the law of death which daily invents new means of combat; this law obliges the nations to be ever at war. The other is the law of peace, of labour, of salvation, which strives to deliver man from the scourges which assail him. One looks only for violent conquest, the other for the relief of suffering humanity. Two ways lie open before you, one leading to a lower and yet lower plane of life, where are heard the weeping of the poor, the cries of little children, and the moans of pain, where manhood and womanhood shrivel, and possessions destroy the possessor; and the other leading to the highlands of the mind where are heard the glad shouts of humanity, and honest effort is rewarded with immortality.

I have no doubt of your choice. Being the daughters of a heroic race, you will not shirk your responsibility. St. Margaret has shown you the way in which you must go. She is sending you out in the search not of things that you may own, but in the search for your true self, for your own way of thinking and serving, for the lives of other beings. You will seek to find what human life can be, and you will make the search with high courage and sober common sense. You will not reach the goal. Your life is stretched between the least that is left behind and the achievement still before you, of which every vision that we get seems only a glimmer of the truth that we shall some day win. Like your patron saint you will go forth to civilize, to enlighten, and to bless. Yes, you are going toward something great. I am on the way with you, and therefore I love you.

ADDRESS TO THE NEW CHURCH OF SCOTLAND (SWEDENBORGIAN).

Glasgow, June 22, 1932

Dear Friends of the New Church of Scotland,

I greet you with the joy of spiritual kinship. It is good to be in this ‘green and pleasant land’, and to find friends with whom I can unite in a happy community of faith. I cannot express better the sense of fellowship I experience here than by telling you what the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg have meant to me.

By giving me the golden key to the hidden treasures of the Bible he opened the gate of the Garden of Heaven for me, and showed me fair flowering paths where I love to walk. What precious herbs of healing grow there! What sweet smells of celestial flowers greet me! What thresholds of quiet I pass over, leaving behind me all the harsh, loud futilities of earth-life! There the Lamb of God walks whitely through the grass. In the Garden of the Lord sparkle countless rills and fountains. There the dews from Hermon fall upon my head. The trees, laden with golden fruit, murmur wisdom with their leaves, and the birds no longer sing wordless notes, but immortal truths. There blessed figures arrayed in light pass me and smile companionship with me; their beautiful hands guide me in paths of peace, and they whisper patience to me while I wait for my release unto greater service and a more satisfying self-expression.

There, with ‘The Divine Love and Wisdom’ spiritually bright, I read words that give me eyes and thoughts that quicken my ear. As the air is made luminous by the sun, so the Word Ineffable makes bright all darkness.

Yes, the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg have been my light and a staff in my hand, and by his vision splendid I am attended on my way.

ADDRESS TO THE RENFREW STREET SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF.

Glasgow, June 23, 1932

My message to you, dear Boys and Girls, is: Have faith—faith in God, in yourselves, and in life. Lack of faith is the greatest handicap. The only way to overcome it is to believe.

Faith is the eye of the mind, the ear of the heart. It prompts us to speak out bravely when others are silent. It makes us say ‘love’ when others say ‘hate’. It keeps us at work when others are asleep; it keeps us going when others halt and despair. Remember, boys and girls, those who believe with all their hearts accomplish things impossible to those who are without faith. Faith is the unfailing lamp that lights us on our way.

ADDRESS TO THE LANGSIDE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF, MOUNT FLORIDA, GLASGOW.

Prize-giving, June 23, 1932

I am happy, dear Boys and Girls, to present your prizes, which represent real effort and achievement. But may I suggest that it is well to bear in mind that if our actions are good and right, there is no need for a reward in this world or in another world, even though the reward is pleasant and deserved. The satisfaction in well-doing is the highest reward, and the only one that endures. If in life we depend upon the stimulus of a reward to call forth our energies, we leave undeveloped that active spiritual force which God has implanted within each of us.

The student who leaves his school resolved to take the initiative and do his duty as a member of society, whether he succeeds or fails in the eyes of the world, reflects honour upon his school and himself.

ADDRESS TO THE ST. VINCENT SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND AND THE DEAF.

Tollcross, Glasgow, June 23, 1932

Dear Boys and Girls,

I have been asked to say a word to you, and I comply gladly because it is a pleasure to speak to members of the world of the deaf—your world and mine. But, in a real sense, you and I know that we are not deaf if we hear with our hearts. Our minds have their own eyes and ears, and if we think right and feel right, we can plant flowers of contentment and happiness among the rocks and crannies of our limitations.

We are deaf only if we fail to find beauty and goodness in the world. But if we love the sun and the stars, the birds and flowers, and try every day to do something kind for some one, there will be joy for us on the mountains and gladness in the fields; and in our lives there will be a sweetness that will overflow into the lives of others. These are the things that make everything in life beautiful. Far away in the days to come is our goal. We may not reach it, but we can look up and see its beauty, believe in it and follow where it leads.

HELEN KELLER READING THE BIBLE
THE BRAILLE BIBLE IN MANY VOLUMES IS ARRANGED IN TWO PILES

ADDRESS IN ST. BRIDE’S PARISH CHURCH,^[15]

BOTHWELL. June 26, 1932

Dear Friends,

I am always glad to bear witness to the blessing the Bible has been to me. Ever since I was a little girl I have read it constantly for courage and for joy.

Through all kinds of difficulties the Bible has kept my hope of accomplishment bright. In the desert of darkness and silence the Bible has planted concepts of inward sight and hearing which have exercised an ever-increasing power over my thoughts. It has rendered less bitter the separation from those whom I have loved and lost a little while. It has made the spiritual world very real to me.

I should like to say to you, my friends, no matter what our creed or our interpretation of the Scriptures, that the Bible is our sure balance amid the confusion and wavering elements of earth-life. It gives us a right perspective of the great things God asks of us and the little things in which we waste our energies. It is a faithful reminder of our high capabilities, a fearless monitor against belittling aims. A daily walk in the sweet fields of the Word renews our faded enthusiasms and enlarges our aspirations. We have not learned the Lesson of Life if we do not every day open the Word for a moment of spiritual refreshment.

ADDRESSES TO THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND.

London, July 4, 1932

Sir Beachcroft Towse, my Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be with you to-day, and to take a small part in the opening of the new school for blind masseurs. It is a work very near to my heart, a forward step in the higher training of the blind which will enable them to take their place as useful citizens in the life of the community, not because they are blind, but because they are intelligent and capable.

As what I intended to say here to-day is before you, I will not trespass further upon your patience, especially as speakers are here waiting to thrill you with their eloquence. I will conclude with a toast to the cause of the blind.

May the cause of the blind prosper and grow and spread from pole to pole and from ocean to ocean, opening the million million blind eyes of the world to the upward-looking spirit of the handicapped! The cause of the blind will be fulfilled only when every blind child is taught, and no blind man or woman is left unhelped in all the world.

Sir Beachcroft Towse and Friends,

There could be no day more appropriate for the opening of the Massage School for the Blind than the 4th of July. To-day America is celebrating her independence, and to-day in London the blind and their friends are making another brave effort to secure the independence of the sightless. The spirit of independence is very strong in our race, and the hope of independence is the torch that lights the blind on their dark journey.

On this occasion it is encouraging to remember how far we have come since the days of degrading pity that banished the blind from the activities of human life to the by-ways of beggary and charity. To-day you are proclaiming, not by voice alone, but by deed, that you expect the blind to be in the vanguard of civilization. It is true that this is an age of great uncertainty, but there is one problem modern civilization has solved. It might be summed up in the question, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The answer to this question is now definitely in the affirmative. Society has accepted responsibility for the unfortunate who, by reason of physical disability, are less fitted than their fellows to participate in the struggle of life. Society has assumed a responsibility for their maintenance. What we ask to-day of society is a larger independence for the handicapped.

How the thought smiles upon us, that the new massage school under the auspices of the National Institute for the Blind will house a high ideal of usefulness and independence for the sightless, and that your co-operation and goodwill are making this dream a bright reality! I do not forget that depression and widespread suffering have created demands that are endless and insistent. But we must brace ourselves for more and more self-denial. There is no ‘give’ to the necessity of finding something to do for those who can work. I like to use myself as an example of what can be done for all the handicapped. If it was possible for one loving human being to enable me to find work and happiness despite triple limitation, how much easier it is to help those who are only blind!

Now, the new massage school is not a charity. Its friends ask your patronage for the students they are training, not because they are blind, but because they are intelligent, capable men and women. If you give them the right sort of help, they will become an asset to the community in which they live.

Please bear in mind, it is hard enough for those with all their faculties to succeed. The real problem of the sightless person begins when he seeks work. He cannot succeed alone. The world is made by the seeing and for the seeing. His education is comparatively easy, but teaching the world to move up on the bench of life and give him a chance to make good is not so easy.

I stand before you, myself deaf and blind, and with halting speech I plead with you to do unto my blind fellows as you would have others do unto you. Remember, blind people are just like other people in the dark. They have the same ambitions and feelings you have. They want the same things you do. They want work, useful work and some of life’s sweet satisfactions. When the public adopts an attitude of understanding and helpfulness, the difficulties of the sightless will no longer be insurmountable. Through you they will triumph over blindness. Only then will God’s Commandment be obeyed, ‘Put not a stumbling-block in the way of the blind, nor make life bitter for the deaf’.

These are times that try men’s souls, but we must not shrink from facing the crisis with open eyes and courageous minds. If we stand fast now, posterity will thank us for our constancy.

Depression and selfishness are not easily conquered, but conquer them we must if civilization is to advance. What we may obtain with little effort we esteem too lightly. It is struggle only that gives victory its preciousness. Men are not honoured for the difficulties that beset their lives, but for the overcoming of them.

If people everywhere would only minimize their differences and think of the fine qualities that unite them, they would strive to bring order and unity out of the discords created by fear and strife. True patriotism now is to unite in casting our weight on the side of all work that liberates, enlightens, and turns disaster into a bridge-road to a nobler civilization.

SPEECH TO CAPTAIN IAN FRASER, C.B.E., M.P.

House of Commons, July 6, 1932

It gives me a wonderful thrill to stand here with Captain Fraser in this historic place, where mighty men have swayed empires, and events past computing have reached out to the ends of the earth! I never dreamed I should dine in the House of Commons! It will be something for me to boast of when I return to America, where I was born and have lived all my days. No one there has ever invited me to dine at the Capitol in Washington, and yet my countrymen say you are slow over here! I wish more Americans would come here and see for themselves how fast things are moving. If they don’t watch out, Britain will get so far ahead of them they’ll never catch up with her.

I met Captain Fraser first in Sir Arthur Pearson’s Victory Over Blindness, and then again in New York at the World Conference for the Blind. He is one of the heroes who made St. Dunstan’s a name honoured wherever human beings struggle to overcome obstacles. St. Dunstan’s!—the name that sounded throughout the world during the War and after like a trumpet, summoning humanity to rescue men blinded in battle! It is infinitely more important than all the wars that have ever been waged, because it is a movement of the spirit in man. It raises the conception of his inborn powers and points to yet greater triumphs over limitation.

The name and the spirit of St. Dunstan’s will not die; for they are rooted in the soil of England, a part of her highest achievement and pride, a testimonial that there is a new kind of spirit in the world. It is almost as if a new human nature had been born out of the travail of the ages. The sorrows of man have at last touched their eyes with vision. They are gaining knowledge by revelations of the heart. Men and women are using their own souls in the discovery of others’ souls, and that is the immortal message of St. Dunstan’s. Long may Captain Fraser be spared to carry this faith-renewing message to mankind!

ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.

London, July 7, 1932

Mrs. Franklin and Friends,

I am proud to be one of this gathering of the National Council of Women. I wish to express my interest in everything that concerns women.

I believe that women have it in their power to make civilization minister to the comfort and happiness of all. But before we can accomplish this, we must understand the world we live in, physical and spiritual. By the physical I mean our environment and how to control it. By the spiritual I mean an intelligent study of economics, industry, and politics. What we need is a new ideal of civilization. What we need to learn is how to use wealth for progressive education, for public hygiene, for decrease of crime, delinquency, and injustice, for art, beauty, and human happiness.

Furthermore, I believe women can make the world safe from war, and it is incumbent upon them to use this power before it is too late. We must learn to think down every wall that divides us from our fellow-creatures and prevents us from giving them sympathy and help. Whole-heartedly I join hands with all who, like the National Council of Women, go forth to liberate, to enlighten and to bless. Always in my dreams I hear the turn of the key that shall close for ever the brazen gates of war, and the fall of the last rampart that stands between humanity and a happier world.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SECTION OF OTOLARYNOLOGY, BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CENTENARY MEETING.

London, July 27, 1932

Mrs. Macy, preceding Miss Keller, described how, by patient effort, the child Helen has been taught to appreciate the value of various contacts made upon the palm and fingers of one hand. She demonstrated that it was possible to carry on a conversation with her at a speed comparable with that of human speech by means of a light tatoo of sensitive fingers working with lightning rapidity over this receptive palm. There came a stage in Helen’s development when she expressed a desire to talk ‘with the mouth’, and she demonstrated how, with fingers applied to her tutor’s nose, jaw, and throat, she gradually acquired the ability to give expression to her own thoughts through the vocal chords.

Sir St. Clair Thomson and Friends,

I was glad to come here and say a word to the doctors of Great Britain about the deaf. I long for the dawn of a day when aurists and teachers and parents co-operate in assisting the deaf child. Such co-operation would greatly advance the rehabilitation of those whose hearing cannot be saved.

I feel a special interest in this subject because I remember gratefully how a wise and foreseeing physician told my father that he could do nothing for my eyes or ears, but advised him to have me taught. He suggested that my father consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who was deeply interested in the education of the deaf. As a result of this advice a teacher was found for me, and my desolate night of silence was made bright with knowledge and friendship. My education began years before it would in all probability have done if Dr. Chisholm had not looked beyond my injured ears to the imprisoned mind of the little girl before him.

I should like to see this attitude adopted by every physician who has a deaf child under his care. As soon as he knows that the case is hopeless, he should have ready at hand information helpful to the child’s friends from the point of view of education, and giving him his chance in life. In my conversations with doctors I am sometimes amazed at their lack of knowledge concerning the effects of deafness upon the mind. Their interest is pathological, not humanitarian.

Deafness in the young is a much worse misfortune than blindness. It means the loss of the most important brain stimulus—the sound of the voice which awakens the impulse to speak and keeps us in the intellectual companionship of man. It should not be forgotten that often the young deaf child has speech, and can be helped to preserve it by timely instruction; whereas, if years elapse before he is taught, the difficulties of teaching him are multiplied.

I do not mean to say that speech is essential to mental development, but language is of supreme importance, and every incentive should be utilized to make the deaf child feel joy in acquiring language. Articulation is quite different from the process of combining words to express an idea. A satisfactory education may be gained through books and the hand-alphabet. The physician should understand this if he would advise the parents of a deaf child wisely.

But, whether the deaf child acquires language through speech or the hand, the doctor can do much to start him on his silent way to knowledge and some measure of happiness. He can suggest the right method or school or special training that will develop the child into an intelligent and useful human being.

ADDRESS TO THE ROTARIANS OF INVERNESS.

September 8, 1932

Mr. Chairman, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am glad of this opportunity to speak to the Rotarians of Inverness about the blind. I have often spoken on this subject to the Rotarians in my own country. Such a body of intelligent men is a great power in getting right things done in this wrong old world.

Before the blind, or any other group of handicapped human beings, can be helped effectively, their peculiar problems must be studied and understood. To understand is to care sympathetically and constructively about the unfortunate.

If you truly want to help handicapped people, you will not be satisfied to give them alms or pity. You will realize that the blind, for instance, are just like seeing people in the dark. They have the same feelings and ambitions as you have. They want the same things you do—food, raiment, work, money—fountain-heads of satisfaction.

Will you try a little experiment? Then, close your eyes tightly, so that you cannot see a ray of light. This room, the faces of your friends—where are they? Everything you have seen daily vanishes, the street, the sky, the sun, and the stars. Remember, with you this catastrophe is make-believe. You can at will open your eyes and see again, while the child born blind, or the man blinded by accident or disease, must live in the dark as long as life lasts.

The first step in the rehabilitation of those whose vision cannot be restored is to train them to do things by touch. There are many kinds of adjustment which each blind individual may be faced with, and it is felt that blind home teachers render the greatest service, since they understand the difficulties to be overcome and can give practical assistance. When the workers for the blind have the intelligent interest and goodwill of the community, their task is facilitated, and they are able to get laws enacted that will be beneficial to the sightless. I do not say that a blind man’s life can be made a bed of roses—the struggle for existence can never be that, but his burden of dependence can be lightened, and his prospect of achievement made brighter.

There is a second duty which in my opinion is more important than rehabilitation, and that is prevention of blindness. I am constantly asked to give a message of encouragement to the handicapped, and I am afraid I overstress the thought that limitation stimulates development. The assertions we make about the benefits of affliction are usually as vague as our platitudes about compensation for the loss of one or more senses. The loss of any physical faculty is never a positive advantage. A sound body and mind are the best tools for accomplishment. Impaired powers limit our usefulness and halt us at every forward step in the march of progress. That is why I say that prevention is more important than cure.

There can be no greater contribution to the happiness of mankind than to protect sight. In the United States there is a society for prevention which is much looked to for general leadership in the war against blindness. It is active in securing action for the safeguarding of human eyes in factories, mines, schools, and homes.

There should be a similar organization in every country. Conditions in the Far East imperatively demand a preventive programme. There is an appalling belt of darkness that extends all the way from China to Morocco.

It would be wonderful if the Rotarians should exert their united influence to keep the light in the eyes of unnumbered millions of people throughout the British Empire. We live in a redemptive world. Earth has no hopeless islands or continents. My friends, will you not inscribe upon your banner: ‘Health is the Natural State of Man. Poverty, the root of disease, will end. Science will triumph, and Light will prevail in all places’?

ADDRESSES BY HELEN KELLER AND MRS. MACY TO THE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCOTLAND AFTER BEING PRESENTED WITH HONORARY FELLOWSHIPS.

Park Lane Hotel, London, September 27, 1932

This presentation had none of the impressive ceremonial which usually marks such occasions. The Institute would, as the President explained, have conferred the honour upon the two ladies with all the customary pomp and circumstance, had it not been for the express desire of the recipients for a quiet and informal meeting (see page 136). The President said that he and his colleagues wished to convey to Dr. Keller and Mrs. Macy their profound sense of the value of the services they had rendered to education, and in token thereof to confer upon them the highest honour in their power, the Honorary Fellowship. Education had no territorial boundaries, and in adding the names of two famous women from across the Atlantic to their roll of honour, the teachers of Scotland felt that they were carrying out the traditions by which they had always been inspired. Dr. MacGillivray, Secretary of the Board of Examiners, in presenting the two ladies, also referred to their services to education.

In reply Miss Keller said:

Mr. Chairman, I shall not attempt to put into words my emotions at this new and precious proof of appreciation from the Educational Institute of Scotland. The only perfect thanks is love, and I have that in full measure for those whose mission it is to teach.

To what body of men and women does mankind owe deeper gratitude than to its teachers? It is they who with tireless devotion build bright ramparts everywhere against ignorance, barbarism, and limitation. Although we rarely see their names, yet we know that the world is pervaded and profoundly moved by their power. How little we think, when we honour a great poet or scientist or statesman, that the labour of one or many teachers is potent in his character and achievement! When we listen to a forceful orator, or read his eloquent speech, how seldom we remember that some invisible one was his teacher who had a gift of inspiring him, and who revealed to him the power of words! If we knew more about the teachers of Alexander, Napoleon and Washington and Lenin, we should know the source of the mighty influences that have swayed men and shaped momentous events.

Truly, civilization is the result of long ages of patient, purposeful teaching. The process is growing ever wider. Hundreds of men and women in every community are moulding the mind of youth to its future destiny, and the community that has the best teachers is in the vanguard of progress. The teachers of to-day and to-morrow will have as vital a part in shaping society as they have had in the past. As man advances to higher levels of thought, it will be the teacher’s responsibility more and more to stress the altruistic impulses of his nature. Not only must man’s intellectual powers be harmoniously developed, his sympathies must also be extended more and more to regard not only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow-men of all races, and finally of the lower animals. If the teachers are faithful to their mission, we can be sure that the social instincts will grow not weaker but stronger, and that altruism will triumph in all departments of human life.

Mrs. Macy said:

Mr. Chairman, I know not if I deserve the laurel wreath the Educational Institute of Scotland has placed upon my brow. Dearly as I have loved my work, I have never thought I deserved more praise than other teachers who give the best they have to their pupils. If their efforts have not released an Ariel from the imprisoning oak, it is no doubt because there has not been an Ariel to release.

What earnest effort and consummate ingenuity I have seen teachers expend upon hopelessly dull children! I have known them to renounce pleasanter tasks in order to devote their lives to what seemed to me monotonous, uninteresting work. I have watched them reduce earth, sea, and sky and all that in them is to benefit beings incapable of doing anything faintly remarkable. With Christ-like love and patience they are ever ready to succour the neglected, backward, or unhappy children of the human race. Are not such teachers more deserving of gratitude and honour than one whose wonderful task was to guide the bright intelligence of a Helen Keller?

Helen was a receptive, responsive child, eager to learn, curious about everything. She learned so quickly that it was a test of my powers to keep up with her. In a few months the world’s rising tide of wonder had lifted us to heights of praise and adulation which gave zest to my labours, but I never thought for one moment it was due to any extraordinary ability in me that we achieved this success. I knew quite well that there were many other teachers of the deaf and the blind who were my superiors in knowledge and experience, but unable to rise above their environment in schools and cloister-like institutions. The thought of their dearth of opportunity to succeed and be appreciated was ever an ache in my heart.

But, whether I deserve the honour you have conferred upon me or not, I want to say that the generous recognition in Scotland of my work is very pleasing to me. I was thrilled to the depths when the University of Glasgow placed Helen Keller’s name on its Honour Roll. No praise that I ever had for my own work gave me such entire and perfect joy as that. Now the Educational Institute of Scotland has united our names in its golden clasp of praise. When such a distinguished body of intellectuals acclaims two humble women of another land, there must be something right about it.

You Scots praise so gloriously, I could almost persuade myself that I deserve it. Such appreciation convinces even the object of it. If the praise is not quite true, still it is so admirably expressed that she hopes it will convince other people anyway. I am proud to be associated with you in name and distinction.

This gesture of the teachers of Scotland will inspire Helen Keller and me to labour more diligently than ever for the human weal. Furthermore, I like to think you are sowing the seed of sympathy and understanding which alone can bring about a true internationalism. In a world torn by dissensions and sundered by divisions it may seem a very tiny seed, but it has in it the faith that moves mountains.

THE END

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