CHAPTER XXl

The role of books

Now Helen wants to show what books meant to her and how much she
depended on them. Books provided her pleasure and wisdom. They also provided
that knowledge which comes to others through their eyes and their ears.
Books, she feels, have meant so much more in her education than in that of
others. So she wants to go back to that time when she began to read.

Helen's earliest readings

Helen was just seven when she read her first connected story in May 1887.
Since then she had read everything her hands could touch in the shape of a
printed page. During the early years of her education she did not study regularly
or according to any plan. To begin with she had only a few books in raised
letters, which included readers" for beginners, a collection of stories for children and a book about the earth titled "Our World". Sometimes her teacher, Mike
Sullivan, read to her, spelling into her hands, little stories and poems she knew. It
was during her first visit to Boston that she began to read in good earnest. She
was permitted to spend sometime in the Institution library, where she read
whatever book her fingers lighted upon. She read parts of many books, without
having much understanding. Says she

The words themselves fascinated me; but I took no conscious account of
what I read."

"Little Lord Fauntleroy

Once she was reading "The Scarlet Letter" Her teacher (Miss Sullivan
told her that she had a story about a little boy which she was sure would
delight her more than "The Scarlet Letter". She promised to read the story to
me the following summer. Her teacher, accordingly, read to her the story, after
her visit to Boston. It was a warm afternoon in August. They sat together in a
hammock which swung from two pines at a short distance from the house.
Miss Sullivan explained to her the things she knew she would not understand
before she began the story. She became too impatient as her teacher explained
the meanings of many difficult words. She took the book in her hands and
tried to feel the letters. Later Mr Anagnos had this story embossed for her. All
through her childhood "Little Lord Fauntleroy" remained her sweet companion.
During the next two years she read many books at her home and on her visits
to Boston.

Some books of Helen's childhood

Among the books she read were "Greek Heroes", La Fontaine's "Fables",
Hawthorne's "Wonder Book", "Bible Stories", Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare".
The Pilgrim's Progress", "Robinson Crusoe", "Little Women," etc. She loved
"Little Women" because it gave her a sense of kinship with girls and boys who
could see and hear. She did not care much for "The Pilgrim's Progress" or La
Fontaine's "Fables". The stories, like "Fables", in which animals behaved like
human beings never appealed to her. She disagreed with La Fontaine's idea that
man's morality springs from self-love, because she believed that self-love is the
"root of all evil"

Genuine Interest in the animals

She loved "The Jungle Book" and "Wild Animals I Have Known". She felt a
genuine interest in the animals themselves in these stories. One sympathizes with
Their loves and hatreds, laughs over their comedies and weeps over their tragedies.
Their pointed moral is subtle.

Fascination for antiquity

Ancient Greece cast a spell over Helen's mind. In her fancy the pagan gods
and goddesses still walked on earth and talked face to face with men. In her
heart she secretly built shrines to those she loved best. She loved many nymphs.
heroes and demigods. She could not forgive the cruelty and greed of Medea and
Jason. She wondered why they were allowed to do wrong in the first place by
the gods. It was the iliad that made Greece her paradise. She was familiar with
the story of Troy before she read it in the original. She felt that Great poetry,
written in Greek or in English, needed no other interpreter than a responsive
heart. There was no need for analysis and laborious comments. When Helen
read the finest passages of the iliad, she was conscious of a soul-sense that lifted
her above the narrow circumstances of her life.

Admiration for the Aeneid

Helen's admiration for the Aeneid was real. She read it without the help of
notes or dictionary. She always liked to translate the episodes that pleased her
specially. She found Virgil's word-painting wonderful, but his gods and men were
like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask. Virgil was serene and lovely like
Apollo in a moonlight, whereas Homer was a beautiful, animated youth in the
full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

The reading of the Bible

Helen had begun to read the Bible before she could understand it. It was a
rainy Sunday when she begged her cousin to read her a story from the Bible
Her cousin spelled into her hand the story of Joseph and his brothers. Somehow
failed to interest her. However, later she began to discover the glories in the
Bible. For years she read it with great interest, even though her mind rebelled
against much in the Bible that she found distasteful. There was something
impressive and awful in the simplicity and terrible directness of the book of
Esther. The story of Ruth was completely oriental. Her beautiful, unselfish spirits shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth's
unselfish, is hard to find in all the world.

The Bible gave Helen a deep, comforting sense that things seen are temporal
and things unseen are eternal".

Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare

Helen read Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare" at first with child's
understanding and wonder. "Macbeth" impressed her the most. The story came
to stick to her mind. She continued to remember the dagger and Lady Macbeth's
little white hand as real. In "King Lear" she never forgot the feeling of horror
when she came to the scene in which Gloster's eyes were put out. She equated
Shylock with Satan in her mind. She felt sorry for them for they could not be
good even if they wished to. At times she felt that the Shylocks, the Judases and
even the Devil are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due
time be made whole. The first reading of Shakespeare filled her mind only with
unpleasant memories. She read his plays many times later. She liked to read the
little songs and the sonnets. It was a dreary work for her to read all the meanings
into Shakespeare's lines, which critics and commentators had given them. She
was content with her little knowledge to Shakespeare.

Love for history

Next to poetry she loved history. The first book that gave her any real sense
of the value of history was Swinton's "World History" which she received on her
thirteenth birthday. From it she learnt how the races of men spread from land to
land and built great cities, how different nations excelled in art and knowledge,
how civilization decayed and rose again like the Phoenix, etc.

Fondness for French and German Literature

In her college days Helen became somewhat familiar with French and
German literature. She realized that the German put strength before beauty and
truth before convention, both in life and in literature, because he did everything
with vigour. She found in German literature a fine reserve and the idea of
woman's self-sacrificing love, as in Goethe's 'Faust.
Among the French writers Helen liked Moliere and Racine the most. She
appreciated the genius of Victor Hugo. She thinks that Hugo, Goethe and Schiller
and all great poets of all great nations are "interpreters of eternal things.