A Little Lower Than the Angels (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ...nerve-hills become our instructors. Miss Helen Kellar, the remarkable sightless and soundless girl, is a vivid example, for she obtains her intelligence of the world entirely through the skin. She sees nothing, hears nothing, but is exquisitely attuned to the outward in her potency of touch. She listens through the ends of her fingers. She reads by running them over raised type, talks through them by playing upon her typewriter. She places her hands upon your lips and throat while you speak, and thus hears you. They are her decalogue of ears. She hears through the palm of her hand while her teacher writes the finger-alphabet there. In a recent communication she says, "I felt something fall heavily," instead, as we would say, "I heard something fall heavily." She felt the roar of Niagara by placing her hands on soft pillows. She says, "I felt a strange, awful sound, like heavy iron being thrown down." Where we say hear, she says felt. She hears through the medium of physical contact. She sees by the same general sense. She says, "I felt the bright sunshine of our beautiful world." Doubtless something as a plant feels it. She "felt intense light quivering about her." She felt even the "light of the stars." She says, "I felt a sound of light, swift footsteps about my bed." Ears and eyes are as oblivion, yet she hears and sees through the palm, the finger-tips, the lips, the feet, --the meeting of her body with the universe. That animated dress of hers, quivering with life, so keenly alert that a zephyr can not approach it without betraying its advent, --is her sole avenue of intelligence. Without it, the sunshine, the air, the trees and flowers, the animals, the solid...