Page 342 - The Story of My Lif

but that essentially it was a condition—the fulfilment of the heart’s desire, the

satisfaction of its wants; and that heaven existed wherever RIGHT was
acknowledged, believed in, and loved.

She shrinks from the thought of death with evident dismay.

Recently, on being shown a deer which had been killed by her brother, she was
greatly distressed, and asked sorrowfully, “Why must everything die, even the
fleet-footed deer?” At another time she asked, “Do you not think we would be
very much happier always, if we did not have to die?” I said, “No; because, if
there were no death, our world would soon be so crowded with living creatures

that it would be impossible for any of them to live comfortably.” “But,” said
Helen, quickly, “I think God could make some more worlds as well as He made
this one.”

When friends have told her of the great happiness which awaits her in another
life, she instantly asked: “How do you know, if you have not been dead?”

The literal sense in which she sometimes takes common words and idioms
shows how necessary it is that we should make sure that she receives their
correct meaning. When told recently that Hungarians were born musicians, she
asked in surprise, “Do they sing when they are born?” When her friend added

that some of the pupils he had seen in Budapest had more than one hundred
tunes in their heads, she said, laughing, “I think their heads must be very noisy.”
She sees the ridiculous quickly, and, instead of being seriously troubled by
metaphorical language, she is often amused at her own too literal conception of
its meaning.

Having been told that the soul was without form, she was much perplexed at
David’s words, “He leadeth my soul.” “Has it feet?

Can it walk? Is it blind?” she asked; for in her mind the idea of being led was