Page 369 - The Story of My Lif

In a letter to a friend at the Perkins Institution, dated May 17, 1889, she gives a
reproduction from one of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, which I had read to
her not long before. This letter is published in the Perkins Institution Report

(1891), p.

204. The original story was read to her from a copy of “Andersen’s Stories,”
published by Leavitt & Allen Bros., and may be found on p. 97 of Part I. in that

volume.

Her admiration for the impressive explanations which Bishop Brooks has given
her of the Fatherhood of God is well known. In one of his letters, speaking of
how God in every way tells us of His love, he says, “I think he writes it even
upon the walls of the great house of nature which we live in, that he is our

Father.” The next year at Andover she said: “It seems to me the world is full of
goodness, beauty, and love; and how grateful we must be to our heavenly Father,
who has given us so much to enjoy! His love and care are written all over the
walls of nature.”

In these later years, since Helen has come in contact with so many persons who

are able to converse freely with her, she has made the acquaintance of some
literature with which I am not familiar; she has also found in books printed in
raised letters, in the reading of which I have been unable to follow her, much
material for the cultivation of the taste she possesses for poetical imagery. The
pages of the book she reads become to her like paintings, to which her
imaginative powers give life and colour. She is at once transported into the midst
of the events portrayed in the story she reads or is told, and the characters and
descriptions become real to her; she rejoices when justice wins, and is sad when
virtue goes unrewarded. The pictures the language paints on her memory appear
to make an indelible impression; and many times, when an experience comes to
her similar in character, the language starts forth with wonderful accuracy, like
the reflection from a mirror.