Page 390 - The Story of My Lif

that we do not observe this process in ordinary children is, because we seldom

observe them at all, and because they are fed from so many sources that the
memories are confused and mutually destructive. The story of “The Frost King”
did not, however, come from Helen Keller’s mind intact, but had taken to itself
the mould of the child’s temperament and had drawn on a vocabulary that to
some extent had been supplied in other ways. The style of her version is in some
respects even better than the style of Miss Canby’s story. It has the imaginative
credulity of a primitive folktale; whereas Miss Canby’s story is evidently told for
children by an older person, who adopts the manner of a fairy tale and cannot
conceal the mature mood which allows such didactic phrases as “Jack Frost as
he is sometimes called,”

“Noon, at which time Mr. Sun is strongest.” Most people will feel the superior
imaginative quality of Helen Keller’s opening paragraph. Surely the writer must
become as a little child to see things like that. “Twelve soldierly-looking white
bears” is a stroke of genius, and there is beauty of rhythm throughout the child’s
narrative. It is original in the same way that a poet’s version of an old story is
original.

This little story calls into life all the questions of language and the philosophy of
style. Some conclusions may be briefly suggested.

All use of language is imitative, and one’s style is made up of all other styles that
one has met.

The way to write good English is to read it and hear it. Thus it is that any child
may be taught to use correct English by not being allowed to read or hear any
other kind. In a child, the selection of the better from the worse is not conscious;
he is the servant of his word experience.

The ordinary man will never be rid of the fallacy that words obey thought, that
one thinks first and phrases afterward. There must first, it is true, be the