Page 398 - The Story of My Lif

It is true, on the other hand, that in her descriptions, she is best from the point of
view of art when she is faithful to her own sensations; and this is precisely true
of all artists.

Her recent training has taught her to drop a good deal of her conventionality and
to write about experiences in her life which are peculiar to her and which, like
the storm in the wild cherry tree, mean most and call for the truest phrasing. She
has learned more and more to give up the style she borrowed from books and
tried to use, because she wanted to write like other people; she has learned that

she is at her best when she “feels” the lilies sway; lets the roses press into her
hands and speaks of the heat which to her means light.

Miss Keller’s autobiography contains almost everything that she ever intended to
publish. It seems worth while, however, to quote from some of her chance bits of
writing, which are neither so informal as her letters nor so carefully composed as

her story of her life. These extracts are from her exercises in her course in
composition, where she showed herself at the beginning of her college life quite
without rival among her classmates. Mr.

Charles T. Copeland, who has been for many years instructor in English and
Lecturer on English Literature at Harvard and Radcliffe, said to me: “In some of
her work she has shown that she can write better than any pupil I ever had, man
or woman. She has an excellent ‘ear’ for the flow of sentences.” The extracts
follow:

A few verses of Omar Khayyam’s poetry have just been read to me, and I feel as
if I had spent the last half-hour in a magnificent sepulcher. Yes, it is a tomb in
which hope, joy and the power of acting nobly lie buried. Every beautiful
description, every deep thought glides insensibly into the same mournful chant
of the brevity of life, of the slow decay and dissolution of all earthly things. The
poet’s bright, fond memories of love, youth and beauty are but the funeral
torches shedding their light on this tomb, or to modify the image a little, they are