Dreams That Come True, as published in Personality, (December, 1927)
Transcription
"The Dreams That Come True"
--When One who Can neither See nor Hear Finds Joy in a Flower Garden
by Helen Keller
III
Are you amazed, O reader, that I should sympathize with the boy's enthusiasm for the circus? Well, I have a perennial desire myself to get under a circus-tent, and be a part of the riotous pageant -- the segregated wonders of the world. I remember that when I was a little girl, not quite seven years old, my teacher took me to the circus. It was the greatest object-lesson of my childhood. My vocabulary was very limited. Miss Sullivan had been teaching me only two months; but I had learned enough words to understand that I was going to touch "very tall, very large, very strong animals." The phaeton came around to the front door, and I touched Charlie, the old horse. He had been in the family longer than I had. I asked if the "animals" were as tall as Charlie. When Miss Sullivan told me that one of them, the elephant, was as high as the phaeton itself, I became so excited I could hardly sit still. Charlie was very slow. I had observed that when the whip was applied to his fat sides, he went a little faster. I seized the whip, and before Miss Sullivan could stop me, I had given the poor old fellow a terrible whack which made him rear, and nearly upset the phaeton. My teacher quieted Charlie, and delayed our progress long enough to make me understand that if I did that again, I should go right home and never, never, never see the huge elephant.
The first thing of which I was conscious when we finally got inside the tent was a strange, terrifying smell. I clutched Miss Sullivan's skirt, and for a moment my impulse to run away was stronger than my curiosity. But, her hand on one side and the big hand of the circus man on the other side reassured me. They gave me a bag of peanuts and took me at once to see the elephant. I felt his huge forelegs, and the circus man lifted me up on his shoulder, so that I could touch the creature's head and fan-like ears and his broad back, on which there was an Oriental silk covering with tassels and bells. (Some one was going to ride him later.) I was told to give him some peanuts, and perhaps he would let me touch his "long nose" and put it into his mouth. I was amazed, and a little angry; for I liked peanuts, and I had intended to eat some myself. But my disappointment was only for a second or two. Some one gave me another bag of peanuts, and I was allowed to feel my benefactress's beautiful, slim body. She was a trapeze performer, and wore only pink tights. She laughed with pretty confusion at my scrutiny, and kissed me.
I also made the acquaintance of the Arabian marvels and their gorgeous riders, and felt the splendid chariots. I was allowed to sit in one of them like a gypsy princess. The camel was made to kneel, and let me climb up on his queer, humpy back. But oh, the smell of him! At last the wonderful hour came to an end, and we had to leave. My dejection was a little lightened by my teacher's assurance that the circus would came (sic) back after days and days, and I should be taken there again. Of course all the details of this strange nomadic caravan are intensely interesting to any child, and to one who had almost no contact with the outer world they were overwhelmingly fascinating.
What a far cry it is from the automobile which bore me along at the rate of twenty miles in half an hour to that slow horse plodding a mile in the same period of time and an old-fashioned circus in an out-of-the-way village! But it is one way to illustrate the magical changes I have witnessed in the past forty years, and the piled up interest and novelty of my present experiences. When my friends and I arrived at the great publishing- house, Mr. Doubleday received us with cordial kindness, and from his personality and conversation I judged he was a lover of nature as well as a collector and distributor of books.
After a few minutes' chat we went out into the gardens, and smell roses I did! Multitudes of them. There seemed to be as many kinds and scents and ways of growing as there were roses. Gorgeous ramblers climbed up with insatiate desire and tossed great clusters in the breeze. Long-petalled, curly-headed roses romped and spread themselves out like active, eager children seeking adventure. Delicate roses with single petals and slender stems trembled in my hand, while large, full roses exacted tribute with stately grace. All roses that are most fondly twined with memories of home and simple joys grew there, and my fingers thrilled as I recognized the moss-rose of my childhood. Some of the roses were so high and large that they seemed like cascades dancing softly down from the sky.
But I did much more than smell roses. For there were quantities of peonies, in all their splendor and stateliness, all kinds of lilies and pinks and larkspur and masses of honeysuckle. Every breath was a delight, and every flower touched glowed with tints of inexhaustible beauty which no mortal eye may behold.
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