XLII

Letters of 1903.  To various persons.  Hard days at Riverdale.  Last summer at Elmira.  The return to Italy

The reader may perhaps recall that H. H. Rogers, some five or six years earlier, had taken charge of the fortunes of Helen Keller, making it possible for her to complete her education.  Helen had now written her first book—­a wonderful book—­’The Story of My Life’, and it had been successfully published.  For a later generation it may be proper to explain that the Miss Sullivan, later Mrs. Macy, mentioned in the letter which follows, was the noble woman who had devoted her life to the enlightenment of this blind, dumb girl—­had made it possible for her to speak and understand, and, indeed, to see with the eyes of luminous imagination.

The case of plagiarism mentioned in this letter is not now remembered, and does not matter, but it furnished a text for Mark Twain, whose remarks on the subject in general are eminently worth while.

To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.: 

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson,
st. Patrick’s day, ’03. 
Dear Helen,—­I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am to have your book, and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and as a remembrances of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted between us for nine years without a break, and without a single act of violence that I can call to mind.  I suppose there is nothing like it in heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off.  I often think of it with longing, and how they’ll say, “There they come—­sit down in front!” I am practicing with a tin halo.  You do the same.  I was at Henry Rogers’s last night, and of course we talked of you.  He is not at all well; you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is just as lovely as ever.

I am charmed with your book-enchanted.  You are a wonderful creature, the most wonderful in the world—­you and your other half together —­Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make a complete and perfect whole.  How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary competencies of her pen—­they are all there.

Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that “plagiarism” farce!  As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism!  The kernal, the soul—­let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—­is plagiarism.  For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction