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 HELEN KELLER 283 Her college days were happy ones, though evidently full of difficulties and discouragements. Her constant comment on college life is the lack of time and the multiplicity of tasks — its great disadvantage in her opinion is lack of opportunity for reflection. There is much truth in her remark, * * One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. ' ' She seems to have looked back frequently with longing to her days of * * solitude, books and imagination. Another comment she makes on college methods is concerning the laborious explanations'' that deadened so much of the instruction in literature, ' ' the in- terminable comments and the bewildering criticisms ' ' ; and it is with the greatest enthusiasm she speaks of one instructor who brought the literature itself to his class, allowing students to enjoy its power and beauty without needless interpretation or exposition. More wonderful than the intellectual attainment of Helen Keller is the beauty of her mind and spirit. Imprisoned in darkness and silence, how marvellous that she stretches out eager hands to help the world ; that she ever is busy planning for the betterment of the world's condition; that she is inter- ested not only in The Training of a Blind Child or The Educa- tion of the Deaf J but equally so in The Workers* Right, The Modern Womany socialism, suffrage, religion and politics; that out of the silent dark she chants with sweet optimism : To the lone exile who must dwell with thee Thou art benign and friendly ! ' ' Again and again one realizes in reading her thoughts how far more unfortunate than herself she considers those who are in- tellectually and spiritually blind. In two gifts, Helen Keller has been exceptionally rich — books and friends. Of the former she says, ''Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends." From her own story of her life we find that as a young college woman, she loved especially Greek and
 * * Dark ! thou blessed, quiet Dark 1