For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine. - Helen Keller

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land, or opened a new Haven to the Human Spirit.

First they ask me to tell the life of the child who is mother to the woman. Then they make me my own daughter and ask for an account of grown-up sensations. Finally I am requested to write about my dreams, and thus I become an anachronical grandmother; for it is the special privilege of old age to relate dreams.

Indeed, everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom had a part in my education — noisy-throated frogs, katydids and crickets held in my hand until, forgetting their embarrassment, they trilled their reedy note, little downy chickens and wildflowers, the dogwood blossoms, meadow-violets and budding fruit trees. I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the cornstalks, the silky rustling of the long leaves, and the indignant snort of my pony...