Three Days to See

Suppose you set your mind to work on the problem of how you would use your own eyes if you had three more days to see. If with the oncoming darkness of the third night you knew that the sun would never rise for you again, how would you spend those three precious intervening days? What would you most want to let your gaze rest upon?

I, naturally, should want most to see the things which have become dear to me through my years of darkness. You, too, would want to let your eyes rest long on the things that have become dear to you so that you could take the memory of them with you in the night that loomed before you.

I should want to see the people whose kindness and gentleness and companionship have made my life worth living. First I should like to gaze long upon the face of my teacher, Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy, who came to me when I was a child and opened the outer world to me. I should want not merely the outline of her face, so that I could cherish it in my memory, but to study that face and find in it the living evidence of the sympathetic tenderness and patience with which she accomplished the difficult task of my education. I should like to see in her eyes that strength of character which has enabled her to stand firm in the face of difficulties, and that compassion for all humanity which she has revealed to me so often.

Oh, the things that I should see if I had the power of sight for just three days!

*作者海伦·凯勒(Helen Keller, 1980—1968),美国聋哑妇作家、教育家。