feel the cool shock of
the plunge and the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and
ripple about my body. The pleasing changes of rough and smooth, pliant
and rigid, curved and straight in the bark and branches of a tree give
the truth to my hand. The immovable rock, with its juts and warped
surface, bends beneath my fingers into all manner of grooves and
hollows. The bulge of a watermelon and the puffed-up rotundities of
squashes that sprout, bud, and ripen in that strange garden planted
somewhere behind my finger-tips are the ludicrous in my tactual memory
and imagination. My fingers are tickled to delight by the soft ripple
of a baby's laugh, and find amusement in the lusty crow of the barnyard
autocrat. Once I had a pet rooster that used to perch on my knee and
stretch his neck and crow. A bird in my hand was then worth two in
the--barnyard.

My fingers cannot, of course, get the impression of a large whole at a
glance; but I feel the parts, and my mind puts them together. I move
around my house, touching object after object in order, before I can
form an idea of the entire house. In other people's houses I can touch
only what is shown to me--the chief objects of interest, carvings on the
wall, or a curious architectural feature, exhibited like the family
album. Therefore a house with which I am not familiar has for me, at
first, no general effect or harmony of detail. It is not a complete
conception, but a collection of object-impressions which, as they come
to me, are disconnected and isolated. But my mind is full of
associations, sensations, theories, and with them it constructs the
house. The process reminds me of the building of Solomon's temple, where
was neither saw, nor hammer, nor any tool heard while the stones were
being laid one upon another. The silent worker is imagination which
decrees reality out of chaos.

Without imagination what a poor thing my world would be! My garden would
be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and
smells. But when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty, the bare
ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedge-row bursts into leaf,
and the rose-tree shakes its fragrance everywhere. I know how budding
trees look, and I enter into the amorous joy of the mating birds, and
this is the miracle of imagination.

Twofold is the miracle when, through my fingers, my imagination reaches
forth and meets the imagination of an artist which he ha