hands of people.
They show all kinds of vitality, energy, stillness, and cordiality. I
never realized how living the hand is until I saw those chill plaster
images in Mr. Hutton's collection of casts. The hand I know in life has
the fullness of blood in its veins, and is elastic with spirit. How
different dear Mr. Hutton's hand was from its dull, insensate image! To
me the cast lacks the very form of the hand. Of the many casts in Mr.
Hutton's collection I did not recognize any, not even my own. But a
loving hand I never forget. I remember in my fingers the large hands of
Bishop Brooks, brimful of tenderness and a strong man's joy. If you were
deaf and blind, and could have held Mr. Jefferson's hand, you would have
seen in it a face and heard a kind voice unlike any other you have
known. Mark Twain's hand is full of whimsies and the drollest humours,
and while you hold it the drollery changes to sympathy and championship.

[Illustration: Copyright, 1907, by the Whitman Studio

The Medallion

The bas-relief on the wall is a portrait of the Queen Dowager of Spain,
which Her Majesty had made for Miss Keller

To face page 22]

I am told that the words I have just written do not "describe" the hands
of my friends, but merely endow them with the kindly human qualities
which I know they possess, and which language conveys in abstract words.
The criticism implies that I am not giving the primary truth of what I
feel; but how otherwise do descriptions in books I read, written by men
who can see, render the visible look of a face? I read that a face is
strong, gentle; that it is full of patience, of intellect; that it is
fine, sweet, noble, beautiful. Have I not the same right to use these
words in describing what I feel as you have in describing what you see?
They express truly what I feel in the hand. I am seldom conscious of
physical qualities, and I do not remember whether the fingers of a hand
are short or long, or the skin is moist or dry. No more can you, without
conscious effort, recall the details of a face, even when you have seen
it many times. If you do recall the features, and say that an eye is
blue, a chin sharp, a nose short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do
not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,--not so well
as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities
of the face--its humour, gravity, sadness, spirituality. If I should
tell you in physical terms how a hand