cannot sing and she cannot play the piano, although, as some
early experiments show, she could learn mechanically to beat out
a tune on the keys. Her enjoyment of music, however, is very
genuine, for she has a tactile recognition of sound when the
waves of air beat against her. Part of her experience of the
rhythm of music comes, no doubt, from the vibration of solid
objects which she is touching: the floor, or, what is more
evident, the case of the piano, on which her hand rests. But she
seems to feel the pulsation of the air itself. When the organ was
played for her in St. Bartholomew's, the whole building shook
with the great pedal notes, but that does not altogether account
for what she felt and enjoyed. The vibration of the air as the
organ notes swelled made her sway in answer. Sometimes she puts
her hand on a singer's throat to feel the muscular thrill and
contraction, and from this she gets genuine pleasure. No one
knows, however, just what her sensations are. It is amusing to
read in one of the magazines of 1895 that Miss Keller "has a just
and intelligent appreciation of different composers from having
literally felt their music, Schumann being her favourite." If she
knows the difference between Schumann and Beethoven, it is
because she has read it, and if she has read it, she remembers it
and can tell any one who asks her.

Miss Keller's effort to reach out and meet other people on their
own intellectual ground has kept her informed of daily affairs.
When her education became more systematic and she was busy with
books, it would have been very easy for Miss Sullivan to let her
draw into herself, if she had been so inclined. But every one who
has met her has given his best ideas to her and she has taken
them. If, in the course of a conversation, the friend next to her