she sees it, is no doubt a little better than it really is. But
her knowledge of it is not so incomplete as one might suppose.
Occasionally she astonishes you by ignorance of some fact which
no one happens to have told her; for instance, she did not know,
until her first plunge into the sea, that it is salt. Many of the
detached incidents and facts of our daily life pass around and
over her unobserved; but she has enough detailed acquaintance
with the world to keep her view of it from being essentially
defective.

Most that she knows at first hand comes from her sense of touch.
This sense is not, however, so finely developed as in some other
blind people. Laura Bridgman could tell minute shades of
difference in the size of thread, and made beautiful lace. Miss
Keller used to knit and crochet, but she has had better things to
do. With her varied powers and accomplishments, her sense of
touch has not been used enough to develop it very far beyond
normal acuteness. A friend tried Miss Keller one day with several
coins. She was slower than he expected her to be in identifying
them by their relative weight and size. But it should be said she
almost never handles money--one of the many sordid and petty
details of life, by the way, which she has been spared.

She recognizes the subject and general intention of a statuette
six inches high. Anything shallower than a half-inch bas-relief
is a blank to her, so far as it expresses an idea of beauty.
Large statues, of which she can feel the sweep of line with her
whole hand, she knows in their higher esthetic value. She
suggests herself that she can know them better than we do,
because she can get the true dimensions and appreciate more