"Some time ago, when a policeman shot dead her dog, a dearly
loved daily companion, she found in her forgiving heart no
condemnation for the man; she only said, 'If he had only known
what a good dog she was, he wouldn't have shot her.' It was said
of old time, 'Lord forgive them, they know not what they do!'

"Of course the question will arise whether, if Helen Keller had
not been guarded from the knowledge of evil, she would have been
what she is to-day.... Her mind has neither been made effeminate
by the weak and silly literature, nor has it been vitiated by
that which is suggestive of baseness. In consequence her mind is
not only vigorous, but it is pure. She is in love with noble
things, with noble thoughts, and with the characters of noble men
and women."

She still has a childlike aversion to tragedies. Her imagination
is so vital that she falls completely under the illusion of a
story, and lives in its world. Miss Sullivan writes in a letter
of 1891:

"Yesterday I read to her the story of 'Macbeth,' as told by
Charles and Mary Lamb. She was very greatly excited by it, and
said: 'It is terrible! It makes me tremble!' After thinking a
little while, she added, 'I think Shakespeare made it very
terrible so that people would see how fearful it is to do
wrong.'"

Of the real world she knows more of the good and less of the evil
than most people seem to know. Her teacher does not harass her