"Occasionally I think I am reading with my fingers, either Braille or line print, and even translating a little Latin, but always with an odd feeling that I am touching forbidden fruit. Somehow I feel that the spirits of sleep are displeased if any thoughts of literature cross my mind. Still I am free to enjoy everything else—I can wander among flowers and trees and be with my friends, especially those who live at a distance from where I happen to be. Sometimes I am with my mother, and at other times with my sister Mildred. My teacher scarcely ever appears in my dreams; but I know she would very often if a cruel fate should tear her away from me. I shall never forget the morning seven or eight years ago, when I dreamed that my dear friend, Bishop Brooks, was dying. A few hours later I found that my dream was a terrible reality. It is probable that I thought of him at the very moment when he was passing away, and I certainly wept in the same manner and in the same place while I dreamed, that I did afterwards!
"I hardly ever dream of anything that has happened the day before, although I sometimes have several different dreams on the same night; nor do I dream of the same things often. However, I dream oftenest of the unpleasant and horrible, no matter how happy and successful the day may have been. Indeed, I have found it unadvisable to read terrible stories or tragedies often, or in the evening. They impress me so painfully, and retain so firm a hold of my imagination that they sooner or later force themselves into my dreams. About two years ago I read 'Sixty Years a Queen' the story of the awful massacre at Cawnpore, which took place during the Indian Mutiny. It filled me with a horror that haunted me persistently for several days. At last I managed to banish these disagreeable feelings; but one night a frightful distortion of the selfsame story appeared before my mind. I thought I was in a small prison. At first I only noticed a skeleton hanging up on one of the walls; then I felt a strange, awful sound, like heavy iron being cast down, and the most heartrending cries ensued. I was informed that twenty men were being put to death with the utmost cruelty. I rushed madly from one room to another, and, as each ruffian came out, I locked the door behind him, in the hope that some of the victims might thereby be saved. All my efforts were futile, and I awoke with a sickening horror weighing down on my heart. I have also fancied that I saw cities on fire, and brave, innocent men dragged to a fiery martyrdom. One instant I would stand in speechless bewilderment, as the flames leaped up, dark and glaring, into a black sky. The next moment I would be in the midst of the conflagration, trying to save some of the sufferers, and seeing in dismay how they slipped away beyond my power. At such times I have thought myself the most wretched person in the world; but in the morning the bright sunshine and fresh air of our own dear, beautiful world would chase away those horrible phantoms.
"On the whole, my dreams are consistent with my feelings and sympathies; but once I thought I was engaged in a great boat-race between Yale and Harvard. Now, in reality I am always on Harvard's side in the great games; but at that time I dreamed that I was a thorough Yale man! Perhaps this inconsistency arose from the fact that a long time ago I had declared how glad I was of Harvard's failure to win a certain boat-race, because the Yale men rowed with the American stroke and the Harvard men had learned the English stroke. At any rate, sleeping or waking, I love my friends, and never think they change or grow unkind. From time to time I make friends in my dreams; but usually I am too busy running around and watching other people to have any long conversations or 'reveries.'
"I am often led into pretty fantasies, of which I will give an illustration. Consternation was spread everywhere because the news had been received of King Winter's determination to establish his rule permanently in the temperate zones. The stern monarch fulfilled his threat all too soon; for, although it was mid-summer, yet the whole ocean was suddenly frozen, and all the boats and steamers were stuck fast in the ice. Commerce was ruined, and starvation was unavoidable. The flowers and trees shared in the universal sorrow, and bravely strove to keep alive through the summer. Finally, overcome by the intense cold, they dropped their leaves and blossoms, which they had kept fresh and spotless to the last. Slowly the flowers fluttered down and lay at King Winter's feet, silently supplicating him to show mercy, but all in vain. They froze unheeded, and were changed into pearls, diamonds, and turquoises.
"Another time I took it into my head to climb to the stars. I sprang up into the air, and was borne upward by a strong impulse. I could not see or hear; but my mind was my guide as well as my interpreter. Higher and higher I rose, until I was very close to the stars. Their intense light prevented me from coming any nearer; so I hung on invisible wings, fascinated by the rolling spheres and the constant play of light and shadow, which my thoughts reflected. All at once I lost my balance, I knew not how, and down, down I rushed through empty space, till I struck violently against a tree, and my body sank to the ground. The shock waked me up, and for a moment I thought all my bones were broken to atoms.
"I have said all that I can remember concerning my dreams; but what really surprises me is this; sometimes, in the midst of a nightmare, I am conscious of a desire to wake up, and I make a vigorous effort to break the spell. Something seems to hold my senses tightly, and it is only with a spasmodic movement that I can open my eyes. Even then I feel, or I think I feel, a rapid motion shaking my bed and a sound of light, swift footsteps. It seems strange to me that I should make such an effort to wake up, instead of doing it automatically."
This faithful and dramatic sketch is replete with specific as well as with generic corroborations of the distinctive results of the present inquiry. The differences between the dream experiences of Helen Keller before and after education are quite consistent with comparable results in the cases of other defectives—although dreams of her uneducated period seem to occur rarely if at all, and it is not possible to determine how soon after she began to speak, such speech-communication made its appearance in her dreams. It is interesting to note that oral speech, when once acquired, speedily superseded manual talking, and that automatic talking aloud in her sleep appeared; the finger alphabet became almost obsolete in her waking life, and likewise in her dreams. Yet the persistence of early acquired habits is strikingly shown in her occasional unconscious tendency to talk to herself by forming the letters with one hand against the palm of the other. These processes she seems to utilize quite automatically and unconsciously as aids to composition or to "thinking aloud."
In regard to the source and content of her dreams, the more realistic episodes reflect their perceptional origin in tactile and motor experiences; such are the attack of the wolf, the fall from a height, the reception of information through the palm, reading the raised print,—while dreams of flying naturally present the same elaboration of sensory elements as in normally equipped individuals. The dreams of seeing and hearing probably reflect far more of conceptual interpretation and imaginative inference than of true sensation; yet they are in part built up upon a sensory basis,—in the former case, that of the heat sensations radiating from a brilliant illumination (witness the flames of the conflagration, the "intense light" of the stars), in the latter of vibrational or jarring sensations communicated to the body (as in the torrent of Niagara). But, on the whole, the direct sensory tone of her dream life is weak; while for this very reason, possibly, the imaginative and "transferred" components are unusually dominant. The associative elaboration of fancies in dream life is rarely capable of simple analysis, and commonly reveals results, and not the processes or stages by which the results were reached. Dependent, as Helen Keller is so largely, upon the communication of others for her knowledge of what is going on about her, it is natural that this transferred communication should be important in her dream knowledge. That her consciousness of the process of such acquisition should be vague and difficult to express is natural; and the phrases "my thoughts declared," "my mind acts as a sort of mirror," "I was informed," are as satisfactory psychologically as could be expected. It is, however, in dreams not of external incidents involving vaguely transferred or directly communicated information, but in the free roamings of creative imagination, that the dream life of Helen Keller finds its most suitable métier; it is in this direction that this dream narrative, reflecting, as it does, her rich emotional nature and enthusiastically sympathetic temperament, presents its most distinctive and attractive aspect.
IV
Returning to the general data regarding the dreams of the blind, the question that next suggests itself is whether and how, in cases where blindness ensued after a remembered period of vision, the pre-blindness period is distinguished from the post-blindness period in dream-imagery. It was noticed, for instance, that the blind and deaf young man mentioned above, though seeing in his dreams, never thus saw the shop in which he worked. It is easy to imagine that the more or less sudden loss of sight, the immersion into a strange and dark world, would for a time leave the individual living entirely upon the past. His remembered experiences are richer and more vivid (we are supposing his blindness to occur after childhood) than those he now has; he is learning a new language and translates everything back into the old. His dreams will naturally continue to be those of his seeing life. As his experiences in his new surroundings increase, and the memory of the old begins to fade, the tendency of recent impressions to arise in the automatism of dreaming will bring the events of the post-blindness period as factors into his dreams. I find in my list only seven who do not have such dreams; and in these the blindness has been on the average of only 2.8 years standing. The average age of "blinding" of the seven is fifteen years, making it probable that the adaptation to the new environment has here been a slow one, and that such dreams will occur later on. On the other hand, cases occur in which, after three, two, or even one year's blindness, when the persons so afflicted were young, events happening within that period have been dreamed of. Heermann cites a case of a man of seventy who never dreamed of the hospital in which he had been living for eighteen years, and to which he was brought shortly after his blindness. This and other cases suggest that the more mature and settled the brain-tissue, the more difficult is it to impress upon it new conditions sufficiently deeply to have them appear in the automatic life of dreams.