next day felt a new desire to please. She watched for him to pass from school.
When he appeared, "had a most delightful thrill shoot through her." The first
impulse to fly was conquered; she never thought a boy beautiful before. They
often met after dark, wrote; finally she grew tired of him because she could not
make him feel deeply, sent him off, called him an idiot, and then soliloquized on
the "most dreadful grief of her life." The latter stages of their acquaintance she
occasionally used to beat him, but his attraction steadily waned. Once later, as
she was suffering from a dull, irresolute feeling due to want of a companion and
an object, she met a boy of seventeen, whose face, like her own, brightened as
they approached. It was the first appearance of nature's mandate to mate. This
friendly glance suffused her whole being with the "glory and vision of love."
Religion and young men were her need. They had stolen interviews by night and
many an innocent embrace and kiss, and almost died once by being caught. They
planned in detail what they would do after they were married, but all was taken
for granted without formal vows. Only when criticized did they ever dream of
caution and concealment, and then they made elaborate parades of ignoring each
other in public and fired their imaginations with thoughts of disguises, masks,
etc. This passion was nipped in the bud by the boy's removal from his school.
In preparing for her first communion, an anonymous writer[25] became sober
and studious, proposing to model her life on that of each fresh saint and to spend
a week in retreat examining her conscience with vengeance. She wanted to
revive the custom of public confession and wrote letters of penitence and
submission, which she tore up later, finding her mind not "all of a piece." She
lay prostrate on her prie-dieu weeping from ecstasy, lying on the rim of heaven
held by angels, wanting to die, now bathed in bliss or aching intolerably with
spiritual joy, but she was only twelve and her old nature often reasserted itself.
Religion at that time became an intense emotion nourished on incense, music,
tapers, and a feeling of being tangible. It was rapturous and sensuous. While
under its spell, she seemed to float and touch the wings of angels. Here solemn
Gregorian chants are sung, so that when one comes back to earth there is a sense
of hunger, deception, and self-loathing. Now she came to understand how so
many sentimental and virtuous souls sought oblivion in the narcotic of religious
excitement. Here, at the age of twelve, youth began and childhood ended with
her book.
Pathetic is the account of Helen Keller's effort to understand the meaning of the
word "love" in its season.[26]