Mr. Anagnos, in speaking of my composition on the cities, has said, "These ideas are poetic in their essence." But I do not understand how he ever thought a blind and deaf child of eleven could have invented them. Yet I cannot think that because I did not originate the ideas, my little composition is therefore quite devoid of interest. It shows me that I could express my appreciation of beautiful and poetic ideas in clear and animated language.

Those   early   compositions   were   mental   gymnastics.   I   was   learning,   as   all   young   and   inexperienced   persons   learn,   by   assimilation   and   imitation,   to   put   ideas   into   words.   Everything   I   found   in   books   that   pleased   me   I   retained   in   my   memory,   consciously   or   unconsciously,   and   adapted   it.   The   young   writer,   as   Stevenson   has   said,   instinctively   tries   to   copy   whatever   seems   most   admirable,   and   he   shifts   his   admiration   with   astonishing   versatility.   It   is   only   after   years   of   this   sort   of   practice   that   even   great   men   have   learned   to   marshal   the   legion   of   words   which   come   thronging   through   every   byway   of   the   mind.

I   am   afraid   I   have   not   yet   completed   this   process.   It   is   certain   that   I   cannot   always   distinguish   my   own   thoughts   from   those   I   read,   because   what   I   read   becomes   the   very   substance   and   texture   of   my   mind.   Consequently,   in   nearly   all   that   I   write,   I   produce   something   which   very   much   resembles   the   crazy   patchwork   I   used   to   make   when   I   first   learned   to   sew.