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2 Three Days to See

Warm Up

● What are the five senses that help you know about the world around you?

● What are the pleasant things you see around you?

● What are the things you want to know about?

Reading skills

Helen Keller was a remarkable author who overcame deafness and
blindness and inspired the world. In this essay, ‘Three days to see’ she

tells us what she would do if she had just three days of sight.

I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being
were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during
his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of

sight, silence would teach him the joys of sound.

Now and then I have tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently, I asked
a friend, who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, what she had observed.

“Nothing in particular,” she replied.

“How was it possible?” I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing
worthy of note? I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere
touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin

of a silver birch, or through shaggy bark of a pine. In spring, I touch the branches of trees
hopefully in search of a bird, the first sign of awakening nature after the winter’s sleep.

Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently on a small tree and feel the happy
quiver of a bird in full song.

At times, my heart cries out with longing to see all these things. If I can get so much pleasure
from mere touch,how much more beauty must be revealed by sight? And I have imagined

what I should most like to see if I were given the use of my eyes, say for just three days!

On the first day, I should want to see the people whose kindness and companionship have
made my life worth living. I do not know what it is to see into the heart of a friend through
that window of the soul, the eye. I can only ‘see’ through my finger tips, the outline of a

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