第三天，我將在人們的日常世界中度過，到為生活而奔忙的人們中間去，去體會他們的快樂、憂傷和感動……
The Third Day
The following morning, I should again greet the dawn, anxious to discover new
delights, for I am sure that, for those who have eyes which really see, the dawn
of each day must be a perpetually new revelation of beauty.
This, according to the terms of my imagined miracle, is to be my third and
last day of sight. I shall have no time to waste in regrets or longings; there
is too much to see. The first day I devoted to my friends, animate and
inanimate. The second revealed to me the history of man and Nature. Today I
shall spend in the workaday world of the present, amid the haunts of men going
about the business of life. And where can one find so many activities and
conditions of men as in New York? So the city becomes my destination.
I start from my home in the quiet little suburb of Forest Hills, Long Island.
Here , surrounded by green lawns, trees, and flowers, are neat little houses,
happy with the voices and movements of wives and children, havens of peaceful
rest for men who toil in the city. I drive across the lacy structure of steel
which spans the East River, and I get a new and startling vision of the power
and ingenuity of the mind of man. Busy boasts chug and scurry about the river -
racy speed boat, stolid, snorting tugs. If I had long days of sight ahead, I
should spend many of them watching the delightful activity upon the river.
I look ahead, and before me rise the fantastic towers of New York, a city
that seems to have stepped from the pages of a fairy story. What an
awe-inspiring sight, these glittering spires. these vast banks of stone and
steel-structures such as the gods might build for themselves! This animated
picture is a part of the lives of millions of people every day. How many, I
wonder, give it so much as a seconds glance? Very few, I fear, Their eyes are
blind to this magnificent sight because it is so familiar to them.
I hurry to the top of one of those gigantic structures, the Empire State
Building, for there , a short time ago, I "saw" the city below through the eyes
of my secretary. I am anxious to compare my fancy with reality. I am sure I
should not be disappointed in the panorama spread out before me, for to me it
would be a vision of another world.
Now I begin my rounds of the city. First, I stand at a busy corner, merely
looking at people, trying by sight of them to understand something of their
live. I see smiles, and I am happy. I see serious determination, and I am proud,
I see suffering, and I am compassionate.
I stroll down Fifth Avenue. I throw my eyes out of focus, so that I see no
particular object but only a seething kaleidoscope of colors. I am certain that
the colors of women's dresses moving in a throng must be a gorgeous spectacle of
which I should never tire. But perhaps if I had sight I should be like most
other women -- too interested in styles and the cut of individual dresses to
give much attention to the splendor of color in the mass. And I am convinced,
too, that I should become an inveterate window shopper, for it must be a delight
to the eye to view the myriad articles of beauty on display.
From Fifth Avenue I make a tour of the city-to Park Avenue, to the slums, to
factories, to parks where children play. I take a stay-at-home trip abroad by
visiting the foreign quarters. Always my eyes are open wide to all the sights of
both happiness and misery so that I may probe deep and add to my understanding
of how people work and live. my heart is full of the images of people and
things. My eye passes lightly over no single trifle; it strives to touch and
hold closely each thing its gaze rests upon. Some sights are pleasant, filling
the heart with happiness; but some are miserably pathetic. To these latter I do
not shut my eyes, for they, too, are part of life. To close the eye on them is
to close the heart and mind.
My third day of sight is drawing to an end. Perhaps there are many serious
pursuits to which I should devote the few remaining hours, but I am afraid that
on the evening of that last day I should again run away to the theater, to a
hilariously funny play, so that I might appreciate the overtones of comedy in
the human spirit.
At midnight my temporary respite from blindness would cease, and permanent
night would close in on me again. Naturally in those three short days I should
not have seen all I wanted to see. Only when darkness had again descended upon
me should I realize how much I had left unseen. But my mind would be so crowded
with glorious memories that I should have little time for regrets. Thereafter
the touch of every object would bring a glowing memory of how that object
looked.
Perhaps this short outline of how I should spend three days of sight does not
agree with the program you would set for yourself if you knew that you were
about to be stricken blind. I am, however, sure that if you actually faced that
fate your eyes would open to things you had never seen before, storing up
memories for the long night ahead. You would use your eyes as never before.
Everything you saw would become dear to you. Your eyes would touch and embrace
every object that came within your range of vision. Then, at last, you would
really see, and a new world of beauty would open itself before you.
I
who am blind can give one hint to those who see -- one admonition to those who
would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would
be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear
the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as
if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as
if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste
with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again.
Make the most of every sense: glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty
which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature
provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most
delightful.
