Helen Keller, who went blind and deaf at nineteen months, said:
‘One day I asked a friend of mind who had just returned from a long walk in the woods what she had seen. She replied, “Nothing in particular”.
‘How was this possible?’ I asked myself, ‘when I, who cannot hear or see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate shape and design of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly over the rough bark of a pine tree. Occasionally, I place my hand quietly on a small tree, and if I’m lucky, feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song. ‘The greatest calamity that can befall people, is not that they should be born blind, but that they should have eyes, yet fail to see’.