Sight to the Blind | Page 7

tied thick around my eyes. And I sot there patient day after day, and the doctor he 'd drap in and cheer me up. 'Aunt Dally,' he would say--he claimed he never had no time to git out the Dalmanuthy--'in just a leetle while you 'll be a-trotting around the Blue Grass here worse 'n a race-hoss; but you got to git your training gradual.' Then he 'd thin the bandages more and more, till a sort of gray twilight come a-sifting through. 'And don't think,' he would say, 'that I am aiming to let you lope back to them mountains till I git you plumb made over. Fust thing is a new set of teeth,--you done gummed yourself into dyspepsy and gineral cantankerousness,--and then I 'm sot on taking you to my house to visit a month and eat good victuals and git your stummick opened up whar it done growed together, and your mind unj'inted, and your sperrits limbered similar.' And straightway he sont for a tooth-dentist, that tuck a pictur' of my gums in wax then and thar. Then come the great day when I looked my fust on a human countenance ag'in. I axed that it be the doctor's, and I seed him only through black glasses darkly; but, O God! what a sight it were none but the blind can ever tell! Then for quite a spell I looked out through them dark glasses at the comings and goings and people there in the hospital. Then one day the doctor he run in and says, 'Time for you to look on the sunlight, Aunt Dally. Keep on them glasses, and wrop a shawl round you, and come with me. I 'm aiming to show you the prettiest country God ever made.' Then he holp me into a chariot that run purely by the might of its own manoeuvers, and I seed tall houses and chimblys whiz by dimlike, and then atter a while he retch over and lifted my glasses.
"Women, the tongue of Seraphim hain't competent to tell what I seed then! That country hain't rugged and on-eend like this here, but is spread out smooth and soft and keerful, with nary ragged corner nowhar', and just enough roll to tole the eye along. Thar I, beheld the wide, green pastures I had heared tell of in Scriptur', thar I seed still waters, clear as crystal, dotted here and yan, and on them pastures and by them waters thousands of sleek nags and cattle a-feeding and drinking, peaceful and satisfied; thar, bowered back amongst lofty trees, was the beautiful many mansions and homes of the blest; thar was the big road, smooth and white as glass, down which pretty boys and gals too fair for this world, come on prancing nags; thar, best of all, hovering and brooding tender over everything, was the warm, blue sky and the golden sunlight. Them alone would have been enough for me. Yes, it were indeed a heavenly vision. I set, scarcely knowing if I were in or out of the body. 'Am I translated,' I axed the doctor, 'and is this here the New Jerusalem, and them pretty creeturs the angels of heaven?' 'Far from it, Aunt Dally,' he says, sighing. 'Them air the fortunate Blue-Grass folk, that be so used to blessings they don't even know they got 'em, let alone makin' a' effort to share 'em with the needy. If they was as onselfish within as they air fair and prosperous without, we would n't need no millennium.'
"I can't say I had any rale, realizing sense of sight that day. It were all too wonderful and visionary. And them weeks that follered at the doctor's house, too, they seem like a love-lie dream--the delicate victuals that fairly melted down my throat before these here fine store teeth could clutch 'em, the kindness of him and his woman, and of his little gal, that teached me my a-b-c's. For she said, 'With your head-piece, Aunt Dally, it hain't too late for you to die a scholar yet; you got to git l'arning.' And, women, I got it. I knowed all my letters and were quite a piece in the primer before I left, and Evy here she aims to finish my education and have me reading Scriptur' come summer. Yes, it all seemed too good and fair to be true, and I lived in a daze. I come to myself sufficient', though, to have the little gal write John to hire a wagon and bring Marthy and all the young uns to the railroad for to meet me, and see the world and the cyars; and also, realizing I were going to git back my faculty and workingness, and not being able to make the doctor take