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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.
阿纳戈诺斯先生则说我描写古代城市的作文“诗意地再现了其内在特质”。但我并不知晓他是如何看待一个十一岁的盲聋小孩的遣词造句的。总之，我并不认为我有创作的本事，因为我无法创造自己的观点，所以我的作文空泛而无趣也就在所难免了。这反倒提醒了我，我应该使用清晰而生动的语言来描述美好的事物，品评诗意的思想。
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.
那些作文构成了我早期的智力训练课程。像所有缺乏经验的年轻人一样，我通过吸收和模仿将自己的思想诉诸文字。书本中任何给我留下愉悦记忆的事物——无论是有意还是无意——都适用于这个原则。有一个年轻的作家史蒂文森曾说过，受本能驱使，他总是尽其所能地再现那些最令人景仰的崇高思想，而且，他会令人惊讶地将这种崇高转化为千变万化的文字效果。即使是伟大的人物，也只有经年累月地持续训练，才能汇聚起攻往每一条思想小径的文字大军。
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.
至今，我仍担心自己无法完成这一过程。显而易见的是，我不能总是从我读到的东西里辨认出我自己的思想，因为我读过的东西已经变成了我的精神食粮，它已经与我融为一体。所以说，在我写的几乎所有文章里，我所创造出的是这样一种东西——它很像我最初学习女红时所缝制的一件色彩斑斓的百衲衣。
