The Story Of My Life

Hellen Keller

CHAPTER I

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that

clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an

autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest

impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that

link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences

in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first

years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest."

Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their

poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education

have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order,

therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of

sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting

and important.

I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern

Alabama.

The family on my father's side is descended from Caspar Keller, a native

of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss ancestors was

the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject

of their education--rather a singular coincidence; though it is true

that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and

no slave who has not had a king among his.

My grandfather, Caspar Keller's son, "entered" large tracts of land in

Alabama and finally settled there. I have been told that once a year he

went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies

for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the

letters to his family, which give charming and vivid accounts of these

trips.

My Grandmother Keller was a daughter of one of Lafayette's aides,

Alexander Moore, and granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early

Colonial Governor of Virginia. She was also second cousin to Robert E.

Lee.

My father, Arthur H. Keller, was a captain in the Confederate Army, and

my mother, Kate Adams, was his second wife and many years younger. Her

grandfather, Benjamin Adams, married Susanna E. Goodhue, and lived in

Newbury, Massachusetts, for many years. Their son, Charles Adams, was

born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When

the Civil War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became

a brigadier-general. He married Lucy Helen Everett, who belonged to the

same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale.

After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.

I lived, up to the time of the illness that deprived me of my sight and

hearing, in a tiny house consisting of a large square room and a small

one, in which the servant slept. It is a custom in the South to build a

small house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion. Such

a house my father built after the Civil War, and when he married my

mother they went to live in it. It was completely covered with vines,

climbing roses and honeysuckles. From the garden it looked like an

arbour. The little porch was hidden from view by a screen of yellow

roses and Southern smilax. It was the favourite haunt of humming-birds

and bees.

The Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our

little rose-bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the

surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy.

Its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood.

Even in the days before my teacher came, I used to feel along the square

stiff boxwood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell would find the

first violets and lilies. There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to

find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass. What

joy it was to lose myself in that garden of flowers, to wander happily

from spot to spot, until, coming suddenly upon a beautiful vine, I

recognized it by its leaves and blossoms, and knew it was the vine which

covered the tumble-down summer-house at the farther end of the garden!

Here, also, were trailing clematis, drooping jessamine, and some rare

sweet flowers called butterfly lilies, because their fragile petals

resemble butterflies' wings. But the roses--they were loveliest of all.

Never have I found in the greenhouses of the North such heart-satisfying

roses as the climbing roses of my southern home. They used to hang

in long festoons from our porch, filling the whole air with their

fragrance, untainted by any earthy smell; and in the early morning,

washed in the dew, they felt so soft, so pure, I could not help

wondering if they did not resemble the asphodels of God's garden.

The beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little

life. I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always

does. There was the usual amount of discussion as to a name for me.

The first baby in the family was not to be lightly named, every one was

emphatic about that. My father suggested the name of Mildred Campbell,

an ancestor whom he highly esteemed, and he declined to take any further

part in the discussion. My mother solved the problem by giving it as

her wish that I should be called after her mother, whose maiden name was

Helen Everett. But in the excitement of carrying me to church my father

lost the name on the way, very naturally, since it was one in which he

had declined to have a part. When the minister asked him for it, he just

remembered that it had been decided to call me after my grandmother, and

he gave her name as Helen Adams.

I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of

an eager, self-asserting disposition. Everything that I saw other people

do I insisted upon imitating. At six months I could pipe out "How d'ye,"

and one day I attracted every one's attention by saying "Tea, tea, tea"

quite plainly. Even after my illness I remembered one of the words I had

learned in these early months. It was the word "water," and I continued

to make some sound for that word after all other speech was lost. I

ceased making the sound "wah-wah" only when I learned to spell the word.

They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just

taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was

suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in

the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mother's lap and

almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her

to take me up in her arms.

These happy days did not last long. One brief spring, musical with the

song of robin and mocking-bird, one summer rich in fruit and roses, one

autumn of gold and crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of

an eager, delighted child. Then, in the dreary month of February,

came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the

unconsciousness of a new-born baby. They called it acute congestion of

the stomach and brain. The doctor thought I could not live. Early one

morning, however, the fever left me as suddenly and mysteriously as it

had come. There was great rejoicing in the family that morning, but no

one, not even the doctor, knew that I should never see or hear again.

I fancy I still have confused recollections of that illness. I

especially remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe

me in my waking hours of fret and pain, and the agony and bewilderment

with which I awoke after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so

dry and hot, to the wall away from the once-loved light, which came

to me dim and yet more dim each day. But, except for these fleeting

memories, if, indeed, they be memories, it all seems very unreal, like

a nightmare. Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that

surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she

came--my teacher--who was to set my spirit free. But during the first

nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields,

a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could

not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, "the day is ours, and what

the day has shown."

CHAPTER II

I cannot recall what happened during the first months after my illness.

I only know that I sat in my mother's lap or clung to her dress as she

went about her household duties. My hands felt every object and observed

every motion, and in this way I learned to know many things. Soon I

felt the need of some communication with others and began to make crude

signs. A shake of the head meant "No" and a nod, "Yes," a pull meant

"Come" and a push, "Go." Was it bread that I wanted? Then I would

imitate the acts of cutting the slices and buttering them. If I wanted

my mother to make ice-cream for dinner I made the sign for working the

freezer and shivered, indicating cold. My mother, moreover, succeeded

in making me understand a good deal. I always knew when she wished me

to bring her something, and I would run upstairs or anywhere else she

indicated. Indeed, I owe to her loving wisdom all that was bright and

good in my long night.

I understood a good deal of what was going on about me. At five I

learned to fold and put away the clean clothes when they were brought

in from the laundry, and I distinguished my own from the rest. I knew

by the way my mother and aunt dressed when they were going out, and I

invariably begged to go with them. I was always sent for when there was

company, and when the guests took their leave, I waved my hand to them,

I think with a vague remembrance of the meaning of the gesture. One day

some gentlemen called on my mother, and I felt the shutting of the front

door and other sounds that indicated their arrival. On a sudden thought

I ran upstairs before any one could stop me, to put on my idea of a

company dress. Standing before the mirror, as I had seen others do, I

anointed mine head with oil and covered my face thickly with powder.

Then I pinned a veil over my head so that it covered my face and fell in

folds down to my shoulders, and tied an enormous bustle round my small

waist, so that it dangled behind, almost meeting the hem of my skirt.

Thus attired I went down to help entertain the company.

I do not remember when I first realized that I was different from other

people; but I knew it before my teacher came to me. I had noticed that

my mother and my friends did not use signs as I did when they wanted

anything done, but talked with their mouths. Sometimes I stood between

two persons who were conversing and touched their lips. I could not

understand, and was vexed. I moved my lips and gesticulated frantically

without result. This made me so angry at times that I kicked and

screamed until I was exhausted.

I think I knew when I was naughty, for I knew that it hurt Ella, my

nurse, to kick her, and when my fit of temper was over I had a feeling

akin to regret. But I cannot remember any instance in which this feeling

prevented me from repeating the naughtiness when I failed to get what I

wanted.

In those days a little coloured girl, Martha Washington, the child of

our cook, and Belle, an old setter, and a great hunter in her day, were

my constant companions. Martha Washington understood my signs, and I

seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished. It pleased

me to domineer over her, and she generally submitted to my tyranny

rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter. I was strong, active,

indifferent to consequences. I knew my own mind well enough and always

had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it. We spent

a great deal of time in the kitchen, kneading dough balls, helping make

ice-cream, grinding coffee, quarreling over the cake-bowl, and feeding

the hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps. Many of them

were so tame that they would eat from my hand and let me feel them.

One big gobbler snatched a tomato from me one day and ran away with it.

Inspired, perhaps, by Master Gobbler's success, we carried off to the

woodpile a cake which the cook had just frosted, and ate every bit of

it. I was quite ill afterward, and I wonder if retribution also overtook

the turkey.

The guinea-fowl likes to hide her nest in out-of-the-way places, and it

was one of my greatest delights to hunt for the eggs in the long grass.

I could not tell Martha Washington when I wanted to go egg-hunting,

but I would double my hands and put them on the ground, which meant

something round in the grass, and Martha always understood. When we were

fortunate enough to find a nest I never allowed her to carry the eggs

home, making her understand by emphatic signs that she might fall and

break them.

The sheds where the corn was stored, the stable where the horses were

kept, and the yard where the cows were milked morning and evening were

unfailing sources of interest to Martha and me. The milkers would let

me keep my hands on the cows while they milked, and I often got well

switched by the cow for my curiosity.

The making ready for Christmas was always a delight to me. Of course I

did not know what it was all about, but I enjoyed the pleasant odours

that filled the house and the tidbits that were given to Martha

Washington and me to keep us quiet. We were sadly in the way, but that

did not interfere with our pleasure in the least. They allowed us to

grind the spices, pick over the raisins and lick the stirring spoons.

I hung my stocking because the others did; I cannot remember, however,

that the ceremony interested me especially, nor did my curiosity cause

me to wake before daylight to look for my gifts.

Martha Washington had as great a love of mischief as I. Two little

children were seated on the veranda steps one hot July afternoon.

One was black as ebony, with little bunches of fuzzy hair tied with

shoestrings sticking out all over her head like corkscrews. The other

was white, with long golden curls. One child was six years old, the

other two or three years older. The younger child was blind--that was

I--and the other was Martha Washington. We were busy cutting out paper

dolls; but we soon wearied of this amusement, and after cutting up our

shoestrings and clipping all the leaves off the honeysuckle that were

within reach, I turned my attention to Martha's corkscrews. She objected

at first, but finally submitted. Thinking that turn and turn about is

fair play, she seized the scissors and cut off one of my curls, and

would have cut them all off but for my mother's timely interference.

Belle, our dog, my other companion, was old and lazy and liked to sleep

by the open fire rather than to romp with me. I tried hard to teach

her my sign language, but she was dull and inattentive. She sometimes

started and quivered with excitement, then she became perfectly rigid,

as dogs do when they point a bird. I did not then know why Belle acted

in this way; but I knew she was not doing as I wished. This vexed me and

the lesson always ended in a one-sided boxing match. Belle would get up,

stretch herself lazily, give one or two contemptuous sniffs, go to

the opposite side of the hearth and lie down again, and I, wearied and

disappointed, went off in search of Martha.

Many incidents of those early years are fixed in my memory, isolated,

but clear and distinct, making the sense of that silent, aimless,

dayless life all the more intense.

One day I happened to spill water on my apron, and I spread it out to

dry before the fire which was flickering on the sitting-room hearth. The

apron did not dry quickly enough to suit me, so I drew nearer and threw

it right over the hot ashes. The fire leaped into life; the flames

encircled me so that in a moment my clothes were blazing. I made a

terrified noise that brought Viny, my old nurse, to the rescue. Throwing

a blanket over me, she almost suffocated me, but she put out the fire.

Except for my hands and hair I was not badly burned.

About this time I found out the use of a key. One morning I locked my

mother up in the pantry, where she was obliged to remain three hours, as

the servants were in a detached part of the house. She kept pounding on

the door, while I sat outside on the porch steps and laughed with glee

as I felt the jar of the pounding. This most naughty prank of mine

convinced my parents that I must be taught as soon as possible. After

my teacher, Miss Sullivan, came to me, I sought an early opportunity

to lock her in her room. I went upstairs with something which my mother

made me understand I was to give to Miss Sullivan; but no sooner had I

given it to her than I slammed the door to, locked it, and hid the key

under the wardrobe in the hall. I could not be induced to tell where the

key was. My father was obliged to get a ladder and take Miss Sullivan

out through the window--much to my delight. Months after I produced the

key.

When I was about five years old we moved from the little vine-covered

house to a large new one. The family consisted of my father and mother,

two older half-brothers, and, afterward, a little sister, Mildred. My

earliest distinct recollection of my father is making my way through

great drifts of newspapers to his side and finding him alone, holding

a sheet of paper before his face. I was greatly puzzled to know what he

was doing. I imitated this action, even wearing his spectacles, thinking

they might help solve the mystery. But I did not find out the secret for

several years. Then I learned what those papers were, and that my father

edited one of them.

My father was most loving and indulgent, devoted to his home, seldom

leaving us, except in the hunting season. He was a great hunter, I have

been told, and a celebrated shot. Next to his family he loved his dogs

and gun. His hospitality was great, almost to a fault, and he seldom

came home without bringing a guest. His special pride was the big garden

where, it was said, he raised the finest watermelons and strawberries in

the county; and to me he brought the first ripe grapes and the choicest

berries. I remember his caressing touch as he led me from tree to tree,

from vine to vine, and his eager delight in whatever pleased me.

He was a famous story-teller; after I had acquired language he used to

spell clumsily into my hand his cleverest anecdotes, and nothing pleased

him more than to have me repeat them at an opportune moment.

I was in the North, enjoying the last beautiful days of the summer of

1896, when I heard the news of my father's death. He had had a short

illness, there had been a brief time of acute suffering, then all was

over. This was my first great sorrow--my first personal experience with

death.

How shall I write of my mother? She is so near to me that it almost

seems indelicate to speak of her.

For a long time I regarded my little sister as an intruder. I knew that

I had ceased to be my mother's only darling, and the thought filled me

with jealousy. She sat in my mother's lap constantly, where I used to

sit, and seemed to take up all her care and time. One day something

happened which seemed to me to be adding insult to injury.

At that time I had a much-petted, much-abused doll, which I afterward

named Nancy. She was, alas, the helpless victim of my outbursts of

temper and of affection, so that she became much the worse for wear. I

had dolls which talked, and cried, and opened and shut their eyes; yet

I never loved one of them as I loved poor Nancy. She had a cradle, and I

often spent an hour or more rocking her. I guarded both doll and cradle

with the most jealous care; but once I discovered my little sister

sleeping peacefully in the cradle. At this presumption on the part of

one to whom as yet no tie of love bound me I grew angry. I rushed upon

the cradle and over-turned it, and the baby might have been killed had

my mother not caught her as she fell. Thus it is that when we walk in

the valley of twofold solitude we know little of the tender affections

that grow out of endearing words and actions and companionship. But

afterward, when I was restored to my human heritage, Mildred and I grew

into each other's hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand

wherever caprice led us, although she could not understand my finger

language, nor I her childish prattle.

CHAPTER III

Meanwhile the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became

less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were

invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible

hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself.

I struggled--not that struggling helped matters, but the spirit of

resistance was strong within me; I generally broke down in tears and

physical exhaustion. If my mother happened to be near I crept into her

arms, too miserable even to remember the cause of the tempest. After

awhile the need of some means of communication became so urgent that

these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.

My parents were deeply grieved and perplexed. We lived a long way from

any school for the blind or the deaf, and it seemed unlikely that any

one would come to such an out-of-the-way place as Tuscumbia to teach

a child who was both deaf and blind. Indeed, my friends and relatives

sometimes doubted whether I could be taught. My mother's only ray of

hope came from Dickens's "American Notes." She had read his account of

Laura Bridgman, and remembered vaguely that she was deaf and blind, yet

had been educated. But she also remembered with a hopeless pang that Dr.

Howe, who had discovered the way to teach the deaf and blind, had been

dead many years. His methods had probably died with him; and if they had

not, how was a little girl in a far-off town in Alabama to receive the

benefit of them?

When I was about six years old, my father heard of an eminent oculist

in Baltimore, who had been successful in many cases that had seemed

hopeless. My parents at once determined to take me to Baltimore to see

if anything could be done for my eyes.

The journey, which I remember well, was very pleasant. I made friends

with many people on the train. One lady gave me a box of shells. My

father made holes in these so that I could string them, and for a long

time they kept me happy and contented. The conductor, too, was kind.

Often when he went his rounds I clung to his coat tails while he

collected and punched the tickets. His punch, with which he let me play,

was a delightful toy. Curled up in a corner of the seat I amused myself

for hours making funny little holes in bits of cardboard.

My aunt made me a big doll out of towels. It was the most comical

shapeless thing, this improvised doll, with no nose, mouth, ears or

eyes--nothing that even the imagination of a child could convert into a

face. Curiously enough, the absence of eyes struck me more than all

the other defects put together. I pointed this out to everybody with

provoking persistency, but no one seemed equal to the task of providing

the doll with eyes. A bright idea, however, shot into my mind, and the

problem was solved. I tumbled off the seat and searched under it until

I found my aunt's cape, which was trimmed with large beads. I pulled two

beads off and indicated to her that I wanted her to sew them on my

doll. She raised my hand to her eyes in a questioning way, and I nodded

energetically. The beads were sewed in the right place and I could not

contain myself for joy; but immediately I lost all interest in the doll.

During the whole trip I did not have one fit of temper, there were so

many things to keep my mind and fingers busy.

When we arrived in Baltimore, Dr. Chisholm received us kindly: but

he could do nothing. He said, however, that I could be educated, and

advised my father to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell of Washington,

who would be able to give him information about schools and teachers

of deaf or blind children. Acting on the doctor's advice, we went

immediately to Washington to see Dr. Bell, my father with a sad heart

and many misgivings, I wholly unconscious of his anguish, finding

pleasure in the excitement of moving from place to place. Child as I

was, I at once felt the tenderness and sympathy which endeared Dr.

Bell to so many hearts, as his wonderful achievements enlist their

admiration. He held me on his knee while I examined his watch, and he

made it strike for me. He understood my signs, and I knew it and loved

him at once. But I did not dream that that interview would be the door

through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to

friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.

Dr. Bell advised my father to write to Mr. Anagnos, director of the

Perkins Institution in Boston, the scene of Dr. Howe's great labours

for the blind, and ask him if he had a teacher competent to begin my

education. This my father did at once, and in a few weeks there came

a kind letter from Mr. Anagnos with the comforting assurance that

a teacher had been found. This was in the summer of 1886. But Miss

Sullivan did not arrive until the following March.

Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine

touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And

from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge is love

and light and vision."

CHAPTER IV

The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my

teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder

when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which

it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was

seven years old.

On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb,

expectant. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the

hurrying to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to

happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun

penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch, and fell

on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the

familiar leaves and blossoms which had just come forth to greet the

sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of marvel or

surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for

weeks and a deep languor had succeeded this passionate struggle.

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a

tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and

anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line,

and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like

that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or

sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.

"Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light

of love shone on me in that very hour.

I felt approaching footsteps, I stretched out my hand as I supposed to

my mother. Some one took it, and I was caught up and held close in the

arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all

things else, to love me.

The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me

a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent

it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until

afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan

slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested

in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded

in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and

pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the

letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even

that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like

imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this

uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and

a few verbs like sit, stand and walk. But my teacher had been with me

several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.

One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my

big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me

understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had

a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan had tried

to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water,

but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped

the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I

became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll,

I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the

fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret

followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still,

dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.

I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I

had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was

removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm

sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought,

made me hop and skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance

of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water

and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed

over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly,

then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions

of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something

forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of

language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the

wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living

word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were

barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept

away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each

name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every

object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because

I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On

entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way

to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them

together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had

done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.

I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they

all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among

them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's

rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child

than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and

lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for

a new day to come.

CHAPTER V

I recall many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's

sudden awakening. I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the

name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and

learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my

sense of kinship with the rest of the world.

When the time of daisies and buttercups came Miss Sullivan took me by

the hand across the fields, where men were preparing the earth for the

seed, to the banks of the Tennessee River, and there, sitting on the

warm grass, I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature. I

learned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every

tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, how birds build

their nests and live and thrive from land to land, how the squirrel, the

deer, the lion and every other creature finds food and shelter. As my

knowledge of things grew I felt more and more the delight of the world I

was in. Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the

shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the

fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples

of my baby sister's hand. She linked my earliest thoughts with nature,

and made me feel that "birds and flowers and I were happy peers."

But about this time I had an experience which taught me that nature is

not always kind. One day my teacher and I were returning from a long

ramble. The morning had been fine, but it was growing warm and sultry

when at last we turned our faces homeward. Two or three times we stopped

to rest under a tree by the wayside. Our last halt was under a wild

cherry tree a short distance from the house. The shade was grateful, and

the tree was so easy to climb that with my teacher's assistance I was

able to scramble to a seat in the branches. It was so cool up in the

tree that Miss Sullivan proposed that we have our luncheon there. I

promised to keep still while she went to the house to fetch it.

Suddenly a change passed over the tree. All the sun's warmth left the

air. I knew the sky was black, because all the heat, which meant light

to me, had died out of the atmosphere. A strange odour came up from the

earth. I knew it, it was the odour that always precedes a thunderstorm,

and a nameless fear clutched at my heart. I felt absolutely alone,

cut off from my friends and the firm earth. The immense, the unknown,

enfolded me. I remained still and expectant; a chilling terror crept

over me. I longed for my teacher's return; but above all things I wanted

to get down from that tree.

There was a moment of sinister silence, then a multitudinous stirring

of the leaves. A shiver ran through the tree, and the wind sent forth a

blast that would have knocked me off had I not clung to the branch with

might and main. The tree swayed and strained. The small twigs snapped

and fell about me in showers. A wild impulse to jump seized me, but

terror held me fast. I crouched down in the fork of the tree. The

branches lashed about me. I felt the intermittent jarring that came now

and then, as if something heavy had fallen and the shock had traveled

up till it reached the limb I sat on. It worked my suspense up to the

highest point, and just as I was thinking the tree and I should fall

together, my teacher seized my hand and helped me down. I clung to her,

trembling with joy to feel the earth under my feet once more. I had

learned a new lesson--that nature "wages open war against her children,

and under softest touch hides treacherous claws."

After this experience it was a long time before I climbed another tree.

The mere thought filled me with terror. It was the sweet allurement

of the mimosa tree in full bloom that finally overcame my fears. One

beautiful spring morning when I was alone in the summer-house, reading,

I became aware of a wonderful subtle fragrance in the air. I started up

and instinctively stretched out my hands. It seemed as if the spirit of

spring had passed through the summer-house. "What is it?" I asked, and

the next minute I recognized the odour of the mimosa blossoms. I felt my

way to the end of the garden, knowing that the mimosa tree was near the

fence, at the turn of the path. Yes, there it was, all quivering in

the warm sunshine, its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long

grass. Was there ever anything so exquisitely beautiful in the world

before! Its delicate blossoms shrank from the slightest earthly touch;

it seemed as if a tree of paradise had been transplanted to earth. I

made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk and for

one minute stood irresolute; then, putting my foot in the broad space

between the forked branches, I pulled myself up into the tree. I had

some difficulty in holding on, for the branches were very large and

the bark hurt my hands. But I had a delicious sense that I was doing

something unusual and wonderful so I kept on climbing higher and higher,

until I reached a little seat which somebody had built there so long ago

that it had grown part of the tree itself. I sat there for a long, long

time, feeling like a fairy on a rosy cloud. After that I spent many

happy hours in my tree of paradise, thinking fair thoughts and dreaming

bright dreams.

CHAPTER VI

I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it.

Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the

words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were,

delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow

and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is

wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until

we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable

and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.

At first, when my teacher told me about a new thing I asked very few

questions. My ideas were vague, and my vocabulary was inadequate; but as

my knowledge of things grew, and I learned more and more words, my field

of inquiry broadened, and I would return again and again to the same

subject, eager for further information. Sometimes a new word revived an

image that some earlier experience had engraved on my brain.

I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word,

"love." This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early

violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss

me; but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my

mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my

hand, "I love Helen."

"What is love?" I asked.

She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart,

whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me

very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched

it.

I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs,

a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"

"No," said my teacher.

Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.

"Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the

heat came. "Is this not love?"

It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun,

whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head,

and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my

teacher could not show me love.

A day or two afterward I was stringing beads of different sizes in

symmetrical groups--two large beads, three small ones, and so on. I had

made many mistakes, and Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and

again with gentle patience. Finally I noticed a very obvious error

in the sequence and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the

lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads. Miss

Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."

In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was

going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an

abstract idea.

For a long time I was still--I was not thinking of the beads in my lap,

but trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new

idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief

showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.

Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"

"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun

came out," she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that

time I could not have understood, she explained: "You cannot touch the

clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers

and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch

love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

Without love you would not be happy or want to play."

The beautiful truth burst upon my mind--I felt that there were invisible

lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.

From the beginning of my education Miss Sullivan made it a practice to

speak to me as she would speak to any hearing child; the only difference

was that she spelled the sentences into my hand instead of speaking

them. If I did not know the words and idioms necessary to express my

thoughts she supplied them, even suggesting conversation when I was

unable to keep up my end of the dialogue.

This process was continued for several years; for the deaf child does

not learn in a month, or even in two or three years, the numberless

idioms and expressions used in the simplest daily intercourse.

The little hearing child learns these from constant repetition and

imitation. The conversation he hears in his home stimulates his mind and

suggests topics and calls forth the spontaneous expression of his own

thoughts. This natural exchange of ideas is denied to the deaf child.

My teacher, realizing this, determined to supply the kinds of stimulus

I lacked. This she did by repeating to me as far as possible, verbatim,

what she heard, and by showing me how I could take part in the

conversation. But it was a long time before I ventured to take the

initiative, and still longer before I could find something appropriate

to say at the right time.

The deaf and the blind find it very difficult to acquire the amenities

of conversation. How much more this difficulty must be augmented in the

case of those who are both deaf and blind! They cannot distinguish the

tone of the voice or, without assistance, go up and down the gamut of

tones that give significance to words; nor can they watch the expression

of the speaker's face, and a look is often the very soul of what one

says.

CHAPTER VII

The next important step in my education was learning to read.

As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of

cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly

learned that each printed word stood for an object, an act, or a

quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the words in little

sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make

them in objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for

example, "doll," "is," "on," "bed" and placed each name on its object;

then I put my doll on the bed with the words is, on, bed arranged beside

the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and at the same time

carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves.

One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word girl on my pinafore

and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, is, in,

wardrobe. Nothing delighted me so much as this game. My teacher and I

played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged

in object sentences.

From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my

"Reader for Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found

them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek. Thus I began to

read. Of the time when I began to read connected stories I shall speak

later.

For a long time I had no regular lessons. Even when I studied most

earnestly it seemed more like play than work. Everything Miss Sullivan

taught me she illustrated by a beautiful story or a poem. Whenever

anything delighted or interested me she talked it over with me just

as if she were a little girl herself. What many children think of with

dread, as a painful plodding through grammar, hard sums and harder

definitions, is to-day one of my most precious memories.

I cannot explain the peculiar sympathy Miss Sullivan had with my

pleasures and desires. Perhaps it was the result of long association

with the blind. Added to this she had a wonderful faculty for

description. She went quickly over uninteresting details, and

never nagged me with questions to see if I remembered the

day-before-yesterday's lesson. She introduced dry technicalities of

science little by little, making every subject so real that I could not

help remembering what she taught.

We read and studied out of doors, preferring the sunlit woods to the

house. All my early lessons have in them the breath of the woods--the

fine, resinous odour of pine needles, blended with the perfume of wild

grapes. Seated in the gracious shade of a wild tulip tree, I learned to

think that everything has a lesson and a suggestion. "The loveliness of

things taught me all their use." Indeed, everything that could hum, or

buzz, or sing, or bloom had a part in my education--noisy-throated

frogs, katydids and crickets held in my hand until forgetting their

embarrassment, they trilled their reedy note, little downy chickens

and wildflowers, the dogwood blossoms, meadow-violets and budding fruit

trees. I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber

and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the

cornstalks, the silky rustling of the long leaves, and the indignant

snort of my pony, as we caught him in the pasture and put the bit in

his mouth--ah me! how well I remember the spicy, clovery smell of his

breath!

Sometimes I rose at dawn and stole into the garden while the heavy dew

lay on the grass and flowers. Few know what joy it is to feel the roses

pressing softly into the hand, or the beautiful motion of the lilies

as they sway in the morning breeze. Sometimes I caught an insect in the

flower I was plucking, and I felt the faint noise of a pair of wings

rubbed together in a sudden terror, as the little creature became aware

of a pressure from without.

Another favourite haunt of mine was the orchard, where the fruit ripened

early in July. The large, downy peaches would reach themselves into my

hand, and as the joyous breezes flew about the trees the apples tumbled

at my feet. Oh, the delight with which I gathered up the fruit in my

pinafore, pressed my face against the smooth cheeks of the apples, still

warm from the sun, and skipped back to the house!

Our favourite walk was to Keller's Landing, an old tumbledown

lumber-wharf on the Tennessee River, used during the Civil War to

land soldiers. There we spent many happy hours and played at learning

geography. I built dams of pebbles, made islands and lakes, and dug

river-beds, all for fun, and never dreamed that I was learning a lesson.

I listened with increasing wonder to Miss Sullivan's descriptions of

the great round world with its burning mountains, buried cities, moving

rivers of ice, and many other things as strange. She made raised maps in

clay, so that I could feel the mountain ridges and valleys, and follow

with my fingers the devious course of rivers. I liked this, too; but the

division of the earth into zones and poles confused and teased my mind.

The illustrative strings and the orange stick representing the poles

seemed so real that even to this day the mere mention of temperate zone

suggests a series of twine circles; and I believe that if any one should

set about it he could convince me that white bears actually climb the

North Pole.

Arithmetic seems to have been the only study I did not like. From the

first I was not interested in the science of numbers. Miss Sullivan

tried to teach me to count by stringing beads in groups, and by

arranging kintergarten straws I learned to add and subtract. I never had

patience to arrange more than five or six groups at a time. When I had

accomplished this my conscience was at rest for the day, and I went out

quickly to find my playmates.

In this same leisurely manner I studied zoology and botany.

Once a gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, sent me a collection of

fossils--tiny mollusk shells beautifully marked, and bits of sandstone

with the print of birds' claws, and a lovely fern in bas-relief. These

were the keys which unlocked the treasures of the antediluvian world for

me. With trembling fingers I listened to Miss Sullivan's descriptions

of the terrible beasts, with uncouth, unpronounceable names, which once

went tramping through the primeval forests, tearing down the branches

of gigantic trees for food, and died in the dismal swamps of an unknown

age. For a long time these strange creatures haunted my dreams, and this

gloomy period formed a somber background to the joyous Now, filled with

sunshine and roses and echoing with the gentle beat of my pony's hoof.

Another time a beautiful shell was given me, and with a child's surprise

and delight I learned how a tiny mollusk had built the lustrous coil

for his dwelling place, and how on still nights, when there is no breeze

stirring the waves, the Nautilus sails on the blue waters of the

Indian Ocean in his "ship of pearl." After I had learned a great many

interesting things about the life and habits of the children of the

sea--how in the midst of dashing waves the little polyps build the

beautiful coral isles of the Pacific, and the foraminifera have made the

chalk-hills of many a land--my teacher read me "The Chambered Nautilus,"

and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is

symbolical of the development of the mind. Just as the wonder-working

mantle of the Nautilus changes the material it absorbs from the water

and makes it a part of itself, so the bits of knowledge one gathers

undergo a similar change and become pearls of thought.

Again, it was the growth of a plant that furnished the text for a

lesson. We bought a lily and set it in a sunny window. Very soon the

green, pointed buds showed signs of opening. The slender, fingerlike

leaves on the outside opened slowly, reluctant, I thought, to reveal

the loveliness they hid; once having made a start, however, the opening

process went on rapidly, but in order and systematically. There was

always one bud larger and more beautiful than the rest, which pushed

her outer covering back with more pomp, as if the beauty in soft, silky

robes knew that she was the lily-queen by right divine, while her more

timid sisters doffed their green hoods shyly, until the whole plant was

one nodding bough of loveliness and fragrance.

Once there were eleven tadpoles in a glass globe set in a window full

of plants. I remember the eagerness with which I made discoveries about

them. It was great fun to plunge my hand into the bowl and feel the

tadpoles frisk about, and to let them slip and slide between my fingers.

One day a more ambitious fellow leaped beyond the edge of the bowl and

fell on the floor, where I found him to all appearance more dead than

alive. The only sign of life was a slight wriggling of his tail. But

no sooner had he returned to his element than he darted to the bottom,

swimming round and round in joyous activity. He had made his leap, he

had seen the great world, and was content to stay in his pretty glass

house under the big fuchsia tree until he attained the dignity of

froghood. Then he went to live in the leafy pool at the end of the

garden, where he made the summer nights musical with his quaint

love-song.

Thus I learned from life itself. At the beginning I was only a little

mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed

them. When she came, everything about me breathed of love and joy and

was full of meaning. She has never since let pass an opportunity to

point out the beauty that is in everything, nor has she ceased trying in

thought and action and example to make my life sweet and useful.

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which

made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she

seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant

and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's mind is like a shallow

brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its

education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy

cloud; and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like

a brook it should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until

it broadened out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid

surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue

heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.

Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can

make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty

is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory

and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the

tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a

dull routine of textbooks.

My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from

her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how

much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is

inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in

hers. All the best of me belongs to her--there is not a talent, or

an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving

touch.

CHAPTER VIII

The first Christmas after Miss Sullivan came to Tuscumbia was a great

event. Every one in the family prepared surprises for me; but what

pleased me most, Miss Sullivan and I prepared surprises for everybody

else. The mystery that surrounded the gifts was my greatest delight and

amusement. My friends did all they could to excite my curiosity by hints

and half-spelled sentences which they pretended to break off in the nick

of time. Miss Sullivan and I kept up a game of guessing which taught

me more about the use of language than any set lessons could have done.

Every evening, seated round a glowing wood fire, we played our guessing

game, which grew more and more exciting as Christmas approached.

On Christmas Eve the Tuscumbia schoolchildren had their tree, to which

they invited me. In the centre of the schoolroom stood a beautiful

tree ablaze and shimmering in the soft light, its branches loaded with

strange, wonderful fruit. It was a moment of supreme happiness. I danced

and capered round the tree in an ecstasy. When I learned that there

was a gift for each child, I was delighted, and the kind people who had

prepared the tree permitted me to hand the presents to the children. In

the pleasure of doing this, I did not stop to look at my own gifts; but

when I was ready for them, my impatience for the real Christmas to begin

almost got beyond control. I knew the gifts I already had were not those

of which friends had thrown out such tantalizing hints, and my teacher

said the presents I was to have would be even nicer than these. I was

persuaded, however, to content myself with the gifts from the tree and

leave the others until morning.

That night, after I had hung my stocking, I lay awake a long time,

pretending to be asleep and keeping alert to see what Santa Claus would

do when he came. At last I fell asleep with a new doll and a white bear

in my arms. Next morning it was I who waked the whole family with my

first "Merry Christmas!" I found surprises, not in the stocking

only, but on the table, on all the chairs, at the door, on the very

window-sill; indeed, I could hardly walk without stumbling on a bit of

Christmas wrapped up in tissue paper. But when my teacher presented me

with a canary, my cup of happiness overflowed.

Little Tim was so tame that he would hop on my finger and eat candied

cherries out of my hand. Miss Sullivan taught me to take all the care of

my new pet. Every morning after breakfast I prepared his bath, made his

cage clean and sweet, filled his cups with fresh seed and water from the

well-house, and hung a spray of chickweed in his swing.

One morning I left the cage on the window-seat while I went to fetch

water for his bath. When I returned I felt a big cat brush past me as I

opened the door. At first I did not realize what had happened; but when

I put my hand in the cage and Tim's pretty wings did not meet my touch

or his small pointed claws take hold of my finger, I knew that I should

never see my sweet little singer again.

CHAPTER IX

The next important event in my life was my visit to Boston, in May,

1888. As if it were yesterday I remember the preparations, the departure

with my teacher and my mother, the journey, and finally the arrival

in Boston. How different this journey was from the one I had made to

Baltimore two years before! I was no longer a restless, excitable little

creature, requiring the attention of everybody on the train to keep

me amused. I sat quietly beside Miss Sullivan, taking in with eager

interest all that she told me about what she saw out of the car window:

the beautiful Tennessee River, the great cotton-fields, the hills and

woods, and the crowds of laughing negroes at the stations, who waved to

the people on the train and brought delicious candy and popcorn balls

through the car. On the seat opposite me sat my big rag doll, Nancy, in

a new gingham dress and a beruffled sunbonnet, looking at me out of

two bead eyes. Sometimes, when I was not absorbed in Miss Sullivan's

descriptions, I remembered Nancy's existence and took her up in my arms,

but I generally calmed my conscience by making myself believe that she

was asleep.

As I shall not have occasion to refer to Nancy again, I wish to tell

here a sad experience she had soon after our arrival in Boston. She was

covered with dirt--the remains of mud pies I had compelled her to eat,

although she had never shown any special liking for them. The laundress

at the Perkins Institution secretly carried her off to give her a bath.

This was too much for poor Nancy. When I next saw her she was a formless

heap of cotton, which I should not have recognized at all except for the

two bead eyes which looked out at me reproachfully.

When the train at last pulled into the station at Boston it was as if a

beautiful fairy tale had come true. The "once upon a time" was now; the

"far-away country" was here.

We had scarcely arrived at the Perkins Institution for the Blind when

I began to make friends with the little blind children. It delighted me

inexpressibly to find that they knew the manual alphabet. What joy to

talk with other children in my own language! Until then I had been like

a foreigner speaking through an interpreter. In the school where Laura

Bridgman was taught I was in my own country. It took me some time to

appreciate the fact that my new friends were blind. I knew I could not

see; but it did not seem possible that all the eager, loving children

who gathered round me and joined heartily in my frolics were also blind.

I remember the surprise and the pain I felt as I noticed that they

placed their hands over mine when I talked to them and that they read

books with their fingers. Although I had been told this before, and

although I understood my own deprivations, yet I had thought vaguely

that since they could hear, they must have a sort of "second sight,"

and I was not prepared to find one child and another and yet another

deprived of the same precious gift. But they were so happy and contented

that I lost all sense of pain in the pleasure of their companionship.

One day spent with the blind children made me feel thoroughly at home in

my new environment, and I looked eagerly from one pleasant experience to

another as the days flew swiftly by. I could not quite convince myself

that there was much world left, for I regarded Boston as the beginning

and the end of creation.

While we were in Boston we visited Bunker Hill, and there I had my first

lesson in history. The story of the brave men who had fought on the spot

where we stood excited me greatly. I climbed the monument, counting the

steps, and wondering as I went higher and yet higher if the soldiers had

climbed this great stairway and shot at the enemy on the ground below.

The next day we went to Plymouth by water. This was my first trip on the

ocean and my first voyage in a steamboat. How full of life and motion

it was! But the rumble of the machinery made me think it was thundering,

and I began to cry, because I feared if it rained we should not be able

to have our picnic out of doors. I was more interested, I think, in

the great rock on which the Pilgrims landed than in anything else in

Plymouth. I could touch it, and perhaps that made the coming of the

Pilgrims and their toils and great deeds seem more real to me. I have

often held in my hand a little model of the Plymouth Rock which a kind

gentleman gave me at Pilgrim Hall, and I have fingered its curves, the

split in the centre and the embossed figures "1620," and turned over in

my mind all that I knew about the wonderful story of the Pilgrims.

How my childish imagination glowed with the splendour of their

enterprise! I idealized them as the bravest and most generous men that

ever sought a home in a strange land. I thought they desired the freedom

of their fellow men as well as their own. I was keenly surprised and

disappointed years later to learn of their acts of persecution that make

us tingle with shame, even while we glory in the courage and energy that

gave us our "Country Beautiful."

Among the many friends I made in Boston were Mr. William Endicott and

his daughter. Their kindness to me was the seed from which many pleasant

memories have since grown. One day we visited their beautiful home

at Beverly Farms. I remember with delight how I went through their

rose-garden, how their dogs, big Leo and little curly-haired Fritz with

long ears, came to meet me, and how Nimrod, the swiftest of the horses,

poked his nose into my hands for a pat and a lump of sugar. I also

remember the beach, where for the first time I played in the sand.

It was hard, smooth sand, very different from the loose, sharp sand,

mingled with kelp and shells, at Brewster. Mr. Endicott told me about

the great ships that came sailing by from Boston, bound for Europe. I

saw him many times after that, and he was always a good friend to me;

indeed, I was thinking of him when I called Boston "the City of Kind

Hearts."

CHAPTER X

Just before the Perkins Institution closed for the summer, it was

arranged that my teacher and I should spend our vacation at Brewster,

on Cape Cod, with our dear friend, Mrs. Hopkins. I was delighted, for my

mind was full of the prospective joys and of the wonderful stories I had

heard about the sea.

My most vivid recollection of that summer is the ocean. I had always

lived far inland and had never had so much as a whiff of salt air; but

I had read in a big book called "Our World" a description of the ocean

which filled me with wonder and an intense longing to touch the

mighty sea and feel it roar. So my little heart leaped high with eager

excitement when I knew that my wish was at last to be realized.

No sooner had I been helped into my bathing-suit than I sprang out upon

the warm sand and without thought of fear plunged into the cool water.

I felt the great billows rock and sink. The buoyant motion of the water

filled me with an exquisite, quivering joy. Suddenly my ecstasy gave

place to terror; for my foot struck against a rock and the next instant

there was a rush of water over my head. I thrust out my hands to grasp

some support, I clutched at the water and at the seaweed which the waves

tossed in my face. But all my frantic efforts were in vain. The waves

seemed to be playing a game with me, and tossed me from one to another

in their wild frolic. It was fearful! The good, firm earth had slipped

from my feet, and everything seemed shut out from this strange,

all-enveloping element--life, air, warmth and love. At last, however,

the sea, as if weary of its new toy, threw me back on the shore, and in

another instant I was clasped in my teacher's arms. Oh, the comfort

of the long, tender embrace! As soon as I had recovered from my panic

sufficiently to say anything, I demanded: "Who put salt in the water?"

After I had recovered from my first experience in the water, I thought

it great fun to sit on a big rock in my bathing-suit and feel wave after

wave dash against the rock, sending up a shower of spray which quite

covered me. I felt the pebbles rattling as the waves threw their

ponderous weight against the shore; the whole beach seemed racked by

their terrific onset, and the air throbbed with their pulsations. The

breakers would swoop back to gather themselves for a mightier leap, and

I clung to the rock, tense, fascinated, as I felt the dash and roar of

the rushing sea!

I could never stay long enough on the shore. The tang of the untainted,

fresh and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought, and the shells

and pebbles and the seaweed with tiny living creatures attached to it

never lost their fascination for me. One day Miss Sullivan attracted

my attention to a strange object which she had captured basking in the

shallow water. It was a great horseshoe crab--the first one I had ever

seen. I felt of him and thought it very strange that he should carry

his house on his back. It suddenly occurred to me that he might make a

delightful pet; so I seized him by the tail with both hands and carried

him home. This feat pleased me highly, as his body was very heavy, and

it took all my strength to drag him half a mile. I would not leave Miss

Sullivan in peace until she had put the crab in a trough near the well

where I was confident he would be secure. But next morning I went to the

trough, and lo, he had disappeared! Nobody knew where he had gone, or

how he had escaped. My disappointment was bitter at the time; but little

by little I came to realize that it was not kind or wise to force this

poor dumb creature out of his element, and after awhile I felt happy in

the thought that perhaps he had returned to the sea.

CHAPTER XI

In the autumn I returned to my Southern home with a heart full of joyous

memories. As I recall that visit North I am filled with wonder at the

richness and variety of the experiences that cluster about it. It

seems to have been the beginning of everything. The treasures of a

new, beautiful world were laid at my feet, and I took in pleasure and

information at every turn. I lived myself into all things. I was never

still a moment; my life was as full of motion as those little insects

that crowd a whole existence into one brief day. I met many people who

talked with me by spelling into my hand, and thought in joyous sympathy

leaped up to meet thought, and behold, a miracle had been wrought! The

barren places between my mind and the minds of others blossomed like the

rose.

I spent the autumn months with my family at our summer cottage, on a

mountain about fourteen miles from Tuscumbia. It was called Fern Quarry,

because near it there was a limestone quarry, long since abandoned.

Three frolicsome little streams ran through it from springs in the rocks

above, leaping here and tumbling there in laughing cascades wherever the

rocks tried to bar their way. The opening was filled with ferns which

completely covered the beds of limestone and in places hid the streams.

The rest of the mountain was thickly wooded. Here were great oaks and

splendid evergreens with trunks like mossy pillars, from the branches of

which hung garlands of ivy and mistletoe, and persimmon trees, the

odour of which pervaded every nook and corner of the wood--an illusive,

fragrant something that made the heart glad. In places the wild

muscadine and scuppernong vines stretched from tree to tree, making

arbours which were always full of butterflies and buzzing insects. It

was delightful to lose ourselves in the green hollows of that tangled

wood in the late afternoon, and to smell the cool, delicious odours that

came up from the earth at the close of day.

Our cottage was a sort of rough camp, beautifully situated on the top of

the mountain among oaks and pines. The small rooms were arranged on each

side of a long open hall. Round the house was a wide piazza, where the

mountain winds blew, sweet with all wood-scents. We lived on the piazza

most of the time--there we worked, ate and played. At the back door

there was a great butternut tree, round which the steps had been built,

and in front the trees stood so close that I could touch them and feel

the wind shake their branches, or the leaves twirl downward in the

autumn blast.

Many visitors came to Fern Quarry. In the evening, by the campfire, the

men played cards and whiled away the hours in talk and sport. They told

stories of their wonderful feats with fowl, fish and quadruped--how

many wild ducks and turkeys they had shot, what "savage trout" they had

caught, and how they had bagged the craftiest foxes, outwitted the most

clever 'possums and overtaken the fleetest deer, until I thought that

surely the lion, the tiger, the bear and the rest of the wild tribe

would not be able to stand before these wily hunters. "To-morrow to the

chase!" was their good-night shout as the circle of merry friends broke

up for the night. The men slept in the hall outside our door, and I

could feel the deep breathing of the dogs and the hunters as they lay on

their improvised beds.

At dawn I was awakened by the smell of coffee, the rattling of guns,

and the heavy footsteps of the men as they strode about, promising

themselves the greatest luck of the season. I could also feel the

stamping of the horses, which they had ridden out from town and hitched

under the trees, where they stood all night, neighing loudly, impatient

to be off. At last the men mounted, and, as they say in the old songs,

away went the steeds with bridles ringing and whips cracking and hounds

racing ahead, and away went the champion hunters "with hark and whoop

and wild halloo!"

Later in the morning we made preparations for a barbecue. A fire was

kindled at the bottom of a deep hole in the ground, big sticks were laid

crosswise at the top, and meat was hung from them and turned on spits.

Around the fire squatted negroes, driving away the flies with long

branches. The savoury odour of the meat made me hungry long before the

tables were set.

When the bustle and excitement of preparation was at its height, the

hunting party made its appearance, struggling in by twos and threes, the

men hot and weary, the horses covered with foam, and the jaded hounds

panting and dejected--and not a single kill! Every man declared that he

had seen at least one deer, and that the animal had come very close;

but however hotly the dogs might pursue the game, however well the

guns might be aimed, at the snap of the trigger there was not a deer

in sight. They had been as fortunate as the little boy who said he came

very near seeing a rabbit--he saw his tracks. The party soon forgot its

disappointment, however, and we sat down, not to venison, but to a tamer

feast of veal and roast pig.

One summer I had my pony at Fern Quarry. I called him Black Beauty, as I

had just read the book, and he resembled his namesake in every way, from

his glossy black coat to the white star on his forehead. I spent many of

my happiest hours on his back. Occasionally, when it was quite safe,

my teacher would let go the leading-rein, and the pony sauntered on or

stopped at his sweet will to eat grass or nibble the leaves of the trees

that grew beside the narrow trail.

On mornings when I did not care for the ride, my teacher and I would

start after breakfast for a ramble in the woods, and allow ourselves

to get lost amid the trees and vines, with no road to follow except

the paths made by cows and horses. Frequently we came upon impassable

thickets which forced us to take a round about way. We always returned

to the cottage with armfuls of laurel, goldenrod, ferns and gorgeous

swamp-flowers such as grow only in the South.

Sometimes I would go with Mildred and my little cousins to gather

persimmons. I did not eat them; but I loved their fragrance and enjoyed

hunting for them in the leaves and grass. We also went nutting, and I

helped them open the chestnut burrs and break the shells of hickory-nuts

and walnuts--the big, sweet walnuts!

At the foot of the mountain there was a railroad, and the children

watched the trains whiz by. Sometimes a terrific whistle brought us to

the steps, and Mildred told me in great excitement that a cow or a

horse had strayed on the track. About a mile distant there was a trestle

spanning a deep gorge. It was very difficult to walk over, the ties were

wide apart and so narrow that one felt as if one were walking on knives.

I had never crossed it until one day Mildred, Miss Sullivan and I were

lost in the woods, and wandered for hours without finding a path.

Suddenly Mildred pointed with her little hand and exclaimed, "There's

the trestle!" We would have taken any way rather than this; but it was

late and growing dark, and the trestle was a short cut home. I had to

feel for the rails with my toe; but I was not afraid, and got on

very well, until all at once there came a faint "puff, puff" from the

distance.

"I see the train!" cried Mildred, and in another minute it would have

been upon us had we not climbed down on the crossbraces while it rushed

over our heads. I felt the hot breath from the engine on my face, and

the smoke and ashes almost choked us. As the train rumbled by, the

trestle shook and swayed until I thought we should be dashed to the

chasm below. With the utmost difficulty we regained the track. Long

after dark we reached home and found the cottage empty; the family were

all out hunting for us.

CHAPTER XII

After my first visit to Boston, I spent almost every winter in the

North. Once I went on a visit to a New England village with its frozen

lakes and vast snow fields. It was then that I had opportunities such as

had never been mine to enter into the treasures of the snow.

I recall my surprise on discovering that a mysterious hand had stripped

the trees and bushes, leaving only here and there a wrinkled leaf. The

birds had flown, and their empty nests in the bare trees were filled

with snow. Winter was on hill and field. The earth seemed benumbed by

his icy touch, and the very spirits of the trees had withdrawn to their

roots, and there, curled up in the dark, lay fast asleep. All life

seemed to have ebbed away, and even when the sun shone the day was

Shrunk and cold,

As if her veins were sapless and old,

And she rose up decrepitly

For a last dim look at earth and sea.

The withered grass and the bushes were transformed into a forest of

icicles.

Then came a day when the chill air portended a snowstorm. We rushed

out-of-doors to feel the first few tiny flakes descending. Hour by hour

the flakes dropped silently, softly from their airy height to the earth,

and the country became more and more level. A snowy night closed upon

the world, and in the morning one could scarcely recognize a feature

of the landscape. All the roads were hidden, not a single landmark was

visible, only a waste of snow with trees rising out of it.

In the evening a wind from the northeast sprang up, and the flakes

rushed hither and thither in furious melee. Around the great fire we sat

and told merry tales, and frolicked, and quite forgot that we were in

the midst of a desolate solitude, shut in from all communication with

the outside world. But during the night the fury of the wind increased

to such a degree that it thrilled us with a vague terror. The rafters

creaked and strained, and the branches of the trees surrounding the

house rattled and beat against the windows, as the winds rioted up and

down the country.

On the third day after the beginning of the storm the snow ceased. The

sun broke through the clouds and shone upon a vast, undulating

white plain. High mounds, pyramids heaped in fantastic shapes, and

impenetrable drifts lay scattered in every direction.

Narrow paths were shoveled through the drifts. I put on my cloak and

hood and went out. The air stung my cheeks like fire. Half walking in

the paths, half working our way through the lesser drifts, we succeeded

in reaching a pine grove just outside a broad pasture. The trees stood

motionless and white like figures in a marble frieze. There was no odour

of pine-needles. The rays of the sun fell upon the trees, so that the

twigs sparkled like diamonds and dropped in showers when we touched

them. So dazzling was the light, it penetrated even the darkness that

veils my eyes.

As the days wore on, the drifts gradually shrunk, but before they were

wholly gone another storm came, so that I scarcely felt the earth under

my feet once all winter. At intervals the trees lost their icy covering,

and the bulrushes and underbrush were bare; but the lake lay frozen and

hard beneath the sun.

Our favourite amusement during that winter was tobogganing. In places

the shore of the lake rises abruptly from the water's edge. Down these

steep slopes we used to coast. We would get on our toboggan, a boy

would give us a shove, and off we went! Plunging through drifts, leaping

hollows, swooping down upon the lake, we would shoot across its gleaming

surface to the opposite bank. What joy! What exhilarating madness! For

one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and

joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine!

CHAPTER XIII

It was in the spring of 1890 that I learned to speak. The impulse to

utter audible sounds had always been strong within me. I used to make

noises, keeping one hand on my throat while the other hand felt the

movements of my lips. I was pleased with anything that made a noise and

liked to feel the cat purr and the dog bark. I also liked to keep my

hand on a singer's throat, or on a piano when it was being played.

Before I lost my sight and hearing, I was fast learning to talk, but

after my illness it was found that I had ceased to speak because I could

not hear. I used to sit in my mother's lap all day long and keep my

hands on her face because it amused me to feel the motions of her lips;

and I moved my lips, too, although I had forgotten what talking was. My

friends say that I laughed and cried naturally, and for awhile I

made many sounds and word-elements, not because they were a means of

communication, but because the need of exercising my vocal organs was

imperative. There was, however, one word the meaning of which I still

remembered, WATER. I pronounced it "wa-wa." Even this became less and

less intelligible until the time when Miss Sullivan began to teach me.

I stopped using it only after I had learned to spell the word on my

fingers.

I had known for a long time that the people about me used a method of

communication different from mine; and even before I knew that a deaf

child could be taught to speak, I was conscious of dissatisfaction with

the means of communication I already possessed. One who is entirely

dependent upon the manual alphabet has always a sense of restraint,

of narrowness. This feeling began to agitate me with a vexing,

forward-reaching sense of a lack that should be filled. My thoughts

would often rise and beat up like birds against the wind, and I

persisted in using my lips and voice. Friends tried to discourage this

tendency, fearing lest it would lead to disappointment. But I persisted,

and an accident soon occurred which resulted in the breaking down of

this great barrier--I heard the story of Ragnhild Kaata.

In 1890 Mrs. Lamson, who had been one of Laura Bridgman's teachers, and

who had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden, came to see me,

and told me of Ragnhild Kaata, a deaf and blind girl in Norway who had

actually been taught to speak. Mrs. Lamson had scarcely finished telling

me about this girl's success before I was on fire with eagerness. I

resolved that I, too, would learn to speak. I would not rest satisfied

until my teacher took me, for advice and assistance, to Miss Sarah

Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School. This lovely, sweet-natured

lady offered to teach me herself, and we began the twenty-sixth of

March, 1890.

Miss Fuller's method was this: she passed my hand lightly over her face,

and let me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a

sound. I was eager to imitate every motion and in an hour had learned

six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. Miss Fuller gave me eleven

lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt

when I uttered my first connected sentence, "It is warm." True, they

were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My

soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching

through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.

No deaf child who has earnestly tried to speak the words which he has

never heard--to come out of the prison of silence, where no tone

of love, no song of bird, no strain of music ever pierces the

stillness--can forget the thrill of surprise, the joy of discovery

which came over him when he uttered his first word. Only such a one

can appreciate the eagerness with which I talked to my toys, to stones,

trees, birds and dumb animals, or the delight I felt when at my call

Mildred ran to me or my dogs obeyed my commands. It is an unspeakable

boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no

interpretation. As I talked, happy thoughts fluttered up out of my words

that might perhaps have struggled in vain to escape my fingers.

But it must not be supposed that I could really talk in this short time.

I had learned only the elements of speech. Miss Fuller and Miss Sullivan

could understand me, but most people would not have understood one word

in a hundred. Nor is it true that, after I had learned these elements,

I did the rest of the work myself. But for Miss Sullivan's genius,

untiring perseverance and devotion, I could not have progressed as far

as I have toward natural speech. In the first place, I laboured night

and day before I could be understood even by my most intimate friends;

in the second place, I needed Miss Sullivan's assistance constantly in

my efforts to articulate each sound clearly and to combine all sounds

in a thousand ways. Even now she calls my attention every day to

mispronounced words.

All teachers of the deaf know what this means, and only they can at all

appreciate the peculiar difficulties with which I had to contend. In

reading my teacher's lips I was wholly dependent on my fingers: I had

to use the sense of touch in catching the vibrations of the throat, the

movements of the mouth and the expression of the face; and often this

sense was at fault. In such cases I was forced to repeat the words or

sentences, sometimes for hours, until I felt the proper ring in my own

voice. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and

weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that

I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished,

spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my

achievement.

"My little sister will understand me now," was a thought stronger than

all obstacles. I used to repeat ecstatically, "I am not dumb now." I

could not be despondent while I anticipated the delight of talking to my

mother and reading her responses from her lips. It astonished me to

find how much easier it is to talk than to spell with the fingers, and

I discarded the manual alphabet as a medium of communication on my part;

but Miss Sullivan and a few friends still use it in speaking to me, for

it is more convenient and more rapid than lip-reading.

Just here, perhaps, I had better explain our use of the manual alphabet,

which seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or

talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet

generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the

speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The position of the

hand is as easy to feel as it is to see. I do not feel each letter

any more than you see each letter separately when you read. Constant

practice makes the fingers very flexible, and some of my friends spell

rapidly--about as fast as an expert writes on a typewriter. The mere

spelling is, of course, no more a conscious act than it is in writing.

When I had made speech my own, I could not wait to go home. At last

the happiest of happy moments arrived. I had made my homeward journey,

talking constantly to Miss Sullivan, not for the sake of talking, but

determined to improve to the last minute. Almost before I knew it, the

train stopped at the Tuscumbia station, and there on the platform stood

the whole family. My eyes fill with tears now as I think how my mother

pressed me close to her, speechless and trembling with delight, taking

in every syllable that I spoke, while little Mildred seized my free

hand and kissed it and danced, and my father expressed his pride and

affection in a big silence. It was as if Isaiah's prophecy had been

fulfilled in me, "The mountains and the hills shall break forth before

you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their

hands!"

CHAPTER XIV

The winter of 1892 was darkened by the one cloud in my childhood's

bright sky. Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in

doubt, anxiety and fear. Books lost their charm for me, and even now the

thought of those dreadful days chills my heart. A little story called

"The Frost King," which I wrote and sent to Mr. Anagnos, of the Perkins

Institution for the Blind, was at the root of the trouble. In order to

make the matter clear, I must set forth the facts connected with this

episode, which justice to my teacher and to myself compels me to relate.

I wrote the story when I was at home, the autumn after I had learned to

speak. We had stayed up at Fern Quarry later than usual. While we

were there, Miss Sullivan had described to me the beauties of the late

foliage, and it seems that her descriptions revived the memory of

a story, which must have been read to me, and which I must have

unconsciously retained. I thought then that I was "making up a story,"

as children say, and I eagerly sat down to write it before the ideas

should slip from me. My thoughts flowed easily; I felt a sense of joy in

the composition. Words and images came tripping to my finger ends, and

as I thought out sentence after sentence, I wrote them on my braille

slate. Now, if words and images come to me without effort, it is a

pretty sure sign that they are not the offspring of my own mind, but

stray waifs that I regretfully dismiss. At that time I eagerly absorbed

everything I read without a thought of authorship, and even now I cannot

be quite sure of the boundary line between my ideas and those I find in

books. I suppose that is because so many of my impressions come to me

through the medium of others' eyes and ears.

When the story was finished, I read it to my teacher, and I recall

now vividly the pleasure I felt in the more beautiful passages, and

my annoyance at being interrupted to have the pronunciation of a word

corrected. At dinner it was read to the assembled family, who were

surprised that I could write so well. Some one asked me if I had read it

in a book.

This question surprised me very much; for I had not the faintest

recollection of having had it read to me. I spoke up and said, "Oh, no,

it is my story, and I have written it for Mr. Anagnos."

Accordingly I copied the story and sent it to him for his birthday. It

was suggested that I should change the title from "Autumn Leaves"

to "The Frost King," which I did. I carried the little story to the

post-office myself, feeling as if I were walking on air. I little

dreamed how cruelly I should pay for that birthday gift.

Mr. Anagnos was delighted with "The Frost King," and published it in

one of the Perkins Institution reports. This was the pinnacle of my

happiness, from which I was in a little while dashed to earth. I had

been in Boston only a short time when it was discovered that a story

similar to "The Frost King," called "The Frost Fairies" by Miss Margaret

T. Canby, had appeared before I was born in a book called "Birdie and

His Friends." The two stories were so much alike in thought and language

that it was evident Miss Canby's story had been read to me, and that

mine was--a plagiarism. It was difficult to make me understand this; but

when I did understand I was astonished and grieved. No child ever drank

deeper of the cup of bitterness than I did. I had disgraced myself;

I had brought suspicion upon those I loved best. And yet how could it

possibly have happened? I racked my brain until I was weary to recall

anything about the frost that I had read before I wrote "The Frost

King" but I could remember nothing, except the common reference to Jack

Frost, and a poem for children, "The Freaks of the Frost," and I knew I

had not used that in my composition.

At first Mr. Anagnos, though deeply troubled, seemed to believe me. He

was unusually tender and kind to me, and for a brief space the shadow

lifted. To please him I tried not to be unhappy, and to make myself as

pretty as possible for the celebration of Washington's birthday, which

took place very soon after I received the sad news.

I was to be Ceres in a kind of masque given by the blind girls. How well

I remember the graceful draperies that enfolded me, the bright autumn

leaves that wreathed my head, and the fruit and grain at my feet and in

my hands, and beneath all the piety of the masque the oppressive sense

of coming ill that made my heart heavy.

The night before the celebration, one of the teachers of the Institution

had asked me a question connected with "The Frost King," and I was

telling her that Miss Sullivan had talked to me about Jack Frost and

his wonderful works. Something I said made her think she detected in my

words a confession that I did remember Miss Canby's story of "The Frost

Fairies," and she laid her conclusions before Mr. Anagnos, although I

had told her most emphatically that she was mistaken.

Mr. Anagnos, who loved me tenderly, thinking that he had been deceived,

turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of love and innocence. He believed,

or at least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen

the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him to win his

admiration. I was brought before a court of investigation composed of

the teachers and officers of the Institution, and Miss Sullivan was

asked to leave me. Then I was questioned and cross-questioned with what

seemed to me a determination on the part of my judges to force me to

acknowledge that I remembered having had "The Frost Fairies" read to

me. I felt in every question the doubt and suspicion that was in

their minds, and I felt, too, that a loved friend was looking at me

reproachfully, although I could not have put all this into words. The

blood pressed about my thumping heart, and I could scarcely speak,

except in monosyllables. Even the consciousness that it was only a

dreadful mistake did not lessen my suffering, and when at last I was

allowed to leave the room, I was dazed and did not notice my teacher's

caresses, or the tender words of my friends, who said I was a brave

little girl and they were proud of me.

As I lay in my bed that night, I wept as I hope few children have wept.

I felt so cold, I imagined I should die before morning, and the thought

comforted me. I think if this sorrow had come to me when I was older,

it would have broken my spirit beyond repairing. But the angel of

forgetfulness has gathered up and carried away much of the misery and

all the bitterness of those sad days.

Miss Sullivan had never heard of "The Frost Fairies" or of the book

in which it was published. With the assistance of Dr. Alexander Graham

Bell, she investigated the matter carefully, and at last it came out

that Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins had a copy of Miss Canby's "Birdie and

His Friends" in 1888, the year that we spent the summer with her at

Brewster. Mrs. Hopkins was unable to find her copy; but she has told me

that at that time, while Miss Sullivan was away on a vacation, she tried

to amuse me by reading from various books, and although she could not

remember reading "The Frost Fairies" any more than I, yet she felt

sure that "Birdie and His Friends" was one of them. She explained the

disappearance of the book by the fact that she had a short time

before sold her house and disposed of many juvenile books, such as

old schoolbooks and fairy tales, and that "Birdie and His Friends" was

probably among them.

The stories had little or no meaning for me then; but the mere spelling

of the strange words was sufficient to amuse a little child who could do

almost nothing to amuse herself; and although I do not recall a single

circumstance connected with the reading of the stories, yet I cannot

help thinking that I made a great effort to remember the words, with the

intention of having my teacher explain them when she returned. One thing

is certain, the language was ineffaceably stamped upon my brain, though

for a long time no one knew it, least of all myself.

When Miss Sullivan came back, I did not speak to her about "The Frost

Fairies," probably because she began at once to read "Little Lord

Fauntleroy," which filled my mind to the exclusion of everything else.

But the fact remains that Miss Canby's story was read to me once, and

that long after I had forgotten it, it came back to me so naturally that

I never suspected that it was the child of another mind.

In my trouble I received many messages of love and sympathy. All the

friends I loved best, except one, have remained my own to the present

time.

Miss Canby herself wrote kindly, "Some day you will write a great story

out of your own head, that will be a comfort and help to many." But this

kind prophecy has never been fulfilled. I have never played with words

again for the mere pleasure of the game. Indeed, I have ever since been

tortured by the fear that what I write is not my own. For a long time,

when I wrote a letter, even to my mother, I was seized with a sudden

feeling of terror, and I would spell the sentences over and over, to

make sure that I had not read them in a book. Had it not been for the

persistent encouragement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given

up trying to write altogether.

I have read "The Frost Fairies" since, also the letters I wrote in which

I used other ideas of Miss Canby's. I find in one of them, a letter to

Mr. Anagnos, dated September 29, 1891, words and sentiments exactly like

those of the book. At the time I was writing "The Frost King," and this

letter, like many others, contains phrases which show that my mind was

saturated with the story. I represent my teacher as saying to me of the

golden autumn leaves, "Yes, they are beautiful enough to comfort us for

the flight of summer"--an idea direct from Miss Canby's story.

This habit of assimilating what pleased me and giving it out again as my

own appears in much of my early correspondence and my first attempts at

writing. In a composition which I wrote about the old cities of Greece

and Italy, I borrowed my glowing descriptions, with variations, from

sources I have forgotten. I knew Mr. Anagnos's great love of antiquity

and his enthusiastic appreciation of all beautiful sentiments about

Italy and Greece. I therefore gathered from all the books I read every

bit of poetry or of history that I thought would give him pleasure. 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.

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.

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. This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends--pretty

bits of silk and velvet; but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to

touch always predominated. Likewise my compositions are made up of crude

notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions

of the authors I have read. It seems to me that the great difficulty

of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our

confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more

than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much

like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in

mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the

spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep

on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not

willing to acknowledge defeat.

"There is no way to become original, except to be born so," says

Stevenson, and although I may not be original, I hope sometime to

outgrow my artificial, periwigged compositions. Then, perhaps, my own

thoughts and experiences will come to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and

hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of "The Frost

King" trammel my efforts.

So this sad experience may have done me good and set me thinking on some

of the problems of composition. My only regret is that it resulted in

the loss of one of my dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos.

Since the publication of "The Story of My Life" in the Ladies' Home

Journal, Mr. Anagnos has made a statement, in a letter to Mr. Macy, that

at the time of the "Frost King" matter, he believed I was innocent. He

says, the court of investigation before which I was brought consisted

of eight people: four blind, four seeing persons. Four of them, he says,

thought I knew that Miss Canby's story had been read to me, and the

others did not hold this view. Mr. Anagnos states that he cast his vote

with those who were favourable to me.

But, however the case may have been, with whichever side he may have

cast his vote, when I went into the room where Mr. Anagnos had so often

held me on his knee and, forgetting his many cares, had shared in my

frolics, and found there persons who seemed to doubt me, I felt that

there was something hostile and menacing in the very atmosphere, and

subsequent events have borne out this impression. For two years he seems

to have held the belief that Miss Sullivan and I were innocent. Then he

evidently retracted his favourable judgment, why I do not know. Nor did

I know the details of the investigation. I never knew even the names of

the members of the "court" who did not speak to me. I was too excited

to notice anything, too frightened to ask questions. Indeed, I could

scarcely think what I was saying, or what was being said to me.

I have given this account of the "Frost King" affair because it was

important in my life and education; and, in order that there might be no

misunderstanding, I have set forth all the facts as they appear to me,

without a thought of defending myself or of laying blame on any one.

CHAPTER XV

The summer and winter following the "Frost King" incident I spent with

my family in Alabama. I recall with delight that home-going. Everything

had budded and blossomed. I was happy. "The Frost King" was forgotten.

When the ground was strewn with the crimson and golden leaves of autumn,

and the musk-scented grapes that covered the arbour at the end of the

garden were turning golden brown in the sunshine, I began to write a

sketch of my life--a year after I had written "The Frost King."

I was still excessively scrupulous about everything I wrote. The thought

that what I wrote might not be absolutely my own tormented me. No one

knew of these fears except my teacher. A strange sensitiveness prevented

me from referring to the "Frost King" and often when an idea flashed

out in the course of conversation I would spell softly to her, "I am

not sure it is mine." At other times, in the midst of a paragraph I was

writing, I said to myself, "Suppose it should be found that all this was

written by some one long ago!" An impish fear clutched my hand, so that

I could not write any more that day. And even now I sometimes feel the

same uneasiness and disquietude. Miss Sullivan consoled and helped me in

every way she could think of; but the terrible experience I had passed

through left a lasting impression on my mind, the significance of

which I am only just beginning to understand. It was with the hope of

restoring my self-confidence that she persuaded me to write for the

Youth's Companion a brief account of my life. I was then twelve years

old. As I look back on my struggle to write that little story, it seems

to me that I must have had a prophetic vision of the good that would

come of the undertaking, or I should surely have failed.

I wrote timidly, fearfully, but resolutely, urged on by my teacher, who

knew that if I persevered, I should find my mental foothold again and

get a grip on my faculties. Up to the time of the "Frost King" episode,

I had lived the unconscious life of a little child; now my thoughts were

turned inward, and I beheld things invisible. Gradually I emerged from

the penumbra of that experience with a mind made clearer by trial and

with a truer knowledge of life.

The chief events of the year 1893 were my trip to Washington during

the inauguration of President Cleveland, and visits to Niagara and

the World's Fair. Under such circumstances my studies were constantly

interrupted and often put aside for many weeks, so that it is impossible

for me to give a connected account of them.

We went to Niagara in March, 1893. It is difficult to describe my

emotions when I stood on the point which overhangs the American Falls

and felt the air vibrate and the earth tremble.

It seems strange to many people that I should be impressed by the

wonders and beauties of Niagara. They are always asking: "What does this

beauty or that music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up

the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?" In the most

evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their

meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or

goodness.

During the summer of 1893, Miss Sullivan and I visited the World's Fair

with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. I recall with unmixed delight those days

when a thousand childish fancies became beautiful realities. Every day

in imagination I made a trip round the world, and I saw many wonders

from the uttermost parts of the earth--marvels of invention, treasuries

of industry and skill and all the activities of human life actually

passed under my finger tips.

I liked to visit the Midway Plaisance. It seemed like the "Arabian

Nights," it was crammed so full of novelty and interest. Here was

the India of my books in the curious bazaar with its Shivas and

elephant-gods; there was the land of the Pyramids concentrated in a

model Cairo with its mosques and its long processions of camels; yonder

were the lagoons of Venice, where we sailed every evening when the city

and the fountains were illuminated. I also went on board a Viking

ship which lay a short distance from the little craft. I had been on

a man-of-war before, in Boston, and it interested me to see, on this

Viking ship, how the seaman was once all in all--how he sailed and took

storm and calm alike with undaunted heart, and gave chase to whosoever

reechoed his cry, "We are of the sea!" and fought with brains and

sinews, self-reliant, self-sufficient, instead of being thrust into the

background by unintelligent machinery, as Jack is to-day. So it always

is--"man only is interesting to man."

At a little distance from this ship there was a model of the Santa

Maria, which I also examined. The captain showed me Columbus's cabin and

the desk with an hour-glass on it. This small instrument impressed me

most because it made me think how weary the heroic navigator must have

felt as he saw the sand dropping grain by grain while desperate men were

plotting against his life.

Mr. Higinbotham, President of the World's Fair, kindly gave me

permission to touch the exhibits, and with an eagerness as insatiable

as that with which Pizarro seized the treasures of Peru, I took in

the glories of the Fair with my fingers. It was a sort of tangible

kaleidoscope, this white city of the West. Everything fascinated me,

especially the French bronzes. They were so lifelike, I thought they

were angel visions which the artist had caught and bound in earthly

forms.

At the Cape of Good Hope exhibit, I learned much about the processes of

mining diamonds. Whenever it was possible, I touched the machinery

while it was in motion, so as to get a clearer idea how the stones were

weighed, cut, and polished. I searched in the washings for a diamond and

found it myself--the only true diamond, they said, that was ever found

in the United States.

Dr. Bell went everywhere with us and in his own delightful way described

to me the objects of greatest interest. In the electrical building we

examined the telephones, autophones, phonographs, and other inventions,

and he made me understand how it is possible to send a message on wires

that mock space and outrun time, and, like Prometheus, to draw fire from

the sky. We also visited the anthropological department, and I was much

interested in the relics of ancient Mexico, in the rude stone implements

that are so often the only record of an age--the simple monuments of

nature's unlettered children (so I thought as I fingered them) that seem

bound to last while the memorials of kings and sages crumble in dust

away--and in the Egyptian mummies, which I shrank from touching. From

these relics I learned more about the progress of man than I have heard

or read since.

All these experiences added a great many new terms to my vocabulary,

and in the three weeks I spent at the Fair I took a long leap from the

little child's interest in fairy tales and toys to the appreciation of

the real and the earnest in the workaday world.

CHAPTER XVI

Before October, 1893, I had studied various subjects by myself in a more

or less desultory manner. I read the histories of Greece, Rome and the

United States. I had a French grammar in raised print, and as I already

knew some French, I often amused myself by composing in my head short

exercises, using the new words as I came across them, and ignoring rules

and other technicalities as much as possible. I even tried, without

aid, to master the French pronunciation, as I found all the letters and

sounds described in the book. Of course this was tasking slender powers

for great ends; but it gave me something to do on a rainy day, and

I acquired a sufficient knowledge of French to read with pleasure

La Fontaine's "Fables," "Le Medecin Malgre Lui" and passages from

"Athalie."

I also gave considerable time to the improvement of my speech. I read

aloud to Miss Sullivan and recited passages from my favourite poets,

which I had committed to memory; she corrected my pronunciation and

helped me to phrase and inflect. It was not, however, until October,

1893, after I had recovered from the fatigue and excitement of my visit

to the World's Fair, that I began to have lessons in special subjects at

fixed hours.

Miss Sullivan and I were at that time in Hulton, Pennsylvania, visiting

the family of Mr. William Wade. Mr. Irons, a neighbour of theirs, was

a good Latin scholar; it was arranged that I should study under him. I

remember him as a man of rare, sweet nature and of wide experience.

He taught me Latin grammar principally; but he often helped me in

arithmetic, which I found as troublesome as it was uninteresting. Mr.

Irons also read with me Tennyson's "In Memoriam." I had read many books

before, but never from a critical point of view. I learned for the first

time to know an author, to recognize his style as I recognize the clasp

of a friend's hand.

At first I was rather unwilling to study Latin grammar. It seemed absurd

to waste time analyzing every word I came across--noun, genitive,

singular, feminine--when its meaning was quite plain. I thought I might

just as well describe my pet in order to know it--order, vertebrate;

division, quadruped; class, mammalia; genus, felinus; species, cat;

individual, Tabby. But as I got deeper into the subject, I became more

interested, and the beauty of the language delighted me. I often amused

myself by reading Latin passages, picking up words I understood and

trying to make sense. I have never ceased to enjoy this pastime.

There is nothing more beautiful, I think, than the evanescent fleeting

images and sentiments presented by a language one is just becoming

familiar with--ideas that flit across the mental sky, shaped and tinted

by capricious fancy. Miss Sullivan sat beside me at my lessons, spelling

into my hand whatever Mr. Irons said, and looking up new words for me. I

was just beginning to read Caesar's "Gallic War" when I went to my home

in Alabama.

CHAPTER XVII

In the summer of 1894, I attended the meeting at Chautauqua of the

American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf.

There it was arranged that I should go to the Wright-Humason School for

the Deaf in New York City. I went there in October, 1894, accompanied

by Miss Sullivan. This school was chosen especially for the purpose

of obtaining the highest advantages in vocal culture and training in

lip-reading. In addition to my work in these subjects, I studied, during

the two years I was in the school, arithmetic, physical geography,

French and German.

Miss Reamy, my German teacher, could use the manual alphabet, and after

I had acquired a small vocabulary, we talked together in German

whenever we had a chance, and in a few months I could understand almost

everything she said. Before the end of the first year I read "Wilhelm

Tell" with the greatest delight. Indeed, I think I made more progress

in German than in any of my other studies. I found French much more

difficult. I studied it with Madame Olivier, a French lady who did not

know the manual alphabet, and who was obliged to give her instruction

orally. I could not read her lips easily; so my progress was much slower

than in German. I managed, however, to read "Le Medecin Malgre Lui"

again. It was very amusing but I did not like it nearly so well as

"Wilhelm Tell."

My progress in lip-reading and speech was not what my teachers and I had

hoped and expected it would be. It was my ambition to speak like other

people, and my teachers believed that this could be accomplished; but,

although we worked hard and faithfully, yet we did not quite reach our

goal. I suppose we aimed too high, and disappointment was therefore

inevitable. I still regarded arithmetic as a system of pitfalls. I hung

about the dangerous frontier of "guess," avoiding with infinite

trouble to myself and others the broad valley of reason. When I was not

guessing, I was jumping at conclusions, and this fault, in addition

to my dullness, aggravated my difficulties more than was right or

necessary.

But although these disappointments caused me great depression at times,

I pursued my other studies with unflagging interest, especially physical

geography. It was a joy to learn the secrets of nature: how--in the

picturesque language of the Old Testament--the winds are made to blow

from the four corners of the heavens, how the vapours ascend from the

ends of the earth, how rivers are cut out among the rocks, and mountains

overturned by the roots, and in what ways man may overcome many forces

mightier than himself. The two years in New York were happy ones, and I

look back to them with genuine pleasure.

I remember especially the walks we all took together every day in

Central Park, the only part of the city that was congenial to me. I

never lost a jot of my delight in this great park. I loved to have

it described every time I entered it; for it was beautiful in all its

aspects, and these aspects were so many that it was beautiful in a

different way each day of the nine months I spent in New York.

In the spring we made excursions to various places of interest. We

sailed on the Hudson River and wandered about on its green banks, of

which Bryant loved to sing. I liked the simple, wild grandeur of the

palisades. Among the places I visited were West Point, Tarrytown, the

home of Washington Irving, where I walked through "Sleepy Hollow."

The teachers at the Wright-Humason School were always planning how they

might give the pupils every advantage that those who hear enjoy--how

they might make much of few tendencies and passive memories in the cases

of the little ones--and lead them out of the cramping circumstances in

which their lives were set.

Before I left New York, these bright days were darkened by the greatest

sorrow that I have ever borne, except the death of my father. Mr. John

P. Spaulding, of Boston, died in February, 1896. Only those who knew and

loved him best can understand what his friendship meant to me. He, who

made every one happy in a beautiful, unobtrusive way, was most kind and

tender to Miss Sullivan and me. So long as we felt his loving presence

and knew that he took a watchful interest in our work, fraught with so

many difficulties, we could not be discouraged. His going away left a

vacancy in our lives that has never been filled.

CHAPTER XVIII

In October, 1896, I entered the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, to be

prepared for Radcliffe.

When I was a little girl, I visited Wellesley and surprised my friends

by the announcement, "Some day I shall go to college--but I shall go

to Harvard!" When asked why I would not go to Wellesley, I replied that

there were only girls there. The thought of going to college took root

in my heart and became an earnest desire, which impelled me to enter

into competition for a degree with seeing and hearing girls, in the face

of the strong opposition of many true and wise friends. When I left

New York the idea had become a fixed purpose; and it was decided that

I should go to Cambridge. This was the nearest approach I could get to

Harvard and to the fulfillment of my childish declaration.

At the Cambridge School the plan was to have Miss Sullivan attend the

classes with me and interpret to me the instruction given.

Of course my instructors had had no experience in teaching any but

normal pupils, and my only means of conversing with them was reading

their lips. My studies for the first year were English history, English

literature, German, Latin, arithmetic, Latin composition and occasional

themes. Until then I had never taken a course of study with the idea of

preparing for college; but I had been well drilled in English by Miss

Sullivan, and it soon became evident to my teachers that I needed no

special instruction in this subject beyond a critical study of the books

prescribed by the college. I had had, moreover, a good start in French,

and received six months' instruction in Latin; but German was the

subject with which I was most familiar.

In spite, however, of these advantages, there were serious drawbacks to

my progress. Miss Sullivan could not spell out in my hand all that the

books required, and it was very difficult to have textbooks embossed in

time to be of use to me, although my friends in London and Philadelphia

were willing to hasten the work. For a while, indeed, I had to copy

my Latin in braille, so that I could recite with the other girls. My

instructors soon became sufficiently familiar with my imperfect speech

to answer my questions readily and correct mistakes. I could not make

notes in class or write exercises; but I wrote all my compositions and

translations at home on my typewriter.

Each day Miss Sullivan went to the classes with me and spelled into my

hand with infinite patience all that the teachers said. In study hours

she had to look up new words for me and read and reread notes and books

I did not have in raised print. The tedium of that work is hard to

conceive. Frau Gröte, my German teacher, and Mr. Gilman, the principal,

were the only teachers in the school who learned the finger alphabet to

give me instruction. No one realized more fully than dear Frau Grote how

slow and inadequate her spelling was. Nevertheless, in the goodness of

her heart she laboriously spelled out her instructions to me in special

lessons twice a week, to give Miss Sullivan a little rest. But, though

everybody was kind and ready to help us, there was only one hand that

could turn drudgery into pleasure.

That year I finished arithmetic, reviewed my Latin grammar, and read

three chapters of Caesar's "Gallic War." In German I read, partly with

my fingers and partly with Miss Sullivan's assistance, Schiller's "Lied

von der Glocke" and "Taucher," Heine's "Harzreise," Freytag's "Aus dem

Staat Friedrichs des Grossen," Riehl's "Fluch Der Schonheit," Lessing's

"Minna von Barnhelm," and Goethe's "Aus meinem Leben." I took the

greatest delight in these German books, especially Schiller's wonderful

lyrics, the history of Frederick the Great's magnificent achievements

and the account of Goethe's life. I was sorry to finish "Die Harzreise,"

so full of happy witticisms and charming descriptions of vine-clad

hills, streams that sing and ripple in the sunshine, and wild regions,

sacred to tradition and legend, the gray sisters of a long-vanished,

imaginative age--descriptions such as can be given only by those to whom

nature is "a feeling, a love and an appetite."

Mr. Gilman instructed me part of the year in English literature. We

read together, "As You Like It," Burke's "Speech on Conciliation with

America," and Macaulay's "Life of Samuel Johnson." Mr. Gilman's broad

views of history and literature and his clever explanations made my

work easier and pleasanter than it could have been had I only read

notes mechanically with the necessarily brief explanations given in the

classes.

Burke's speech was more instructive than any other book on a political

subject that I had ever read. My mind stirred with the stirring times,

and the characters round which the life of two contending nations

centred seemed to move right before me. I wondered more and more, while

Burke's masterly speech rolled on in mighty surges of eloquence, how it

was that King George and his ministers could have turned a deaf ear

to his warning prophecy of our victory and their humiliation. Then I

entered into the melancholy details of the relation in which the great

statesman stood to his party and to the representatives of the people. I

thought how strange it was that such precious seeds of truth and wisdom

should have fallen among the tares of ignorance and corruption.

In a different way Macaulay's "Life of Samuel Johnson" was interesting.

My heart went out to the lonely man who ate the bread of affliction in

Grub Street, and yet, in the midst of toil and cruel suffering of body

and soul, always had a kind word, and lent a helping hand to the poor

and despised. I rejoiced over all his successes, I shut my eyes to

his faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not

crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy

and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and

picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent

sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude

very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the

Demosthenes of Great Britain.

At the Cambridge school, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed the

companionship of seeing and hearing girls of my own age. I lived with

several others in one of the pleasant houses connected with the school,

the house where Mr. Howells used to live, and we all had the advantage

of home life. I joined them in many of their games, even blind man's

buff and frolics in the snow; I took long walks with them; we discussed

our studies and read aloud the things that interested us. Some of the

girls learned to speak to me, so that Miss Sullivan did not have to

repeat their conversation.

At Christmas, my mother and little sister spent the holidays with me,

and Mr. Gilman kindly offered to let Mildred study in his school. So

Mildred stayed with me in Cambridge, and for six happy months we were

hardly ever apart. It makes me most happy to remember the hours we spent

helping each other in study and sharing our recreation together.

I took my preliminary examinations for Radcliffe from the 29th of June

to the 3rd of July in 1897. The subjects I offered were Elementary and

Advanced German, French, Latin, English, and Greek and Roman history,

making nine hours in all. I passed in everything, and received "honours"

in German and English.

Perhaps an explanation of the method that was in use when I took my

examinations will not be amiss here. The student was required to pass in

sixteen hours--twelve hours being called elementary and four advanced.

He had to pass five hours at a time to have them counted. The

examination papers were given out at nine o'clock at Harvard and brought

to Radcliffe by a special messenger. Each candidate was known, not

by his name, but by a number. I was No. 233, but, as I had to use a

typewriter, my identity could not be concealed.

It was thought advisable for me to have my examinations in a room by

myself, because the noise of the typewriter might disturb the other

girls. Mr. Gilman read all the papers to me by means of the manual

alphabet. A man was placed on guard at the door to prevent interruption.

The first day I had German. Mr. Gilman sat beside me and read the paper

through first, then sentence by sentence, while I repeated the words

aloud, to make sure that I understood him perfectly. The papers were

difficult, and I felt very anxious as I wrote out my answers on the

typewriter. Mr. Gilman spelled to me what I had written, and I made such

changes as I thought necessary, and he inserted them. I wish to say here

that I have not had this advantage since in any of my examinations. At

Radcliffe no one reads the papers to me after they are written, and I

have no opportunity to correct errors unless I finish before the time is

up. In that case I correct only such mistakes as I can recall in the few

minutes allowed, and make notes of these corrections at the end of my

paper. If I passed with higher credit in the preliminaries than in the

finals, there are two reasons. In the finals, no one read my work over

to me, and in the preliminaries I offered subjects with some of which I

was in a measure familiar before my work in the Cambridge school; for at

the beginning of the year I had passed examinations in English, History,

French and German, which Mr. Gilman gave me from previous Harvard

papers.

Mr. Gilman sent my written work to the examiners with a certificate that

I, candidate No. 233, had written the papers.

All the other preliminary examinations were conducted in the same

manner. None of them was so difficult as the first. I remember that the

day the Latin paper was brought to us, Professor Schilling came in and

informed me I had passed satisfactorily in German. This encouraged me

greatly, and I sped on to the end of the ordeal with a light heart and a

steady hand.

CHAPTER XIX

When I began my second year at the Gilman school, I was full of hope

and determination to succeed. But during the first few weeks I was

confronted with unforeseen difficulties. Mr. Gilman had agreed that that

year I should study mathematics principally. I had physics, algebra,

geometry, astronomy, Greek and Latin. Unfortunately, many of the books

I needed had not been embossed in time for me to begin with the classes,

and I lacked important apparatus for some of my studies. The classes I

was in were very large, and it was impossible for the teachers to give

me special instruction. Miss Sullivan was obliged to read all the books

to me, and interpret for the instructors, and for the first time in

eleven years it seemed as if her dear hand would not be equal to the

task.

It was necessary for me to write algebra and geometry in class and solve

problems in physics, and this I could not do until we bought a braille

writer, by means of which I could put down the steps and processes of my

work. I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on

the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was

to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires, which had bent

and pointed ends. I had to carry in my mind, as Mr. Keith says in his

report, the lettering of the figures, the hypothesis and conclusion, the

construction and the process of the proof. In a word, every study had

its obstacles. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in

a way I am ashamed to remember, especially as the signs of my trouble

were afterward used against Miss Sullivan, the only person of all the

kind friends I had there, who could make the crooked straight and the

rough places smooth.

Little by little, however, my difficulties began to disappear. The

embossed books and other apparatus arrived, and I threw myself into the

work with renewed confidence. Algebra and geometry were the only studies

that continued to defy my efforts to comprehend them. As I have said

before, I had no aptitude for mathematics; the different points were

not explained to me as fully as I wished. The geometrical diagrams

were particularly vexing because I could not see the relation of the

different parts to one another, even on the cushion. It was not until

Mr. Keith taught me that I had a clear idea of mathematics.

I was beginning to overcome these difficulties when an event occurred

which changed everything.

Just before the books came, Mr. Gilman had begun to remonstrate with

Miss Sullivan on the ground that I was working too hard, and in spite

of my earnest protestations, he reduced the number of my recitations. At

the beginning we had agreed that I should, if necessary, take five years

to prepare for college, but at the end of the first year the success of

my examinations showed Miss Sullivan, Miss Harbaugh (Mr. Gilman's head

teacher), and one other, that I could without too much effort complete

my preparation in two years more. Mr. Gilman at first agreed to this;

but when my tasks had become somewhat perplexing, he insisted that I was

overworked, and that I should remain at his school three years longer. I

did not like his plan, for I wished to enter college with my class.

On the seventeenth of November I was not very well, and did not go

to school. Although Miss Sullivan knew that my indisposition was not

serious, yet Mr. Gilman, on hearing of it, declared that I was breaking

down and made changes in my studies which would have rendered it

impossible for me to take my final examinations with my class. In the

end the difference of opinion between Mr. Gilman and Miss Sullivan

resulted in my mother's withdrawing my sister Mildred and me from the

Cambridge school.

After some delay it was arranged that I should continue my studies under

a tutor, Mr. Merton S. Keith, of Cambridge. Miss Sullivan and I spent

the rest of the winter with our friends, the Chamberlins in Wrentham,

twenty-five miles from Boston.

From February to July, 1898, Mr. Keith came out to Wrentham twice a

week, and taught me algebra, geometry, Greek and Latin. Miss Sullivan

interpreted his instruction.

In October, 1898, we returned to Boston. For eight months Mr. Keith gave

me lessons five times a week, in periods of about an hour. He explained

each time what I did not understand in the previous lesson, assigned

new work, and took home with him the Greek exercises which I had written

during the week on my typewriter, corrected them fully, and returned

them to me.

In this way my preparation for college went on without interruption.

I found it much easier and pleasanter to be taught by myself than to

receive instruction in class. There was no hurry, no confusion. My tutor

had plenty of time to explain what I did not understand, so I got on

faster and did better work than I ever did in school. I still found more

difficulty in mastering problems in mathematics than I did in any other

of my studies. I wish algebra and geometry had been half as easy as

the languages and literature. But even mathematics Mr. Keith made

interesting; he succeeded in whittling problems small enough to get

through my brain. He kept my mind alert and eager, and trained it to

reason clearly, and to seek conclusions calmly and logically, instead of

jumping wildly into space and arriving nowhere. He was always gentle and

forbearing, no matter how dull I might be, and believe me, my stupidity

would often have exhausted the patience of Job.

On the 29th and 30th of June, 1899, I took my final examinations for

Radcliffe College. The first day I had Elementary Greek and Advanced

Latin, and the second day Geometry, Algebra and Advanced Greek.

The college authorities did not allow Miss Sullivan to read the

examination papers to me; so Mr. Eugene C. Vining, one of the

instructors at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, was employed to

copy the papers for me in American braille. Mr. Vining was a stranger

to me, and could not communicate with me, except by writing braille. The

proctor was also a stranger, and did not attempt to communicate with me

in any way.

The braille worked well enough in the languages, but when it came to

geometry and algebra, difficulties arose. I was sorely perplexed, and

felt discouraged wasting much precious time, especially in algebra. It

is true that I was familiar with all literary braille in common use in

this country--English, American, and New York Point; but the various

signs and symbols in geometry and algebra in the three systems are very

different, and I had used only the English braille in my algebra.

Two days before the examinations, Mr. Vining sent me a braille copy of

one of the old Harvard papers in algebra. To my dismay I found that it

was in the American notation. I sat down immediately and wrote to Mr.

Vining, asking him to explain the signs. I received another paper and a

table of signs by return mail, and I set to work to learn the notation.

But on the night before the algebra examination, while I was struggling

over some very complicated examples, I could not tell the combinations

of bracket, brace and radical. Both Mr. Keith and I were distressed and

full of forebodings for the morrow; but we went over to the college a

little before the examination began, and had Mr. Vining explain more

fully the American symbols.

In geometry my chief difficulty was that I had always been accustomed

to read the propositions in line print, or to have them spelled into

my hand; and somehow, although the propositions were right before me, I

found the braille confusing, and could not fix clearly in my mind what

I was reading. But when I took up algebra I had a harder time still.

The signs, which I had so lately learned, and which I thought I knew,

perplexed me. Besides, I could not see what I wrote on my typewriter. I

had always done my work in braille or in my head. Mr. Keith had relied

too much on my ability to solve problems mentally, and had not trained

me to write examination papers. Consequently my work was painfully slow,

and I had to read the examples over and over before I could form any

idea of what I was required to do. Indeed, I am not sure now that I read

all the signs correctly. I found it very hard to keep my wits about me.

But I do not blame any one. The administrative board of Radcliffe did

not realize how difficult they were making my examinations, nor did

they understand the peculiar difficulties I had to surmount. But if they

unintentionally placed obstacles in my way, I have the consolation of

knowing that I overcame them all.

CHAPTER XX

The struggle for admission to college was ended, and I could now enter

Radcliffe whenever I pleased. Before I entered college, however, it was

thought best that I should study another year under Mr. Keith. It was

not, therefore, until the fall of 1900 that my dream of going to college

was realized.

I remember my first day at Radcliffe. It was a day full of interest

for me. I had looked forward to it for years. A potent force within

me, stronger than the persuasion of my friends, stronger even than

the pleadings of my heart, had impelled me to try my strength by the

standards of those who see and hear. I knew that there were obstacles

in the way; but I was eager to overcome them. I had taken to heart the

words of the wise Roman who said, "To be banished from Rome is but to

live outside of Rome." Debarred from the great highways of knowledge,

I was compelled to make the journey across country by unfrequented

roads--that was all; and I knew that in college there were many bypaths

where I could touch hands with girls who were thinking, loving and

struggling like me.

I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening

in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all

things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another. Its

people, scenery, manners, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible

interpreters of the real world. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the

spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought the professors were

the embodiment of wisdom. If I have since learned differently, I am not

going to tell anybody.

But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum

I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young

inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common

day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going

to college.

The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time

to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening

and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in

leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet

chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there

is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn,

it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one

leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside

with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in

the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I

am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a

rainy day.

My studies the first year were French, German, history, English

composition and English literature. In the French course I read some

of the works of Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Alfred de Musset and

Sainte-Beuve, and in the German those of Goethe and Schiller. I reviewed

rapidly the whole period of history from the fall of the Roman Empire

to the eighteenth century, and in English literature studied critically

Milton's poems and "Areopagitica."

I am frequently asked how I overcome the peculiar conditions under which

I work in college. In the classroom I am of course practically alone.

The professor is as remote as if he were speaking through a telephone.

The lectures are spelled into my hand as rapidly as possible, and much

of the individuality of the lecturer is lost to me in the effort to keep

in the race. The words rush through my hand like hounds in pursuit of a

hare which they often miss. But in this respect I do not think I am much

worse off than the girls who take notes. If the mind is occupied

with the mechanical process of hearing and putting words on paper at

pell-mell speed, I should not think one could pay much attention to the

subject under consideration or the manner in which it is presented.

I cannot make notes during the lectures, because my hands are busy

listening. Usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get

home. I write the exercises, daily themes, criticisms and hour-tests,

the mid-year and final examinations, on my typewriter, so that the

professors have no difficulty in finding out how little I know. When

I began the study of Latin prosody, I devised and explained to my

professor a system of signs indicating the different meters and

quantities.

I use the Hammond typewriter. I have tried many machines, and I find the

Hammond is the best adapted to the peculiar needs of my work. With this

machine movable type shuttles can be used, and one can have several

shuttles, each with a different set of characters--Greek, French, or

mathematical, according to the kind of writing one wishes to do on the

typewriter. Without it, I doubt if I could go to college.

Very few of the books required in the various courses are printed

for the blind, and I am obliged to have them spelled into my hand.

Consequently I need more time to prepare my lessons than other girls.

The manual part takes longer, and I have perplexities which they have

not. There are days when the close attention I must give to details

chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a

few chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and

singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but I soon recover my buoyancy

and laugh the discontent out of my heart. For, after all, every one who

wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and

since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own

way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the

edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep

it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more

eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every

struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud,

the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire. I am not always

alone, however, in these struggles. Mr. William Wade and Mr. E. E.

Allen, Principal of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of

the Blind, get for me many of the books I need in raised print. Their

thoughtfulness has been more of a help and encouragement to me than they

can ever know.

Last year, my second year at Radcliffe, I studied English composition,

the Bible as English composition, the governments of America and Europe,

the Odes of Horace, and Latin comedy. The class in composition was the

pleasantest. It was very lively. The lectures were always interesting,

vivacious, witty; for the instructor, Mr. Charles Townsend Copeland,

more than any one else I have had until this year, brings before you

literature in all its original freshness and power. For one short hour

you are permitted to drink in the eternal beauty of the old masters

without needless interpretation or exposition. You revel in their fine

thoughts. You enjoy with all your soul the sweet thunder of the Old

Testament, forgetting the existence of Jahweh and Elohim; and you go

home feeling that you have had "a glimpse of that perfection in which

spirit and form dwell in immortal harmony; truth and beauty bearing a

new growth on the ancient stem of time."

This year is the happiest because I am studying subjects that especially

interest me, economics, Elizabethan literature, Shakespeare under

Professor George L. Kittredge, and the History of Philosophy under

Professor Josiah Royce. Through philosophy one enters with sympathy

of comprehension into the traditions of remote ages and other modes of

thought, which erewhile seemed alien and without reason.

But college is not the universal Athens I thought it was. There one does

not meet the great and the wise face to face; one does not even feel

their living touch. They are there, it is true; but they seem mummified.

We must extract them from the crannied wall of learning and dissect and

analyze them before we can be sure that we have a Milton or an Isaiah,

and not merely a clever imitation. Many scholars forget, it seems to me,

that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon

the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is

that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The

mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. It is possible to

know a flower, root and stem and all, and all the processes of growth,

and yet to have no appreciation of the flower fresh bathed in heaven's

dew. Again and again I ask impatiently, "Why concern myself with these

explanations and hypotheses?" They fly hither and thither in my thought

like blind birds beating the air with ineffectual wings. I do not mean

to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object

only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach

but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men. But when a

great scholar like Professor Kittredge interprets what the master

said, it is "as if new sight were given the blind." He brings back

Shakespeare, the poet.

There are, however, times when I long to sweep away half the things I am

expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it

has secured at the greatest cost. It is impossible, I think, to read in

one day four or five different books in different languages and treating

of widely different subjects, and not lose sight of the very ends for

which one reads. When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind

written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a

lot of choice bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use. At the

present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost

despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the

region that was the kingdom of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull

in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come

crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape

them, theme-goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue me, until

I wish--oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish!--that I might smash the

idols I came to worship.

But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although

I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the

dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob

Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before

these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic

formula and indigestible dates--unpalatable diets, until you wish that

books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.

At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed

if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your

standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens

too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and

exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a

nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings

and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble

invariably fail you at a pinch.

"Give a brief account of Huss and his work." Huss? Who was he and what

did he do? The name looks strangely familiar. You ransack your budget

of historic facts much as you would hunt for a bit of silk in a rag-bag.

You are sure it is somewhere in your mind near the top--you saw it

there the other day when you were looking up the beginnings of the

Reformation. But where is it now? You fish out all manner of odds

and ends of knowledge--revolutions, schisms, massacres, systems of

government; but Huss--where is he? You are amazed at all the things you

know which are not on the examination paper. In desperation you seize

the budget and dump everything out, and there in a corner is your

man, serenely brooding on his own private thought, unconscious of the

catastrophe which he has brought upon you.

Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up. With a feeling of

intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner and go home,

your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the divine right of

professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.

It comes over me that in the last two or three pages of this chapter I

have used figures which will turn the laugh against me. Ah, here they

are--the mixed metaphors mocking and strutting about before me, pointing

to the bull in the china shop assailed by hailstones and the bugbears

with pale looks, an unanalyzed species! Let them mock on. The words

describe so exactly the atmosphere of jostling, tumbling ideas I live

in that I will wink at them for once, and put on a deliberate air to say

that my ideas of college have changed.

While my days at Radcliffe were still in the future, they were encircled

with a halo of romance, which they have lost; but in the transition from

romantic to actual I have learned many things I should never have known

had I not tried the experiment. One of them is the precious science of

patience, which teaches us that we should take our education as we would

take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to

impressions of every sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a

soundless tidal wave of deepening thought. "Knowledge is power."

Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge--broad, deep

knowledge--is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to

feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries; and if

one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must

indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.

CHAPTER XXI

I have thus far sketched the events of my life, but I have not shown how

much I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom

they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge which comes to

others through their eyes and their ears. Indeed, books have meant so

much more in my education than in that of others, that I shall go back

to the time when I began to read.

I read my first connected story in May, 1887, when I was seven years

old, and from that day to this I have devoured everything in the shape

of a printed page that has come within the reach of my hungry finger

tips. As I have said, I did not study regularly during the early years

of my education; nor did I read according to rule.

At first I had only a few books in raised print--"readers" for

beginners, a collection of stories for children, and a book about the

earth called "Our World." I think that was all; but I read them over

and over, until the words were so worn and pressed I could scarcely

make them out. Sometimes Miss Sullivan read to me, spelling into my

hand little stories and poems that she knew I should understand; but I

preferred reading myself to being read to, because I liked to read again

and again the things that pleased me.

It was during my first visit to Boston that I really began to read

in good earnest. I was permitted to spend a part of each day in the

Institution library, and to wander from bookcase to bookcase, and take

down whatever book my fingers lighted upon. And read I did, whether I

understood one word in ten or two words on a page. The words themselves

fascinated me; but I took no conscious account of what I read. My mind

must, however, have been very impressionable at that period, for it

retained many words and whole sentences, to the meaning of which I had

not the faintest clue; and afterward, when I began to talk and write,

these words and sentences would flash out quite naturally, so that my

friends wondered at the richness of my vocabulary. I must have read

parts of many books (in those early days I think I never read any one

book through) and a great deal of poetry in this uncomprehending way,

until I discovered "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which was the first book of

any consequence I read understandingly.

One day my teacher found me in a corner of the library poring over

the pages of "The Scarlet Letter." I was then about eight years old. I

remember she asked me if I liked little Pearl, and explained some of

the words that had puzzled me. Then she told me that she had a beautiful

story about a little boy which she was sure I should like better

than "The Scarlet Letter." The name of the story was "Little Lord

Fauntleroy," and she promised to read it to me the following summer. But

we did not begin the story until August; the first few weeks of my stay

at the seashore were so full of discoveries and excitement that I forgot

the very existence of books. Then my teacher went to visit some friends

in Boston, leaving me for a short time.

When she returned almost the first thing we did was to begin the story

of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." I recall distinctly the time and place when

we read the first chapters of the fascinating child's story. It was a

warm afternoon in August. We were sitting together in a hammock which

swung from two solemn pines at a short distance from the house. We had

hurried through the dish-washing after luncheon, in order that we might

have as long an afternoon as possible for the story. As we hastened

through the long grass toward the hammock, the grasshoppers swarmed

about us and fastened themselves on our clothes, and I remember that

my teacher insisted upon picking them all off before we sat down, which

seemed to me an unnecessary waste of time. The hammock was covered with

pine needles, for it had not been used while my teacher was away. The

warm sun shone on the pine trees and drew out all their fragrance. The

air was balmy, with a tang of the sea in it. Before we began the story

Miss Sullivan explained to me the things that she knew I should not

understand, and as we read on she explained the unfamiliar words.

At first there were many words I did not know, and the reading was

constantly interrupted; but as soon as I thoroughly comprehended the

situation, I became too eagerly absorbed in the story to notice mere

words, and I am afraid I listened impatiently to the explanations that

Miss Sullivan felt to be necessary. When her fingers were too tired

to spell another word, I had for the first time a keen sense of my

deprivations. I took the book in my hands and tried to feel the letters

with an intensity of longing that I can never forget.

Afterward, at my eager request, Mr. Anagnos had this story embossed,

and I read it again and again, until I almost knew it by heart; and all

through my childhood "Little Lord Fauntleroy" was my sweet and gentle

companion. I have given these details at the risk of being tedious,

because they are in such vivid contrast with my vague, mutable and

confused memories of earlier reading.

From "Little Lord Fauntleroy" I date the beginning of my true interest

in books. During the next two years I read many books at my home and on

my visits to Boston. I cannot remember what they all were, or in what

order I read them; but I know that among them were "Greek Heroes," La

Fontaine's "Fables," Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," "Bible Stories," Lamb's

"Tales from Shakespeare," "A Child's History of England" by Dickens,

"The Arabian Nights," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "The Pilgrim's

Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," "Little Women," and "Heidi," a beautiful

little story which I afterward read in German. I read them in the

intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of

pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them--I did not know whether they

were well written or not; I never thought about style or authorship.

They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as we accept

the sunshine and the love of our friends. I loved "Little Women" because

it gave me a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could see and

hear. Circumscribed as my life was in so many ways, I had to look

between the covers of books for news of the world that lay outside my

own.

I did not care especially for "The Pilgrim's Progress," which I think I

did not finish, or for the "Fables." I read La Fontaine's "Fables" first

in an English translation, and enjoyed them only after a half-hearted

fashion. Later I read the book again in French, and I found that, in

spite of the vivid word-pictures, and the wonderful mastery of language,

I liked it no better. I do not know why it is, but stories in which

animals are made to talk and act like human beings have never appealed

to me very strongly. The ludicrous caricatures of the animals occupy my

mind to the exclusion of the moral.

Then, again, La Fontaine seldom, if ever, appeals to our highest moral

sense. The highest chords he strikes are those of reason and self-love.

Through all the fables runs the thought that man's morality springs

wholly from self-love, and that if that self-love is directed and

restrained by reason, happiness must follow. Now, so far as I can judge,

self-love is the root of all evil; but, of course, I may be wrong, for

La Fontaine had greater opportunities of observing men than I am likely

ever to have. I do not object so much to the cynical and satirical

fables as to those in which momentous truths are taught by monkeys and

foxes.

But I love "The Jungle Book" and "Wild Animals I Have Known." I feel

a genuine interest in the animals themselves, because they are real

animals and not caricatures of men. One sympathizes with their loves and

hatreds, laughs over their comedies, and weeps over their tragedies. And

if they point a moral, it is so subtle that we are not conscious of it.

My mind opened naturally and joyously to a conception of antiquity.

Greece, ancient Greece, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. In

my fancy the pagan gods and goddesses still walked on earth and talked

face to face with men, and in my heart I secretly built shrines to those

I loved best. I knew and loved the whole tribe of nymphs and heroes

and demigods--no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and

Jason were too monstrous to be forgiven, and I used to wonder why

the gods permitted them to do wrong and then punished them for their

wickedness. And the mystery is still unsolved. I often wonder how

God can dumbness keep

While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time.

It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise. I was familiar with the

story of Troy before I read it in the original, and consequently I had

little difficulty in making the Greek words surrender their treasures

after I had passed the borderland of grammar. Great poetry, whether

written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a

responsive heart. Would that the host of those who make the great

works of the poets odious by their analysis, impositions and laborious

comments might learn this simple truth! It is not necessary that one

should be able to define every word and give it its principal parts

and its grammatical position in the sentence in order to understand and

appreciate a fine poem. I know my learned professors have found greater

riches in the Iliad than I shall ever find; but I am not avaricious. I

am content that others should be wiser than I. But with all their wide

and comprehensive knowledge, they cannot measure their enjoyment of that

splendid epic, nor can I. When I read the finest passages of the Iliad,

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping

circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten--my

world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the

heavens are mine!

My admiration for the Aeneid is not so great, but it is none the

less real. I read it as much as possible without the help of notes or

dictionary, and I always like to translate the episodes that please me

especially. The word-painting of Virgil is wonderful sometimes; but his

gods and men move through the scenes of passion and strife and pity and

love like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask, whereas in the

Iliad they give three leaps and go on singing. Virgil is serene and

lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful,

animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

How easy it is to fly on paper wings! From "Greek Heroes" to the Iliad

was no day's journey, nor was it altogether pleasant. One could have

traveled round the world many times while I trudged my weary way through

the labyrinthine mazes of grammars and dictionaries, or fell into those

dreadful pitfalls called examinations, set by schools and colleges for

the confusion of those who seek after knowledge. I suppose this sort of

Pilgrim's Progress was justified by the end; but it seemed interminable

to me, in spite of the pleasant surprises that met me now and then at a

turn in the road.

I began to read the Bible long before I could understand it. Now it

seems strange to me that there should have been a time when my spirit

was deaf to its wondrous harmonies; but I remember well a rainy Sunday

morning when, having nothing else to do, I begged my cousin to read me a

story out of the Bible. Although she did not think I should understand,

she began to spell into my hand the story of Joseph and his brothers.

Somehow it failed to interest me. The unusual language and repetition

made the story seem unreal and far away in the land of Canaan, and I

fell asleep and wandered off to the land of Nod, before the brothers

came with the coat of many colours unto the tent of Jacob and told their

wicked lie! I cannot understand why the stories of the Greeks should

have been so full of charm for me, and those of the Bible so devoid

of interest, unless it was that I had made the acquaintance of several

Greeks in Boston and been inspired by their enthusiasm for the stories

of their country; whereas I had not met a single Hebrew or Egyptian, and

therefore concluded that they were nothing more than barbarians, and the

stories about them were probably all made up, which hypothesis explained

the repetitions and the queer names. Curiously enough, it never occurred

to me to call Greek patronymics "queer."

But how shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the

Bible? For years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and

inspiration; and I love it as I love no other book. Still there is much

in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much

that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through

from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have

gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant

details it has forced upon my attention. For my part, I wish, with Mr.

Howells, that the literature of the past might be purged of all that is

ugly and barbarous in it, although I should object as much as any one to

having these great works weakened or falsified.

There is something impressive, awful, in the simplicity and terrible

directness of the book of Esther. Could there be anything more dramatic

than the scene in which Esther stands before her wicked lord? She knows

her life is in his hands; there is no one to protect her from his wrath.

Yet, conquering her woman's fear, she approaches him, animated by the

noblest patriotism, having but one thought: "If I perish, I perish; but

if I live, my people shall live."

The story of Ruth, too--how Oriental it is! Yet how different is the

life of these simple country folks from that of the Persian capital!

Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she

stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish

spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel

age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and

deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.

The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things seen are

temporal, and things unseen are eternal."

I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that

I have not loved Shakespeare. I cannot tell exactly when I began Lamb's

"Tales from Shakespeare" but I know that I read them at first with

a child's understanding and a child's wonder. "Macbeth" seems to have

impressed me most. One reading was sufficient to stamp every detail of

the story upon my memory forever. For a long time the ghosts and witches

pursued me even into Dreamland. I could see, absolutely see, the dagger

and Lady Macbeth's little white hand--the dreadful stain was as real to

me as to the grief-stricken queen.

I read "King Lear" soon after "Macbeth," and I shall never forget the

feeling of horror when I came to the scene in which Gloster's eyes are

put out. Anger seized me, my fingers refused to move, I sat rigid for

one long moment, the blood throbbing in my temples, and all the hatred

that a child can feel concentrated in my heart.

I must have made the acquaintance of Shylock and Satan about the same

time, for the two characters were long associated in my mind. I remember

that I was sorry for them. I felt vaguely that they could not be good

even if they wished to, because no one seemed willing to help them or

to give them a fair chance. Even now I cannot find it in my heart to

condemn them utterly. There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks,

the Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of

good which shall in due time be made whole.

It seems strange that my first reading of Shakespeare should have left

me so many unpleasant memories. The bright, gentle, fanciful plays--the

ones I like best now--appear not to have impressed me at first, perhaps

because they reflected the habitual sunshine and gaiety of a child's

life. But "there is nothing more capricious than the memory of a child:

what it will hold, and what it will lose."

I have since read Shakespeare's plays many times and know parts of them

by heart, but I cannot tell which of them I like best. My delight in

them is as varied as my moods. The little songs and the sonnets have a

meaning for me as fresh and wonderful as the dramas. But, with all my

love for Shakespeare, it is often weary work to read all the meanings

into his lines which critics and commentators have given them. I used

to try to remember their interpretations, but they discouraged and vexed

me; so I made a secret compact with myself not to try any more. This

compact I have only just broken in my study of Shakespeare under

Professor Kittredge. I know there are many things in Shakespeare, and

in the world, that I do not understand; and I am glad to see veil after

veil lift gradually, revealing new realms of thought and beauty.

Next to poetry I love history. I have read every historical work that

I have been able to lay my hands on, from a catalogue of dry facts and

dryer dates to Green's impartial, picturesque "History of the English

People" from Freeman's "History of Europe" to Emerton's "Middle Ages."

The first book that gave me any real sense of the value of history was

Swinton's "World History," which I received on my thirteenth birthday.

Though I believe it is no longer considered valid, yet I have kept it

ever since as one of my treasures. From it I learned how the races of

men spread from land to land and built great cities, how a few great

rulers, earthly Titans, put everything under their feet, and with a

decisive word opened the gates of happiness for millions and closed them

upon millions more: how different nations pioneered in art and

knowledge and broke ground for the mightier growths of coming ages; how

civilization underwent as it were, the holocaust of a degenerate age,

and rose again, like the Phoenix, among the nobler sons of the North;

and how by liberty, tolerance and education the great and the wise have

opened the way for the salvation of the whole world.

In my college reading I have become somewhat familiar with French and

German literature. The German puts strength before beauty, and truth

before convention, both in life and in literature. There is a vehement,

sledge-hammer vigour about everything that he does. When he speaks, it

is not to impress others, but because his heart would burst if he did

not find an outlet for the thoughts that burn in his soul.

Then, too, there is in German literature a fine reserve which I like;

but its chief glory is the recognition I find in it of the redeeming

potency of woman's self-sacrificing love. This thought pervades all

German literature and is mystically expressed in Goethe's "Faust":

All things transitory

But as symbols are sent.

Earth's insufficiency

Here grows to event.

The indescribable

Here it is done.

The Woman Soul leads us upward and on!

Of all the French writers that I have read, I like Moliere and Racine

best. There are fine things in Balzac and passages in Mérimée which

strike one like a keen blast of sea air. Alfred de Musset is impossible!

I admire Victor Hugo--I appreciate his genius, his brilliancy, his

romanticism; though he is not one of my literary passions. But Hugo

and Goethe and Schiller and all great poets of all great nations are

interpreters of eternal things, and my spirit reverently follows them

into the regions where Beauty and Truth and Goodness are one.

I am afraid I have written too much about my book-friends, and yet I

have mentioned only the authors I love most; and from this fact one

might easily suppose that my circle of friends was very limited and

undemocratic, which would be a very wrong impression. I like many

writers for many reasons--Carlyle for his ruggedness and scorn of

shams; Wordsworth, who teaches the oneness of man and nature; I find an

exquisite pleasure in the oddities and surprises of Hood, in Herrick's

quaintness and the palpable scent of lily and rose in his verses; I like

Whittier for his enthusiasms and moral rectitude. I knew him, and the

gentle remembrance of our friendship doubles the pleasure I have in

reading his poems. I love Mark Twain--who does not? The gods, too, loved

him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then, fearing lest he

should become a pessimist, they spanned his mind with a rainbow of love

and faith. I like Scott for his freshness, dash and large honesty. I

love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's, bubble up in the sunshine

of optimism--fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash

of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No

barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of

my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of

ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and

heavenly charities."

CHAPTER XXII

I trust that my readers have not concluded from the preceding chapter on

books that reading is my only pleasure; my pleasures and amusements are

many and varied.

More than once in the course of my story I have referred to my love of

the country and out-of-door sports. When I was quite a little girl, I

learned to row and swim, and during the summer, when I am at Wrentham,

Massachusetts, I almost live in my boat. Nothing gives me greater

pleasure than to take my friends out rowing when they visit me. Of

course, I cannot guide the boat very well. Some one usually sits in

the stern and manages the rudder while I row. Sometimes, however, I go

rowing without the rudder. It is fun to try to steer by the scent of

watergrasses and lilies, and of bushes that grow on the shore. I use

oars with leather bands, which keep them in position in the oarlocks,

and I know by the resistance of the water when the oars are evenly

poised. In the same manner I can also tell when I am pulling against the

current. I like to contend with wind and wave. What is more exhilarating

than to make your staunch little boat, obedient to your will and muscle,

go skimming lightly over glistening, tilting waves, and to feel the

steady, imperious surge of the water!

I also enjoy canoeing, and I suppose you will smile when I say that I

especially like it on moonlight nights. I cannot, it is true, see the

moon climb up the sky behind the pines and steal softly across the

heavens, making a shining path for us to follow; but I know she is

there, and as I lie back among the pillows and put my hand in the water,

I fancy that I feel the shimmer of her garments as she passes. Sometimes

a daring little fish slips between my fingers, and often a pond-lily

presses shyly against my hand. Frequently, as we emerge from the shelter

of a cove or inlet, I am suddenly conscious of the spaciousness of the

air about me. A luminous warmth seems to enfold me. Whether it comes

from the trees which have been heated by the sun, or from the water, I

can never discover. I have had the same strange sensation even in the

heart of the city. I have felt it on cold, stormy days and at night. It

is like the kiss of warm lips on my face.

My favourite amusement is sailing. In the summer of 1901 I visited Nova

Scotia, and had opportunities such as I had not enjoyed before to make

the acquaintance of the ocean. After spending a few days in Evangeline's

country, about which Longfellow's beautiful poem has woven a spell of

enchantment, Miss Sullivan and I went to Halifax, where we remained the

greater part of the summer. The harbour was our joy, our paradise. What

glorious sails we had to Bedford Basin, to McNabb's Island, to York

Redoubt, and to the Northwest Arm! And at night what soothing, wondrous

hours we spent in the shadow of the great, silent men-of-war. Oh, it was

all so interesting, so beautiful! The memory of it is a joy forever.

One day we had a thrilling experience. There was a regatta in the

Northwest Arm, in which the boats from the different warships were

engaged. We went in a sail-boat along with many others to watch the

races. Hundreds of little sail-boats swung to and fro close by, and

the sea was calm. When the races were over, and we turned our faces

homeward, one of the party noticed a black cloud drifting in from the

sea, which grew and spread and thickened until it covered the whole sky.

The wind rose, and the waves chopped angrily at unseen barriers. Our

little boat confronted the gale fearlessly; with sails spread and ropes

taut, she seemed to sit upon the wind. Now she swirled in the billows,

now she sprang upward on a gigantic wave, only to be driven down with

angry howl and hiss. Down came the mainsail. Tacking and jibbing,

we wrestled with opposing winds that drove us from side to side with

impetuous fury. Our hearts beat fast, and our hands trembled with

excitement, not fear, for we had the hearts of vikings, and we knew that

our skipper was master of the situation. He had steered through many

a storm with firm hand and sea-wise eye. As they passed us, the large

craft and the gunboats in the harbour saluted and the seamen shouted

applause for the master of the only little sail-boat that ventured out

into the storm. At last, cold, hungry and weary, we reached our pier.

Last summer I spent in one of the loveliest nooks of one of the most

charming villages in New England. Wrentham, Massachusetts, is associated

with nearly all of my joys and sorrows. For many years Red Farm, by King

Philip's Pond, the home of Mr. J. E. Chamberlin and his family, was

my home. I remember with deepest gratitude the kindness of these dear

friends and the happy days I spent with them. The sweet companionship

of their children meant much to me. I joined in all their sports and

rambles through the woods and frolics in the water. The prattle of the

little ones and their pleasure in the stories I told them of elf and

gnome, of hero and wily bear, are pleasant things to remember. Mr.

Chamberlin initiated me into the mysteries of tree and wild-flower,

until with the little ear of love I heard the flow of sap in the oak,

and saw the sun glint from leaf to leaf. Thus it is that

Even as the roots, shut in the darksome earth,

Share in the tree-top's joyance, and conceive

Of sunshine and wide air and wingéd things,

By sympathy of nature, so do I

have evidence of things unseen.

It seems to me that there is in each of us a capacity to comprehend the

impressions and emotions which have been experienced by mankind from the

beginning. Each individual has a subconscious memory of the green earth

and murmuring waters, and blindness and deafness cannot rob him of this

gift from past generations. This inherited capacity is a sort of sixth

sense--a soul-sense which sees, hears, feels, all in one.

I have many tree friends in Wrentham. One of them, a splendid oak, is

the special pride of my heart. I take all my other friends to see this

king-tree. It stands on a bluff overlooking King Philip's Pond, and

those who are wise in tree lore say it must have stood there eight

hundred or a thousand years. There is a tradition that under this tree

King Philip, the heroic Indian chief, gazed his last on earth and sky.

I had another tree friend, gentle and more approachable than the great

oak--a linden that grew in the dooryard at Red Farm. One afternoon,

during a terrible thunderstorm, I felt a tremendous crash against the

side of the house and knew, even before they told me, that the linden

had fallen. We went out to see the hero that had withstood so many

tempests, and it wrung my heart to see him prostrate who had mightily

striven and was now mightily fallen.

But I must not forget that I was going to write about last summer in

particular. As soon as my examinations were over, Miss Sullivan and I

hastened to this green nook, where we have a little cottage on one of

the three lakes for which Wrentham is famous. Here the long, sunny days

were mine, and all thoughts of work and college and the noisy city were

thrust into the background. In Wrentham we caught echoes of what was

happening in the world--war, alliance, social conflict. We heard of the

cruel, unnecessary fighting in the far-away Pacific, and learned of the

struggles going on between capital and labour. We knew that beyond the

border of our Eden men were making history by the sweat of their brows

when they might better make a holiday. But we little heeded these

things. These things would pass away; here were lakes and woods and

broad daisy-starred fields and sweet-breathed meadows, and they shall

endure forever.

People who think that all sensations reach us through the eye and the

ear have expressed surprise that I should notice any difference, except

possibly the absence of pavements, between walking in city streets

and in country roads. They forget that my whole body is alive to the

conditions about me. The rumble and roar of the city smite the nerves of

my face, and I feel the ceaseless tramp of an unseen multitude, and the

dissonant tumult frets my spirit. The grinding of heavy wagons on hard

pavements and the monotonous clangour of machinery are all the more

torturing to the nerves if one's attention is not diverted by the

panorama that is always present in the noisy streets to people who can

see.

In the country one sees only Nature's fair works, and one's soul is not

saddened by the cruel struggle for mere existence that goes on in the

crowded city. Several times I have visited the narrow, dirty streets

where the poor live, and I grow hot and indignant to think that good

people should be content to live in fine houses and become strong

and beautiful, while others are condemned to live in hideous, sunless

tenements and grow ugly, withered and cringing. The children who crowd

these grimy alleys, half-clad and underfed, shrink away from your

outstretched hand as if from a blow. Dear little creatures, they crouch

in my heart and haunt me with a constant sense of pain. There are men

and women, too, all gnarled and bent out of shape. I have felt their

hard, rough hands and realized what an endless struggle their existence

must be--no more than a series of scrimmages, thwarted attempts to do

something. Their life seems an immense disparity between effort and

opportunity. The sun and the air are God's free gifts to all we say, but

are they so? In yonder city's dingy alleys the sun shines not, and the

air is foul. Oh, man, how dost thou forget and obstruct thy brother man,

and say, "Give us this day our daily bread," when he has none! Oh, would

that men would leave the city, its splendour and its tumult and its

gold, and return to wood and field and simple, honest living! Then would

their children grow stately as noble trees, and their thoughts sweet and

pure as wayside flowers. It is impossible not to think of all this when

I return to the country after a year of work in town.

What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once

more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe

my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a

stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous

gladness!

Next to a leisurely walk I enjoy a "spin" on my tandem bicycle. It is

splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of

my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense

of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulses dance and my

heart sing.

Whenever it is possible, my dog accompanies me on a walk or ride or

sail. I have had many dog friends--huge mastiffs, soft-eyed spaniels,

wood-wise setters and honest, homely bull terriers. At present the lord

of my affections is one of these bull terriers. He has a long pedigree,

a crooked tail and the drollest "phiz" in dogdom. My dog friends seem

to understand my limitations, and always keep close beside me when I

am alone. I love their affectionate ways and the eloquent wag of their

tails.

When a rainy day keeps me indoors, I amuse myself after the manner of

other girls. I like to knit and crochet; I read in the happy-go-lucky

way I love, here and there a line; or perhaps I play a game or two of

checkers or chess with a friend. I have a special board on which I play

these games. The squares are cut out, so that the men stand in them

firmly. The black checkers are flat and the white ones curved on top.

Each checker has a hole in the middle in which a brass knob can be

placed to distinguish the king from the commons. The chessmen are of

two sizes, the white larger than the black, so that I have no trouble

in following my opponent's maneuvers by moving my hands lightly over the

board after a play. The jar made by shifting the men from one hole to

another tells me when it is my turn.

If I happen to be all alone and in an idle mood, I play a game of

solitaire, of which I am very fond. I use playing cards marked in the

upper right-hand corner with braille symbols which indicate the value of

the card.

If there are children around, nothing pleases me so much as to frolic

with them. I find even the smallest child excellent company, and I am

glad to say that children usually like me. They lead me about and show

me the things they are interested in. Of course the little ones cannot

spell on their fingers; but I manage to read their lips. If I do not

succeed they resort to dumb show. Sometimes I make a mistake and do the

wrong thing. A burst of childish laughter greets my blunder, and the

pantomime begins all over again. I often tell them stories or teach them

a game, and the wingéd hours depart and leave us good and happy.

Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration.

Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight

can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is

true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art.

As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and

emotion which the artist has portrayed. I can feel in the faces of gods

and heroes hate, courage and love, just as I can detect them in living

faces I am permitted to touch. I feel in Diana's posture the grace and

freedom of the forest and the spirit that tames the mountain lion

and subdues the fiercest passions. My soul delights in the repose and

gracious curves of the Venus; and in Barre's bronzes the secrets of the

jungle are revealed to me.

A medallion of Homer hangs on the wall of my study, conveniently low, so

that I can easily reach it and touch the beautiful, sad face with loving

reverence. How well I know each line in that majestic brow--tracks of

life and bitter evidences of struggle and sorrow; those sightless eyes

seeking, even in the cold plaster, for the light and the blue skies of

his beloved Hellas, but seeking in vain; that beautiful mouth, firm and

true and tender. It is the face of a poet, and of a man acquainted with

sorrow. Ah, how well I understand his deprivation--the perpetual night

in which he dwelt--

O dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

In imagination I can hear Homer singing, as with unsteady, hesitating

steps he gropes his way from camp to camp--singing of life, of love, of

war, of the splendid achievements of a noble race. It was a wonderful,

glorious song, and it won the blind poet an immortal crown, the

admiration of all ages.

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of

sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of

lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may,

I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their

marble gods and goddesses.

Another pleasure, which comes more rarely than the others, is going to

the theatre. I enjoy having a play described to me while it is being

acted on the stage far more than reading it, because then it seems as if

I were living in the midst of stirring events. It has been my privilege

to meet a few great actors and actresses who have the power of so

bewitching you that you forget time and place and live again in the

romantic past. I have been permitted to touch the face and costume of

Miss Ellen Terry as she impersonated our ideal of a queen; and there was

about her that divinity that hedges sublimest woe. Beside her stood Sir

Henry Irving, wearing the symbols of kingship; and there was majesty of

intellect in his every gesture and attitude and the royalty that subdues

and overcomes in every line of his sensitive face. In the king's face,

which he wore as a mask, there was a remoteness and inaccessibility of

grief which I shall never forget.

I also know Mr. Jefferson. I am proud to count him among my friends. I

go to see him whenever I happen to be where he is acting. The first

time I saw him act was while at school in New York. He played "Rip Van

Winkle." I had often read the story, but I had never felt the charm of

Rip's slow, quaint, kind ways as I did in the play. Mr. Jefferson's,

beautiful, pathetic representation quite carried me away with delight.

I have a picture of old Rip in my fingers which they will never lose.

After the play Miss Sullivan took me to see him behind the scenes, and

I felt of his curious garb and his flowing hair and beard. Mr. Jefferson

let me touch his face so that I could imagine how he looked on waking

from that strange sleep of twenty years, and he showed me how poor old

Rip staggered to his feet.

I have also seen him in "The Rivals." Once while I was calling on him

in Boston he acted the most striking parts of "The Rivals" for me. The

reception-room where we sat served for a stage. He and his son seated

themselves at the big table, and Bob Acres wrote his challenge. I

followed all his movements with my hands, and caught the drollery of his

blunders and gestures in a way that would have been impossible had it

all been spelled to me. Then they rose to fight the duel, and I followed

the swift thrusts and parries of the swords and the waverings of poor

Bob as his courage oozed out at his finger ends. Then the great actor

gave his coat a hitch and his mouth a twitch, and in an instant I was in

the village of Falling Water and felt Schneider's shaggy head against my

knee. Mr. Jefferson recited the best dialogues of "Rip Van Winkle," in

which the tear came close upon the smile. He asked me to indicate as

far as I could the gestures and action that should go with the lines. Of

course, I have no sense whatever of dramatic action, and could make only

random guesses; but with masterful art he suited the action to the word.

The sigh of Rip as he murmurs, "Is a man so soon forgotten when he is

gone?" the dismay with which he searches for dog and gun after his

long sleep, and his comical irresolution over signing the contract with

Derrick--all these seem to be right out of life itself; that is, the

ideal life, where things happen as we think they should.

I remember well the first time I went to the theatre. It was twelve

years ago. Elsie Leslie, the little actress, was in Boston, and Miss

Sullivan took me to see her in "The Prince and the Pauper." I shall

never forget the ripple of alternating joy and woe that ran through that

beautiful little play, or the wonderful child who acted it. After the

play I was permitted to go behind the scenes and meet her in her royal

costume. It would have been hard to find a lovelier or more lovable

child than Elsie, as she stood with a cloud of golden hair floating over

her shoulders, smiling brightly, showing no signs of shyness or fatigue,

though she had been playing to an immense audience. I was only just

learning to speak, and had previously repeated her name until I could

say it perfectly. Imagine my delight when she understood the few words I

spoke to her and without hesitation stretched her hand to greet me.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at

many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders,

even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in,

therein to be content.

Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist

as I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate. Beyond there is light,

and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent,

pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree, for

my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not

utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back

into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul.

Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "There is joy in

self-forgetfulness." So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun,

the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my

happiness.

CHAPTER XXIII

Would that I could enrich this sketch with the names of all those who

have ministered to my happiness! Some of them would be found written

in our literature and dear to the hearts of many, while others would

be wholly unknown to most of my readers. But their influence, though it

escapes fame, shall live immortal in the lives that have been sweetened

and ennobled by it. Those are red-letter days in our lives when we meet

people who thrill us like a fine poem, people whose handshake is brimful

of unspoken sympathy, and whose sweet, rich natures impart to our eager,

impatient spirits a wonderful restfulness which, in its essence, is

divine. The perplexities, irritations and worries that have absorbed us

pass like unpleasant dreams, and we wake to see with new eyes and hear

with new ears the beauty and harmony of God's real world. The solemn

nothings that fill our everyday life blossom suddenly into bright

possibilities. In a word, while such friends are near us we feel that

all is well. Perhaps we never saw them before, and they may never cross

our life's path again; but the influence of their calm, mellow natures

is a libation poured upon our discontent, and we feel its healing touch,

as the ocean feels the mountain stream freshening its brine.

I have often been asked, "Do not people bore you?" I do not understand

quite what that means. I suppose the calls of the stupid and curious,

especially of newspaper reporters, are always inopportune. I also

dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. They are like

people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit

yours; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some

hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when

I clasped their frosty finger tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands

with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in

them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging

touch of a child's hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it

for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or

a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure.

I have many far-off friends whom I have never seen. Indeed they are so

many that I have often been unable to reply to their letters; but I

wish to say here that I am always grateful for their kind words, however

insufficiently I acknowledge them.

I count it one of the sweetest privileges of my life to have known and

conversed with many men of genius. Only those who knew Bishop Brooks can

appreciate the joy his friendship was to those who possessed it. As a

child I loved to sit on his knee and clasp his great hand with one of

mine, while Miss Sullivan spelled into the other his beautiful words

about God and the spiritual world. I heard him with a child's wonder

and delight. My spirit could not reach up to his, but he gave me a real

sense of joy in life, and I never left him without carrying away a fine

thought that grew in beauty and depth of meaning as I grew. Once, when I

was puzzled to know why there were so many religions, he said: "There is

one universal religion, Helen--the religion of love. Love your Heavenly

Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much

as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater

than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven." And

his life was a happy illustration of this great truth. In his noble

soul love and widest knowledge were blended with faith that had become

insight. He saw

God in all that liberates and lifts,

In all that humbles, sweetens and consoles.

Bishop Brooks taught me no special creed or dogma; but he impressed upon

my mind two great ideas--the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of

man, and made me feel that these truths underlie all creeds and forms of

worship. God is love, God is our Father, we are His children; therefore

the darkest clouds will break and though right be worsted, wrong shall

not triumph.

I am too happy in this world to think much about the future, except

to remember that I have cherished friends awaiting me there in God's

beautiful Somewhere. In spite of the lapse of years, they seem so close

to me that I should not think it strange if at any moment they should

clasp my hand and speak words of endearment as they used to before they

went away.

Since Bishop Brooks died I have read the Bible through; also some

philosophical works on religion, among them Swedenborg's "Heaven and

Hell" and Drummond's "Ascent of Man," and I have found no creed or

system more soul-satisfying than Bishop Brooks's creed of love. I knew

Mr. Henry Drummond, and the memory of his strong, warm hand-clasp is

like a benediction. He was the most sympathetic of companions. He knew

so much and was so genial that it was impossible to feel dull in his

presence.

I remember well the first time I saw Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. He had

invited Miss Sullivan and me to call on him one Sunday afternoon. It was

early in the spring, just after I had learned to speak. We were shown

at once to his library where we found him seated in a big armchair by an

open fire which glowed and crackled on the hearth, thinking, he said, of

other days.

"And listening to the murmur of the River Charles," I suggested.

"Yes," he replied, "the Charles has many dear associations for me."

There was an odour of print and leather in the room which told me that

it was full of books, and I stretched out my hand instinctively to find

them. My fingers lighted upon a beautiful volume of Tennyson's poems,

and when Miss Sullivan told me what it was I began to recite:

Break, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O sea!

But I stopped suddenly. I felt tears on my hand. I had made my beloved

poet weep, and I was greatly distressed. He made me sit in his armchair,

while he brought different interesting things for me to examine, and

at his request I recited "The Chambered Nautilus," which was then my

favorite poem. After that I saw Dr. Holmes many times and learned to

love the man as well as the poet.

One beautiful summer day, not long after my meeting with Dr. Holmes,

Miss Sullivan and I visited Whittier in his quiet home on the Merrimac.

His gentle courtesy and quaint speech won my heart. He had a book of

his poems in raised print from which I read "In School Days." He was

delighted that I could pronounce the words so well, and said that he had

no difficulty in understanding me. Then I asked many questions about the

poem, and read his answers by placing my fingers on his lips. He said he

was the little boy in the poem, and that the girl's name was Sally, and

more which I have forgotten. I also recited "Laus Deo," and as I spoke

the concluding verses, he placed in my hands a statue of a slave from

whose crouching figure the fetters were falling, even as they fell from

Peter's limbs when the angel led him forth out of prison. Afterward we

went into his study, and he wrote his autograph for my teacher ["With

great admiration of thy noble work in releasing from bondage the mind of

thy dear pupil, I am truly thy friend. john J. Whittier."] and expressed

his admiration of her work, saying to me, "She is thy spiritual

liberator." Then he led me to the gate and kissed me tenderly on my

forehead. I promised to visit him again the following summer, but he

died before the promise was fulfilled.

Dr. Edward Everett Hale is one of my very oldest friends. I have known

him since I was eight, and my love for him has increased with my years.

His wise, tender sympathy has been the support of Miss Sullivan and me

in times of trial and sorrow, and his strong hand has helped us over

many rough places; and what he has done for us he has done for thousands

of those who have difficult tasks to accomplish. He has filled the old

skins of dogma with the new wine of love, and shown men what it is to

believe, live and be free. What he has taught we have seen beautifully

expressed in his own life--love of country, kindness to the least of his

brethren, and a sincere desire to live upward and onward. He has been

a prophet and an inspirer of men, and a mighty doer of the Word, the

friend of all his race--God bless him!

I have already written of my first meeting with Dr. Alexander Graham

Bell. Since then I have spent many happy days with him at Washington and

at his beautiful home in the heart of Cape Breton Island, near Baddeck,

the village made famous by Charles Dudley Warner's book. Here in Dr.

Bell's laboratory, or in the fields on the shore of the great Bras d'Or,

I have spent many delightful hours listening to what he had to tell me

about his experiments, and helping him fly kites by means of which he

expects to discover the laws that shall govern the future air-ship. Dr.

Bell is proficient in many fields of science, and has the art of making

every subject he touches interesting, even the most abstruse theories.

He makes you feel that if you only had a little more time, you, too,

might be an inventor. He has a humorous and poetic side, too. His

dominating passion is his love for children. He is never quite so happy

as when he has a little deaf child in his arms. His labours in behalf of

the deaf will live on and bless generations of children yet to come; and

we love him alike for what he himself has achieved and for what he has

evoked from others.

During the two years I spent in New York I had many opportunities to

talk with distinguished people whose names I had often heard, but whom I

had never expected to meet. Most of them I met first in the house of my

good friend, Mr. Laurence Hutton. It was a great privilege to visit him

and dear Mrs. Hutton in their lovely home, and see their library and

read the beautiful sentiments and bright thoughts gifted friends had

written for them. It has been truly said that Mr. Hutton has the faculty

of bringing out in every one the best thoughts and kindest sentiments.

One does not need to read "A Boy I Knew" to understand him--the most

generous, sweet-natured boy I ever knew, a good friend in all sorts of

weather, who traces the footprints of love in the life of dogs as well

as in that of his fellowmen.

Mrs. Hutton is a true and tried friend. Much that I hold sweetest, much

that I hold most precious, I owe to her. She has oftenest advised

and helped me in my progress through college. When I find my work

particularly difficult and discouraging, she writes me letters that make

me feel glad and brave; for she is one of those from whom we learn that

one painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.

Mr. Hutton introduced me to many of his literary friends, greatest of

whom are Mr. William Dean Howells and Mark Twain. I also met Mr. Richard

Watson Gilder and Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman. I also knew Mr. Charles

Dudley Warner, the most delightful of story-tellers and the most beloved

friend, whose sympathy was so broad that it may be truly said of him,

he loved all living things and his neighbour as himself. Once Mr. Warner

brought to see me the dear poet of the woodlands--Mr. John Burroughs.

They were all gentle and sympathetic and I felt the charm of their

manner as much as I had felt the brilliancy of their essays and poems.

I could not keep pace with all these literary folk as they glanced from

subject to subject and entered into deep dispute, or made conversation

sparkle with epigrams and happy witticisms. I was like little Ascanius,

who followed with unequal steps the heroic strides of Aeneas on his

march toward mighty destinies. But they spoke many gracious words to me.

Mr. Gilder told me about his moonlight journeys across the vast desert

to the Pyramids, and in a letter he wrote me he made his mark under his

signature deep in the paper so that I could feel it. This reminds me

that Dr. Hale used to give a personal touch to his letters to me by

pricking his signature in braille. I read from Mark Twain's lips one

or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and

doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even

while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he

makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.

There are a host of other interesting people I met in New York: Mrs.

Mary Mapes Dodge, the beloved editor of St. Nicholas, and Mrs. Riggs

(Kate Douglas Wiggin), the sweet author of "Patsy." I received from them

gifts that have the gentle concurrence of the heart, books containing

their own thoughts, soul-illumined letters, and photographs that I love

to have described again and again. But there is not space to mention

all my friends, and indeed there are things about them hidden behind the

wings of cherubim, things too sacred to set forth in cold print. It is

with hesitancy that I have spoken even of Mrs. Laurence Hutton.

I shall mention only two other friends. One is Mrs. William Thaw, of

Pittsburgh, whom I have often visited in her home, Lyndhurst. She is

always doing something to make some one happy, and her generosity and

wise counsel have never failed my teacher and me in all the years we

have known her.

To the other friend I am also deeply indebted. He is well known for the

powerful hand with which he guides vast enterprises, and his wonderful

abilities have gained for him the respect of all. Kind to every one, he

goes about doing good, silent and unseen. Again I touch upon the circle

of honoured names I must not mention; but I would fain acknowledge his

generosity and affectionate interest which make it possible for me to go

to college.

Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand

ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges,

and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my

deprivation.

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