 Chapter 1 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 the 27th, 1880, in Tuscambia, a little town of northern Alabama. The family on my father's side is descended from Casper 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 had not had a king among his. My grandfather, Casper 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 Tuscambia 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. Her 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 Everett 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 arbor. The little porch was hidden from view by a screen of yellow roses and southern smile acts. It was a favorite haunt of hummingbirds 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 tumbledown summerhouse 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 resembled butterfly's 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, and tainted 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, everyone 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 howdy, and one day I attracted everyone's attention by saying T-T-T 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 bathtub 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 Mockingbird, 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 newborn 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 brightened 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 gentleman called on my mother and I felt the shutting of the front door and other sounds that indicated their arrival. And a sudden thought I ran upstairs before anyone could stop me to put on my idea of a company dress. Standing before the mirror as I had seen others do I anointed my 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 colored 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 needing dough balls, helping make ice cream, grinding coffee, quarrelling over the cake-bowl and feeding the hens and turkeys that's warmed 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. It 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 would 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 cows 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 her pleasure in the least. They allowed us to grind the spices 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 were worried 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 his 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, worried and disappointed went off in search of Martha. Many incidents of these 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 leapt into life the flames encircled me so that in a moment my clothes were blazing. I made a terrified noise that brought Vinny, 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 the left 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 the 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 in the papers. 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 without bringing a guest. His special pride was the big garden where it was said he raised the finest watermelons and strawberries in the country 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 storyteller 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 outburst 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 overturned it and the baby being 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 affection 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 her finger language nor I her childish prattle. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of the Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 3 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 it was too miserable even to remember the cause of the tempest. After a while 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 anyone would come to such an out-of-the-way place as Tuscambia to teach a child 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 American Notes. She had read his account of Laura Bridgeman and remembered vaguely that she was deaf and blind yet had been educated but she also remembered with hopeless pang that Dr. Howe who had discovered the way to teach the deaf and blind had been dead His methods had probably died with him and if they had not how was a little girl in a far of 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 round 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 iron scape which was trimmed with 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 doll as 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 advise 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 and his 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 labors 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 teacher had been found. This was in the summer of 1886 but Mrs. Sullivan did not arrive until the following March. Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai and the 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. End of chapter 3 chapter 4 of the story of my life this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the story of my life by Helen Keller chapter 4 the most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher Ann 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 3rd 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 was a prize for me. Anger and bitters had prayed upon me continually for weeks and a deep longer 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. Eventually I was without compass or sounding line and had no way of knowing how near the harbor 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. Someone 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 Bridgeman 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 word existed. I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed in a prehending 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 how the doll 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 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. Someone was drawing water and 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 if 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 a 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 great many new words that day. I'd 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. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of the Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 5 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 learned 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 with the presence 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 was 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 and by 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 a strange odor came up from the earth. I knew it. It was the odor that always precedes a thunderstorm and the nameless fear clutched at my heart. I felt absolutely alone cut off from my friends and the firm earth. The immense, the unknown unfolded 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 run 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 and the horror 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 troubled 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 was 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 under the 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. In the next minute I recognized the odor 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 shrunk 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 in a 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 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 6 I had now the key to all language and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who here acquire language without any particular effort. The words that fall from other lips they catch on the wing as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must strap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process the result is wonderful. That is why we 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 the 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 anyone 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 violet 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 is 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 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 bead. 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 meaningful 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 splendor. 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 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 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. 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 to words, nor can they watch the expression of the speaker's face and the look is often the very soul of what one says. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 7 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, ears, 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 today 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 odor 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. The seed-throated frogs, caterdids and crickets held in my hand until, forgetting their embarrassment, they trailed their reedy note. Little downy chickens and wildflowers, the dogwood blossoms, meadow violets and budding fruit trees. I felt the bursting cotton balls and fingered their soft fiber and fuzzy seeds. I felt the low surfing of the wind through the corn stalks, the silky rustling of the long leaves 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 favorite haunt of mine was the orchard where the fruits ripened early in July. The large downy peaches would reach themselves into my hand and as the joyous breezes flew 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 favorite walk was Dukeller'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 riverbeds 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 temperature zone suggests a series of twine circles and I believe that if anyone should set about it he could convince me that white bears actually climbed 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 kindergarten 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 mollusks shells beautifully marked and bits of sandstone with a print of birds claws and a lovely fern in bass relief. These were the keys which unlocked the treasures of the anti-Diluvian world for me. With trembling fingers I listened to Miss Sullivan's descriptions of the terrible beasts with uncouth and pronounceable names which once went trumping 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 a 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 of the blue waters of the Indian Ocean in its ship of pearl. After I had learned 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 for a minifera 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 was very much in my 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 becomes 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 blooming. The slender finger-like 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 doft their green hoods shyly until the whole plant was one nodding bow of loveliness and fragrance. Once there were eleven tadpoles in the 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 leapt 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 he was content to stay in his pretty glass house under the big fuchsia tree until he attained a 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 massive possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them. 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 had she ceased trying in thought and action an 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 the 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 until he feels that liberty is his whether he is busy or at rest. He must feel the flush of victory but not thinking 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 aids 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 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 inspiration or a joy in me that is not awakened by her loving touch. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of the Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 8 The first Christmas after Miss Sullivan came to Tuscambia was a great event. Everyone 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 wake 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 Tuscambia school children had their tree to which they invited me. In the center of the school rooms there was 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 had my own gifts but when I was ready for them my impatience for the real Christmas to begin almost got beyond control. I know 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 all the chairs at the door on the very windowsill. 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 would 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 its 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 saw the cage and Tim's pretty wings did not meet my touch or hid small pointed claws take hold of my finger I knew that I should never see my sweet little singer again. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of The Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 9 The next important event 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 the new gingham dress and a beruffled sun bonnet 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 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 through. 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 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 Bridgeman 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 partly 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 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 center 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 splendor 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 makes 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 years 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. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of the Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 10 Just before the Perkins institution closed for the summer, it was a range 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 leapt 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 sprung 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 sea weed which the waves tossed in my face. That 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 a push-hour 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 wracked by their terrific onset and the air throbbed with their pulsations. The breakers would swoop back together themselves for a mightier leap, and I clung tense, fascinated as I felt a 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 feet 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 a while I felt happy in the thought that perhaps he had returned to the sea. 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 the moment. My life was as full of motion as those little insects that crowd a whole existence on a brief day. I met many people who talked with me by spelling into my hand and thought in joyous sympathy leapt 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 14 miles from Tuscumbia. It was called Fern Quarry because near it there was a limestone quarry long since abandoned. Three frolic-some 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. There 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 odor of which pervaded every nook and corner of the wood an elusive, fragrant something that made the heart glad. In places the wild muscadine and scuppernung vines stretched from tree to tree making arbors 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 odors that came up from the earth at the close of the 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 wild 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 out with the most clever possums and overtaken the fleet astuteer 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. Tomorrow to the chase was their good night's 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 bed. At dawn I was awakened by the smell of coffee, the rattling of guns 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 hidden 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 hoop and wild hello. 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 see the game however well the guns might be aimed at the snap of the trigger there was not a deer inside. There 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 of the leading rain 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 nothing and I helped them open the chestnut burns 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 Salivan 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 shortcut 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 cross braces 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. End of chapter 11 Chapter 12 of the Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. Chapter 12 After my first visit to Boston I spent almost every winter in the north. Once I went on a visit to 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 froliced 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 on upon the 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 the marble freeze. There was no odor 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 bullrushes and underbrush were bare. But the lake lay frozen and hard beneath the sun. Our favorite amusement during the winter was tobogganing. In places the shore of the lake rises abruptly from the water's surface. 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 ourselves divine. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of The Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 13 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 singed 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 a while 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. However one word that meaning of which I still remembered water. I pronounced it wawa. 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 the method of communication different from mine and even before I knew what thought 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 . Friends tried to discourage this tendency fearing lest it should 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 Ragenhild Carter. Mrs. Lamson who had been one of Laura Bridgeman's teachers and who had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden came with a young 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 Man School. We began the 26th 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 11 lessons in all. I will 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 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 talk 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 to 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 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 labored night and day before I could be understood even by my most intimate friends. In the second place, I needed Miss Sullivan's distance 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. I had to use the sense of touch in catching the vibrations of the throat, 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 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 filled 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 through singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of the Story of My Life This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 14 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 Furn 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 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 brails late. 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 waves that I regretfully dismiss. At that time I eagerly absorbed everything I read without the 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 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. Someone asked me if I had read it. 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, and read 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 little while, when it was discovered that the 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. 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 wracked 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 black 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. Anagnus, 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 very soon after I received the sad news. I was to be serious in the kind of mask 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 gaiety of the mask the oppressive sense of coming ill that made my heart heavy. The night before the celebration 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 Camby's story of the Frost fairies, and she laid her conclusions before Mr. Anagnus, although I had told her most emphatically that she was mistaken. Mr. Anagnus, 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 court of investigation composed of the teachers and officers of the institution, and Miss Sullivan was asked 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 the 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. Sofia C. Hopkins had a copy of Miss Camby'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 school books and fairy tales and that Birdie and his friends was probably among them. The stories had little 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 ineffasibly 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 Camby'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 Camby herself wrote kindly someday you will write a great story out of your own head that will be a comfort and help to many but this kind your 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 argument of Miss Salivan I think I should have given up trying to write all together I have read the frost fairies since also the letters I wrote in which I used other ideas of Miss Camby's I find in one of them a letter to Mr. Anagnos dated September the 29th 1891 words and sentiments exactly like those of the book at the time I was writing this letter contains phrases which show that my mind was saturated with the story I represent my teacher at 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 Camby'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 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 poetic ideas in clear and animated language those early compositions were mental gymnastics I was learning as all young and experienced 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 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 lesion 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 become 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 greater 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 said Stevenson and although I may not be original I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial periwicked 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 trumble 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 Cambide's story had been read to me and Mr. Anagnos 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 in the atmosphere and subsequent events have borne out this impression for two years he seems to have held the belief that Miss Salivan 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 misunderstandings I have set forth all the facts as they appear to me without the thought of defending myself or of laying blame on anyone end of chapter 14