The Story of My Life quotes

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 mother, moreover, succeeded in making me understand a good deal. I always knew when she wished me to bring her something, and I would run upstairs or anywhere else she indicated.

Indeed, I owe to her loving wisdom all that was bright and good in my long night.

I understood a good deal of what was going on about me. At five I learned to fold and put away the clean clothes when they were brought in from the laundry, and I distinguished my own from the rest.

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.

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.

I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.

“Light! give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

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

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 Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward.

Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand.

That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!

There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn.

Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought.

As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken.

Finally I noticed a very obvious error in the sequence and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads. Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, “Think.”

In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head.

This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.

“You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day.

You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

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

You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.”

The beautiful truth burst upon my mind⁠—I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.

From the beginning of my education Miss Sullivan made it a practice to speak to me as she would speak to any hearing child; the only difference was that she spelled the sentences into my hand instead of speaking them.

Thus I learned from life itself.

At the beginning I was only a little mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them.

When she came, everything about me breathed of love and joy and was full of meaning.

… should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.

Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can make him learn.

He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest;

he must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of textbooks.

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

How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers.

How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers.

All the best of me belongs to her⁠—there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.

When the train at last pulled into the station at Boston it was as if a beautiful fairy tale had come true.

The “once upon a time” was now; the “faraway country” was here.

We had scarcely arrived at the Perkins Institution for the Blind when I began to make friends with the little blind children. It delighted me inexpressibly to find that they knew the manual alphabet. What joy to talk with other children in my own language!

We had scarcely arrived at the Perkins Institution for the Blind when I began to make friends with the little blind children. It delighted me inexpressibly to find that they knew the manual alphabet. What joy to talk with other children in my own language!

Until then I had been like a foreigner speaking through an interpreter.

In the school where Laura Bridgman was taught I was in my own country. It took me some time to appreciate the fact that my new friends were blind. I knew I could not see;

We would get on our toboggan, a boy would give us a shove, and off we went! Plunging through drifts, leaping hollows, swooping down upon the lake, we would shoot across its gleaming surface to the opposite bank. What joy! What exhilarating madness!

For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine!

Miss Fuller gave me eleven lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt when I uttered my first connected sentence, “It is warm.” True, they were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech.

My soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.

No deaf child who has earnestly tried to speak the words which he has never heard—to come out of the prison of silence, where no tone of love, no song of bird, no strain of music ever pierces the stillness—can forget the thrill of surprise, …

Only such a one can appreciate the eagerness with which I talked to my toys, to stones, trees, birds and dumb animals, or the delight I felt when at my call Mildred ran to me or my dogs obeyed my commands.

It is an unspeakable boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no interpretation.

As I talked, happy thoughts fluttered up out of my words that might perhaps have struggled in vain to escape my fingers.

It was difficult to make me understand this; but when I did understand I was astonished and grieved.

No child ever drank deeper of the cup of bitterness than I did.

I had disgraced myself; I had brought suspicion upon those I loved best. And yet how could it possibly have happened? I racked my brain until I was weary to recall anything about the frost that I had read before I wrote “The Frost King”;

But this kind prophecy has never been fulfilled. I have never played with words again for the mere pleasure of the game.

Indeed, I have ever since been tortured by the fear that what I write is not my own.

For a long time, when I wrote a letter, even to my mother, I was seized with a sudden feeling of terror, and I would spell the sentences over and over, to make sure that I had not read them in a book.

I am afraid I have not yet completed this process.

It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind.

Consequently, in nearly all that I write, I produce something which very much resembles the crazy patchwork I used to make when I first learned to sew. This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends—pretty bits of silk and velvet;

It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies.

Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together.

We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.

They are always asking: “What does this beauty or that music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?” In the most evident sense they mean everything.

I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.

During the summer of 1893, Miss Sullivan and I visited the World’s Fair with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. I recall with unmixed delight those days when a thousand childish fancies became beautiful realities.

He taught me Latin grammar principally; but he often helped me in arithmetic, which I found as troublesome as it was uninteresting. Mr. Irons also read with me Tennyson’s In Memoriam. I had read many books before, but never from a critical point of view.

I learned for the first time to know an author, to recognize his style as I recognize the clasp of a friend’s hand.

At first I was rather unwilling to study Latin grammar. It seemed absurd to waste time analyzing every word I came across—noun, genitive, singular, feminine—when its meaning was quite plain.

Its people, scenery, manners, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom.

If I have since learned differently, I am not going to tell anybody.

But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and “faded into the light of common day.”

But in college there is no time to commune with one’s thoughts.

One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think.

When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures—solitude, books and imagination—outside with the whispering pines.

The professor is as remote as if he were speaking through a telephone. The lectures are spelled into my hand as rapidly as possible, and much of the individuality of the lecturer is lost to me in the effort to keep in the race.

The words rush through my hand like hounds in pursuit of a hare which they often miss.

But in this respect I do not think I am much worse off than the girls who take notes.

If the mind is occupied with the mechanical process of hearing and putting words on paper at pell-mell speed, I should not think one could pay much attention to the subject under consideration or the manner in which it is presented.

I cannot make notes during the lectures, because my hands are busy listening.

Usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get home. I write the exercises, daily themes, criticisms and hour-tests, the midyear and final examinations, on my typewriter, so that the professors have no difficulty in finding out how little I know.

… still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon.

Every struggle is a victory.

One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire. I am not always alone, however, in these struggles. Mr. William Wade and Mr. E. E.

but I soon recover my buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart.

For, after all, everyone who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.

I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and …

They are there, it is true; but they seem mummified. We must extract them from the crannied wall of learning and dissect and analyze them before we can be sure that we have a Milton or an Isaiah, and not merely a clever imitation.

Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit.

The trouble is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit.

It is possible to know a flower, root and stem and all, and all the processes of growth, and yet to have no appreciation of the flower fresh bathed in heaven’s dew.

Again and again I ask impatiently, “Why concern myself with these explanations and hypotheses?” They fly hither and thither in my thought like blind birds beating the air with ineffectual wings.

They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as we accept the sunshine and the love of our friends. I loved Little Women because it gave me a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could see and hear.

Circumscribed as my life was in so many ways, I had to look between the covers of books for news of the world that lay outside my own.

I did not care especially for The Pilgrim’s Progress, which I think I did not finish, or for the Fables. I read La Fontaine’s Fables first in an English translation, and enjoyed them only after a halfhearted fashion.

I read them in the intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them—I did not know whether they were well written or not; I never thought about style or authorship.

They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as we accept the sunshine and the love of our friends.

I loved Little Women because it gave me a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could see and hear.

I was familiar with the story of Troy before I read it in the original, and consequently I had little difficulty in making the Greek words surrender their treasures after I had passed the borderland of grammar.

Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart.

Would that the host of those who make the great works of the poets odious by their analysis, impositions and laborious comments might learn this simple truth!

The word-painting of Virgil is wonderful sometimes; but his gods and men move through the scenes of passion and strife and pity and love like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask, whereas in the Iliad they give three leaps and go on singing.

Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

How easy it is to fly on paper wings! From Greek Heroes to the Iliad was no day’s journey, nor was it altogether pleasant.

Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

How easy it is to fly on paper wings!

From Greek Heroes to the Iliad was no day’s journey, nor was it altogether pleasant.

I felt vaguely that they could not be good even if they wished to, because no one seemed willing to help them or to give them a fair chance. Even now I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them utterly.

There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be made whole.

It seems strange that my first reading of Shakespeare should have left me so many unpleasant memories.

I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell’s, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism—fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised.

No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

I have had the same strange sensation even in the heart of the city. I have felt it on cold, stormy days and at night.

It is like the kiss of warm lips on my face.

My favourite amusement is sailing. In the summer of 1901 I visited Nova Scotia, and had opportunities such as I had not enjoyed before to make the acquaintance of the ocean.

People who think that all sensations reach us through the eye and the ear have expressed surprise that I should notice any difference, except possibly the absence of pavements, between walking in city streets and in country roads.

They forget that my whole body is alive to the conditions about me.

The rumble and roar of the city smite the nerves of my face, and I feel the ceaseless tramp of an unseen multitude, and the dissonant tumult frets my spirit.

The children who crowd these grimy alleys, half-clad and underfed, shrink away from your outstretched hand as if from a blow.

Dear little creatures, they crouch in my heart and haunt me with a constant sense of pain.

There are men and women, too, all gnarled and bent out of shape. I have felt their hard, rough hands and realized what an endless struggle their existence must be—no more than a series of scrimmages, thwarted attempts to do something.

If there are children around, nothing pleases me so much as to frolic with them.

I find even the smallest child excellent company, and I am glad to say that children usually like me.

They lead me about and show me the things they are interested in. Of course the little ones cannot spell on their fingers; but I manage to read their lips. If I do not succeed they resort to dumb show.

It was a wonderful, glorious song, and it won the blind poet an immortal crown, the admiration of all ages.

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye.

I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heartthrobs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful?

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate.

Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree, for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate;

Fain would I question his imperious decree, for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears.

Silence sits immense upon my soul.

Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, “There is joy in self-forgetfulness.” So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.

but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, “There is joy in self-forgetfulness.”

So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.

I do not understand quite what that means. I suppose the calls of the stupid and curious, especially of newspaper reporters, are always inopportune. I also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding.

They are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence.

The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm.

Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart.

It may be only the clinging touch of a child’s hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure.

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence.

I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm.

Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child’s hand;

Hale used to give a personal touch to his letters to me by pricking his signature in braille. I read from Mark Twain’s lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything.

I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake.

Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.

I read from Mark Twain’s lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake.

Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.

There are a host of other interesting people I met in New York: Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, the beloved editor of St. Nicholas, and Mrs. Riggs (Kate Douglas Wiggin), the sweet author of Patsy.

Kind to everyone, he goes about doing good, silent and unseen. Again I touch upon the circle of honoured names I must not mention; but I would fain acknowledge his generosity and affectionate interest which make it possible for me to go to college.

Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life.

In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.

Astronomer comes from the Latin word astra, which means stars; and astronomers are men who study the stars, and tell us about them. When we are sleeping quietly in our beds, they are watching the beautiful sky through the telescope.

A telescope is like a very strong eye.

The stars are so far away that people cannot tell much about them, without very excellent instruments. Do you like to look out of your window, and see little stars?

Not far from the mill there was an old house, with many trees growing close to it. There were eight pigeons on the roof of the house, and a great dog on the step.

Pearl is a very proud mother-dog now. She has eight puppies, and she thinks there never were such fine puppies as hers.

I read in my books every day. I love them very, very, very much. I do want you to come back to me soon. I miss you so very, very much. I cannot know about many things, when my dear teacher is not here.

I am very sorry that I was not at home to welcome her; but my mother and my baby sister will be very kind to her while her mistress is away. I hope she is not lonely and unhappy.

I think puppies can feel very homesick, as well as little girls.

I should like to call her Lioness, for your dog. May I? I hope she will be very faithful—and brave, too.

Yesterday I read “In School Days” and “My Playmate,” and I enjoyed them greatly. I was very sorry that the poor little girl with the browns and the “tangled golden curls” died. It is very pleasant to live here in our beautiful world.

I cannot see the lovely things with my eyes, but my mind can see them all, and so I am joyful all the day long.

When I walk out in my garden I cannot see the beautiful flowers but I know that they are all around me; for is not the air sweet with their fragrance?

When I walk out in my garden I cannot see the beautiful flowers but I know that they are all around me; for is not the air sweet with their fragrance?

I know too that the tiny lily-bells are whispering pretty secrets to their companions else they would not look so happy.

I love you very dearly, because you have taught me so many lovely things about flowers, and birds, and people. Now I must say, goodbye. I hope [you] will enjoy the Thanksgiving very much.

I am. I should be very happy to come and teach you the Braille sometime, if you have time to learn, but I am afraid you are too busy. A few days ago I received a little box of English violets from Lady Meath.

The flowers were wilted, but the kind thought which came with them was as sweet and as fresh as newly pulled violets.

With loving greeting to the little cousins, and Mrs. Hale and a sweet kiss for yourself, From your little friend,

Let me tell you how it seems to me that we come to know about our heavenly Father. It is from the power of love which is in our own hearts.

Love is at the soul of everything.

Whatever has not the power of loving must have a very dreary life indeed.

But God does not only want us to be happy; He wants us to be good. He wants that most of all. He knows that we can be really happy only when we are good.

A great deal of the trouble that is in the world is medicine which is very bad to take, but which it is good to take because it makes us better.

We see how good people may be in great trouble when we think of Jesus who was the greatest sufferer that ever lived and yet was the best Being and so, I am sure, the happiest Being that the world has ever seen.

It almost makes me think the world would get along as well without seeing and hearing as with them. Perhaps people would be better in a great many ways, for they could not fight as they do now.

Just think of an army of blind people, with guns and cannon! Think of the poor drummers!

Of what use would they and their drumsticks be? You are spared the pain of many sights and sounds, which you are only too happy in escaping. Then think how much kindness you are sure of as long as you live.

I did not imagine, when I studied about the forests of Maine, that a strong and beautiful ship would go sailing all over the world, carrying wood from those rich forests, to build pleasant homes and schools and churches in distant countries.

I hope the great ocean will love the new Helen, and let her sail over its blue waves peacefully.

Please tell the brave sailors, who have charge of the Helen Keller, that little Helen who stays at home will often think of them with loving thoughts. I hope I shall see you and my beautiful namesake some time.

I used to think, when I read in my books about your great city, that when I visited it the people would be strangers to me, but now I feel differently.

It seems to me that all people who have loving, pitying hearts, are not strangers to each other.

I can hardly wait patiently for the time to come when I shall see my dear English friends, and their beautiful island home. My favourite poet has written some lines about England which I love very much.

But it is pleasant to think that he is happy and playful in his bright new home, and by and by that strange, wonderful thing teacher calls mind, will begin to spread its beautiful wings and fly away in search of knowledge-land.

Words are the mind’s wings, are they not?

I have been to Andover since I saw you, and I was greatly interested in all that my friends told me about Phillips Academy, because I knew you had been there, and I felt it was a place dear to you.

Then I was like the little blind children who are waiting to enter the kindergarten. There was no light in my soul. This wonderful world with all its sunlight and beauty was hidden from me, and I had never dreamed of its loveliness.

But teacher came to me and taught my little fingers to use the beautiful key that has unlocked the door of my dark prison and set my spirit free.

It is my earnest wish to share my happiness with others, and I ask the kind people of Boston to help me make the lives of little blind children brighter and happier.

It seemed as if it were some living thing rushing on to some terrible fate. I wish I could describe the cataract as it is, its beauty and awful grandeur, and the fearful and irresistible plunge of its waters over the brow of the precipice.

One feels helpless and overwhelmed in the presence of such a vast force.

I had the same feeling once before when I first stood by the great ocean and felt its waves beating against the shore. I suppose you feel so, too, when you gaze up to the stars in the stillness of the night, do you not?

And now we are in Hulton, PA again where I am going to study this winter with a tutor assisted by my dear teacher. I study Arithmetic, Latin and literature. I enjoy my lessons very much. It is so pleasant to learn about new things.

Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.

In literature I am studying Longfellow’s poetry. I know a great deal of it by heart, for I loved it long before I knew a metaphor from a synecdoche.

Among the dogs which received the most attention were the bulldogs. They permitted themselves startling liberties when anyone caressed them, crowding themselves almost into one’s arms and helping themselves without ceremony to kisses, apparently unconscious of the impropriety of their conduct.

Dear me, what unbeautiful little beasts they are! But they are so good natured and friendly, one cannot help liking them.

Dr. Humason, Teacher, and I left the others at the Dog Show and went to a reception given by the “Metropolitan Club.” … It is sometimes called the “Millionaires’ Club.” The building is magnificent, being built of white marble;

but the happy, idle days slipped away so quickly, and there were so many pleasant things to do every moment, that I never found time to clothe my thought in words, and send them to you.

I wonder what becomes of lost opportunities. Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.

But, however this may be, I cannot now write the letter which has lain in my thought for you so long. My heart is too full of sadness to dwell upon the happiness the summer has brought me. My father is dead.

It is such a delight to be with the other girls, and do everything that they do. I study Latin, German, Arithmetic and English History, all of which I enjoy except Arithmetic.

I am afraid I have not a mathematical mind; for my figures always manage to get into the wrong places!

…

Then comes the Iliad. What an inexpressible joy it will be to read about Achilles, and Ulysses, and Andromache and Athene, and the rest of my old friends in their own glorious language! I think Greek is the loveliest language that I know anything about.

If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.

We have had some splendid toboganning this month. Every morning, before lesson-time, we all go out to the steep hill on the northern shore of the lake near the house, and coast for an hour or so.

… if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important to know that the lines drawn from the extremities of the base of an isosceles triangle to the middle points of the opposite sides are equal!

The knowledge doesn’t make life any sweeter or happier, does it? On the other hand, when we learn a new word, it is the key to untold treasures.

…

I am glad, though, that it is nearly time to put away my books; for the sunshine and flowers, and the lovely lake in front of our house are doing their best to tempt me away from my Greek and Mathematics, especially from the latter!

I am sure the daisies and buttercups have as little use for the science of Geometry as I, in spite of the fact that they so beautifully illustrate its principles.

But bless me, I mustn’t forget the tandem! The truth is, I know very little about bicycles. I have only ridden a “sociable,” which is very different from the ordinary tandem. The “sociable” is safer, perhaps, than the tandem;

I wish the Wrentham woods were round the corner! But alas! they are not, and I shall have to content myself with a stroll in the Gardens. Somehow, after the great fields and pastures and lofty pine-groves of the country, they seem shut-in and conventional.

Even the trees seem citified and self-conscious.

Indeed, I doubt if they are on speaking terms with their country cousins! Do you know, I cannot help feeling sorry for these trees with all their fashionable airs?

but no sooner was it proved possible than hundreds of kind, sympathetic hearts were fired with the desire to help them, and now we see how many of those poor, unfortunate persons are being taught to see the beauty and reality of life.

Love always finds its way to an imprisoned soul, and leads it out into the world of freedom and intelligence!

As to the two-handed alphabet, I think it is much easier for those who have sight than the manual alphabet; for most of the letters look like the large capitals in books;

Cicero is splendid, but his orations are very difficult to translate. I feel ashamed sometimes, when I make that eloquent man say what sounds absurd or insipid; but how is a schoolgirl to interpret such genius?

Why, I should have to be a Cicero to talk like a Cicero!

…

I am afraid this letter savors too much of books—but really they make up my whole life these days, and I scarcely see or hear of anything else!

I do believe I sleep on books every night!

You know a student’s life is of necessity somewhat circumscribed and narrow and crowds out almost everything that is not in books. …

You must believe that.

Radcliffe girls are always up to their ears in work.

If you doubt it, you’d better come and see for yourself.

I am studying English—Sophomore English, if you please, (though I can’t see that it is different from just plain English) German, French and History. I’m enjoying my work even more than I expected to, which is another way of saying that I’m glad I came.

It is hard, very hard at times; but it hasn’t swamped me yet.

No, I am not studying Mathematics, or Greek or Latin either. The courses at Radcliffe are elective, only certain courses in English are prescribed. I passed off my English and advanced French before I entered college, and I choose the courses I like best.

When I came to your class last October, I was trying with all my might to be like everybody else, to forget as entirely as possible my limitations and peculiar environment.

Now, however, I see the folly of attempting to hitch one’s wagon to a star with harness that does not belong to it.

I have always accepted other peoples experiences and observations as a matter of course. It never occurred to me that it might be worth while to make my own observations and describe the experiences peculiarly my own.

I have always accepted other peoples experiences and observations as a matter of course. It never occurred to me that it might be worth while to make my own observations and describe the experiences peculiarly my own.

Henceforth I am resolved to be myself, to live my own life and write my own thoughts when I have any.

When I have written something that seems to be fresh and spontaneous and worthy of your criticisms, I will bring it to you, if I may, and if you think it good, I shall be happy;

Did I tell you in my last letter that I had a new dress, a real party dress with low neck and short sleeves and quite a train? It is pale blue, trimmed with chiffon of the same color.

I have worn it only once, but then I felt that Solomon in all his glory was not to be compared with me!

Anyway, he certainly never had a dress like mine! …

I think only those who have escaped that death-in-life existence, from which Laura Bridgman was rescued, can realize how isolated, how shrouded in darkness, how cramped by its own impotence is a soul without thought or faith or hope.

Words are powerless to describe the desolation of that prison-house, or the joy of the soul that is delivered out of its captivity.

When we compare the needs and helplessness of the blind before Dr. Howe began his work, with their present usefulness and independence, we realize that great things have been done in our midst. What if physical conditions have built up high walls about us?

When we compare the needs and helplessness of the blind before Dr. Howe began his work, with their present usefulness and independence, we realize that great things have been done in our midst. What if physical conditions have built up high walls about us?

Thanks to our friend and helper, our world lies upward; the length and breadth and sweep of the heavens are ours!

It is pleasant to think that Dr. Howe’s noble deeds will receive their due tribute of affection and gratitude, in the city, which was the scene of his great labors and splendid victories for humanity.

Someone asked her if she liked to study.

“Yes,” she replied, “but I like to play also, and I feel sometimes as if I were a music box with all the play shut up inside me.”

When she met Dr. Furness, the Shakespearean scholar, he warned her not to let the college professors tell her too many assumed facts about the life of Shakespeare; all we know, he said, is that Shakespeare was baptized, married, and died.

When she met Dr. Furness, the Shakespearean scholar, he warned her not to let the college professors tell her too many assumed facts about the life of Shakespeare; all we know, he said, is that Shakespeare was baptized, married, and died.

“Well,” she replied, “he seems to have done all the essential things.”

Once a friend who was learning the manual alphabet kept making g, which is like the hand of a signpost, for h, which is made with two fingers extended. Finally Miss Keller told him to “fire both barrels.”

“That,” he said, “is your prizefighting bump.”

“I never fight,” she replied, “except against difficulties.”

Miss Keller’s humour is that deeper kind of humour which is courage.

“I never fight,” she replied, “except against difficulties.”

Miss Keller’s humour is that deeper kind of humour which is courage.

Thirteen years ago she made up her mind to learn to speak, and she gave her teacher no rest until she was allowed to take lessons, although wise people, even Miss Sullivan, the wisest of them all, regarded it as an experiment unlikely to succeed …

Her life has been a series of attempts to do whatever other people do, and to do it as well.

Her success has been complete, for in trying to be like other people she has come most fully to be herself.

Her unwillingness to be beaten has developed her courage. Where another can go, she can go. Her respect for physical bravery is like Stevenson’s—the boy’s contempt for the fellow who cries, with a touch of young bravado in it.

Ask her the colour of your coat (no blind person can tell colour), she will feel it and say “black.” If it happens to be blue, and you tell her so triumphantly, she is likely to answer,

“Thank you. I am glad you know. Why did you ask me?”

Her whimsical and adventuresome spirit puts her so much on her mettle that she makes rather a poor subject for the psychological experimenter.

If her companion does not give her enough details, Miss Keller asks questions until she has completed the view to her satisfaction.

She does not see with her eyes, but through the inner faculty to serve which eyes were given to us.

When she returns from a walk and tells someone about it, her descriptions are accurate and vivid. A comparative experience drawn from written descriptions and from her teacher’s words has kept her free from errors in her use of terms of sound and vision.

but of the important difficulties they have been through, Miss Keller was fully informed, took her share of the suffering, and put her mind to the problems. She is logical and tolerant, most trustful of a world that has treated her kindly.

Once when someone asked her to define “love,” she replied, “Why, bless you, that is easy; it is what everybody feels for everybody else.”

“Toleration,” she said once, when she was visiting her friend Mrs. Laurence Hutton, “is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.”

but I shall insist on reasonable obedience from the start. One thing that impresses everybody is Helen’s tireless activity. She is never still a moment. She is here, there, and everywhere. Her hands are in everything; but nothing holds her attention for long.

Dear child, her restless spirit gropes in the dark.

Her untaught, unsatisfied hands destroy whatever they touch because they do not know what else to do with things.

One thing that impresses everybody is Helen’s tireless activity. She is never still a moment. She is here, there, and everywhere. Her hands are in everything; but nothing holds her attention for long. Dear child, her restless spirit gropes in the dark.

Her untaught, unsatisfied hands destroy whatever they touch because they do not know what else to do with things.

She helped me unpack my trunk when it came, and was delighted when she found the doll the little girls sent her. I thought it a good opportunity to teach her her first word.

So they were all willing to give in for the sake of peace. Besides, her past experiences and associations were all against me. I saw clearly that it was useless to try to teach her language or anything else until she learned to obey me.

I have thought about it a great deal, and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

As I wrote you, I meant to go slowly at first. I had an idea that I could win the love and confidence of my little pupil by the same means that I should use if she could see and hear.

He says the gentleman was not particularly interested, but said he would see if anything could be done. Doesn’t it seem strange that Mr. Anagnos never referred to this interview?

My heart is singing for joy this morning. A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil’s mind, and behold, all things are changed!

The wild little creature of two weeks ago has been transformed into a gentle child. She is sitting by me as I write, her face serene and happy, crocheting a long red chain of Scotch wool.

Last week she made her doll an apron, and it was done as well as any child of her age could do it. But I am always glad when this work is over for the day.

Sewing and crocheting are inventions of the devil, I think. I’d rather break stones on the king’s highway than hem a handkerchief.

At eleven we have gymnastics. She knows all the freehand movements and the “Anvil Chorus” with the dumbbells. Her father says he is going to fit up a gymnasium for her in the pump-house; but we both like a good romp better than set exercises.

The new scheme works splendidly. Helen knows the meaning of more than a hundred words now, and learns new ones daily without the slightest suspicion that she is performing a most difficult feat.

She learns because she can’t help it, just as the bird learns to fly.

But don’t imagine that she “talks fluently.” Like her baby cousin, she expresses whole sentences by single words. “Milk,” with a gesture means, “Give me more milk.” “Mother,” accompanied by an inquiring look, means, “Where is mother?” “Go” means, “I want to go out.”

No, I don’t want any more kindergarten materials. I used my little stock of beads, cards and straws at first because I didn’t know what else to do; but the need for them is past, for the present at any rate.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education.

They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.

Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow …

but so does the hearing child. I am sure these difficulties will take care of themselves. The impulse to tell is the important thing. I supply a word here and there, sometimes a sentence, and suggest something which she has omitted or forgotten.

Thus her vocabulary grows apace, and the new words germinate and bring forth new ideas; and they are the stuff out of which heaven and earth are made.

My work grows more absorbing and interesting every day. Helen is a wonderful child, so spontaneous and eager to learn. She knows about 300 words now and a great many common idioms, and it is not three months yet since she learned her first word.

My work grows more absorbing and interesting every day. Helen is a wonderful child, so spontaneous and eager to learn. She knows about 300 words now and a great many common idioms, and it is not three months yet since she learned her first word.

It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine; and moreover, it is given me to rouse and guide this bright intelligence.

If only I were better fitted for the great task! I feel every day more and more inadequate. My mind is full of ideas; but I cannot get them into working shape.

Therefore let us be exceedingly careful what we say and write about her. I shall write freely to you and tell you everything, on one condition: It is this: you must promise never to show my letters to anyone.

My beautiful Helen shall not be transformed into a prodigy if I can help it.

The heat makes Helen languid and quiet. Indeed, the Tophetic weather has reduced us all to a semiliquid state. Yesterday Helen took off her clothes and sat in her skin all the afternoon.

When the sun got round to the window where she was sitting with her book, she got up impatiently and shut the window. But when the sun came in just the same, she came over to me with a grieved look and spelled emphatically:

“Sun is bad boy. Sun must go to bed.”

She is the dearest, cutest little thing now, and so loving! One day, when I wanted her to bring me some water, she said: “Legs very tired. Legs cry much.”

She is the dearest, cutest little thing now, and so loving! One day, when I wanted her to bring me some water, she said:

“Legs very tired. Legs cry much.”

She is much interested in some little chickens that are pecking their way into the world this morning. I let her hold a shell in her hand, and feel the chicken “chip, chip.”

After seeing the chicken come out of the egg, she asked: “Did baby pig grow in egg? Where are many shells?”

Helen’s head measures twenty and one-half inches, and mine measures twenty-one and one-half inches. You see, I’m only one inch ahead!

The weather continues hot. Helen is about the same—pale and thin; but you mustn’t think she is really ill. I am sure the heat, and not the natural, beautiful activity of her mind, is responsible for her condition.

They tell us that Helen is “overdoing,” that her mind is too active (these very people thought she had no mind at all a few months ago!) and suggest many absurd and impossible remedies.

But so far nobody seems to have thought of chloroforming her, which is, I think, the only effective way of stopping the natural exercise of her faculties.

It’s queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty!

and suggest many absurd and impossible remedies. But so far nobody seems to have thought of chloroforming her, which is, I think, the only effective way of stopping the natural exercise of her faculties.

It’s queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty!

I am teaching Helen the square-hand letters as a sort of diversion. It gives her something to do, and keeps her quiet, which I think is desirable while this enervating weather lasts. She has a perfect mania for counting.

All that we do know certainly is that she has a good memory and imagination and the faculty of association.

I do wish things would stop being born!

“New puppies,” “new calves” and “new babies” keep Helen’s interest in the why and wherefore of things at white heat.

He agreed with Mr. Anagnos that it was my duty to give others the benefit of my experience. Besides, they said Helen’s wonderful deliverance might be a boon to other afflicted children.

When I sit down to write, my thoughts freeze, and when I get them on paper they look like wooden soldiers all in a row, and if a live one happens along, I put him in a straitjacket.

It’s easy enough, however, to say Helen is wonderful, because she really is. I kept a record of everything she said last week, and I found that she knows six hundred words. This does not mean, however, that she always uses them correctly.

was one of the restful questions she asked, as we swung to and fro in the hammock. I told her that when we are happy our thoughts are bright, and when we are naughty they are sad. Quick as a flash she said,

“My think is white, Viney’s think is black.”

You see, she had an idea that the colour of our thoughts matched that of our skin. I couldn’t help laughing, for at that very moment Viney was shouting at the top of her voice:

Ask him to let you see it. She has begun to use the pronouns of her own accord. This morning I happened to say, “Helen will go upstairs.” She laughed and said, “Teacher is wrong. You will go upstairs.” This is another great forward step.

Thus it always is. Yesterday’s perplexities are strangely simple today, and today’s difficulties become tomorrow’s pastime.

The rapid development of Helen’s mind is beautiful to watch. I doubt if any teacher ever had a work of such absorbing interest.

Some of them cried, and the wild man of Borneo shrank from her sweet little face in terror. She has talked about nothing but the circus ever since. In order to answer her questions, I have been obliged to read a great deal about animals.

At present I feel like a jungle on wheels!

I find it hard to realize that Christmas is almost here, in spite of the fact that Helen talks about nothing else. Do you remember what a happy time we had last Christmas?

Too much explanation directs the child’s attention to words and sentences, so that he fails to get the thought as a whole. I do not think anyone can read, or talk for that matter, until he forgets words and sentences in the technical sense.

It is a great thing to feel that you are of some use in the world, that you are necessary to somebody.

Helen’s dependence on me for almost everything makes me strong and glad.

The child’s eagerness and interest carry her over many obstacles that would be our undoing if we stopped to define and explain everything.

What would happen, do you think, if someone should try to measure our intelligence by our ability to define the commonest words we use?

I fear me, if I were put to such a test, I should be consigned to the primary class in a school for the feebleminded.

I told her they were tulips; but of course she didn’t understand the wordplay. I can’t believe that the colour-impressions she received during the year and a half she could see and hear are entirely lost.

Everything we have seen and heard is in the mind somewhere. It may be too vague and confused to be recognizable, but it is there all the same, like the landscape we lose in the deepening twilight.

We got home last night. We had a splendid time in Memphis, but I didn’t rest much. It was nothing but excitement from first to last—drives, luncheons, receptions, and all that they involve when you have an eager, tireless child like Helen on your hands.

but he would mean by black and white the same things that he means by sweet and sour. In the same way the child learns from many experiences to differentiate his feelings, and we name them for him—good, bad, gentle, rough, happy, sad.

It is not the word, but the capacity to experience the sensation that counts in his education.

This extract from one of Miss Sullivan’s letters is added because it contains interesting casual opinions stimulated by observing the methods of others.

This sort of thing may be necessary in some stages of education; but it isn’t the way to acquire language.

Nothing, I think, crushes the child’s impulse to talk naturally more effectually than these blackboard exercises.

The schoolroom is not the place to teach any young child language, least of all the deaf child.

… be kept as unconscious as the hearing child of the fact that he is learning words, and he should be allowed to prattle on his fingers, or with his pencil, in monosyllables if he chooses, until such time as his growing intelligence demands the sentence.

Language should not be associated in his mind with endless hours in school, with puzzling questions in grammar, or with anything that is an enemy to joy.

But I must not get into the habit of criticizing other people’s methods too severely. I may be as far from the straight road as they.

Oh, how terrible it was! I never knew before that there could be such a change in anything. There were very few spots of sunshine in poor Ginger’s life, and the sadnesses were so many!” After a moment she added, mournfully, “

I fear some people’s lives are just like Ginger’s.

”

Once, when a question puzzled her very much, I suggested that we take a walk and then perhaps she would understand it. She shook her head decidedly, and said: “

My enemies would think I was running away. I must stay and conquer them now

,” and she did.

She often reads for two or three hours in succession, and then lays aside her book reluctantly. One day as we left the library I noticed that she appeared more serious than usual, and I asked the cause. “

I am thinking how much wiser we always are when we leave here than we are when we come,

” was her reply.

When asked why she loved books so much, she once replied: “

Because they tell me so much that is interesting about things I cannot see, and they are never tired or troubled like people. They tell me over and over what I want to know.

”

But great care has been taken not to lead her thoughts prematurely to the consideration of subjects which perplex and confuse all minds.

Children ask profound questions, but they often receive shallow answers, or, to speak more correctly, they are quieted by such answers.

“Where did I come from?” and “Where shall I go when I die?” were questions Helen asked when she was eight years old.

“She sends the sunshine and rain to make them grow,” Helen replied; and after a moment she added, “

I think the sunshine is Nature’s warm smile, and the raindrops are her tears.

”

One day she said, sadly: “

I am blind and deaf. That is why I cannot see God.

” I taught her the word invisible, and told her we could not see God with our eyes, because He was a spirit; but that when our hearts were full of goodness and gentleness, then we saw Him because then we were more like Him.

At this moment another thought seemed to flash through her mind, and she added, “But Mr. Anagnos did not speak to my soul.” I explained to her that the soul, too, is invisible, or in other words, that it is without apparent form.

“But if I write what my soul thinks,” she said, “then it will be visible, and the words will be its body.”

A long time ago Helen said to me, “I would like to live sixteen hundred years.” When asked if she would not like to live always in a beautiful country called heaven, her first question was, “Where is heaven?”

She shrinks from the thought of death with evident dismay. Recently, on being shown a deer which had been killed by her brother, she was greatly distressed, and asked sorrowfully, “

Why must everything die, even the fleet-footed deer?

” At another time she asked, “Do you not think we would be very much happier always, if we did not have to die?” I said, “No;

When friends have told her of the great happiness which awaits her in another life, she instantly asked: “

How do you know, if you have not been dead?

”

When her friend added that some of the pupils he had seen in Budapest had more than one hundred tunes in their heads, she said, laughing, “

I think their heads must be very noisy.

” She sees the ridiculous quickly, and, instead of being seriously troubled by metaphorical language, she is often amused at her own too literal conception of its meaning.

Countless repetition of the conversation of daily life has impressed certain words and phrases upon their memories, and when they come to talk themselves, memory supplies the words they lisp. Likewise, the language of educated people is the memory of the language of books.

Language grows out of life, out of its needs and experiences.

At first my little pupil’s mind was all but vacant. She had been living in a world she could not realize. Language and knowledge are indissolubly connected; they are interdependent. Good work in language presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things.

The memory must be stored with ideas and the mind must be enriched with knowledge before writing becomes a natural and pleasurable effort. Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say.

Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.

Helen acquired language by practice and habit rather than by study of rules and definitions. Grammar with its puzzling array of classifications, nomenclatures, and paradigms, was wholly discarded in her education. She learned language by being brought in contact with the living language itself;

but we shall never properly develop the higher natures of our little ones while we continue to fill their minds with the so-called rudiments.

Mathematics will never make them loving, nor will the accurate knowledge of the size and shape of the world help them to appreciate its beauties.

Let us lead them during the first years to find their greatest pleasure in Nature. Let them run in the fields, learn about animals, and observe real things. Children will educate themselves under right conditions. They require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

Let us lead them during the first years to find their greatest pleasure in Nature. Let them run in the fields, learn about animals, and observe real things.

Children will educate themselves under right conditions. They require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

I think much of the fluency with which Helen uses language is due to the fact that nearly every impression which she receives comes through the medium of language.

There is, then, a good deal that Miss Sullivan has done for Miss Keller which no other teacher can do in just the same way for anyone else.

To have another Helen Keller there must be another Miss Sullivan.

To have another, well-educated deaf and blind child, there need only be another teacher, living under favourable conditions, among plenty of external interests, unseparated from her pupil, allowed to have a free hand, and using as many as she needs of the principles which Miss …

… yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles—a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward—if the road was always smooth and pleasant.

Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.

Of course, it was not easy at first to fly. The speech-wings were weak and broken, and had lost all the grace and beauty that had once been theirs; indeed, nothing was left save the impulse to fly, but that was something.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

But, nevertheless, it seemed to me sometimes that I could never use my speech-wings as God intended I should use them; there were so many difficulties in the way, so many discouragements;

On the other hand, the peculiar value to her of language, which ordinary people take for granted as a necessary part of them like their right hand, made her think about language and love it.

Language was her liberator, and from the first she cherished it.

The proof of Miss Keller’s early skill in the use of English, and the final comment on the excellence of this whole method of teaching, is contained in an incident, which, although at the time it seemed unfortunate, can no longer be regretted.

One day in Alabama, as we were gathering wild flowers near the springs on the hillsides, she seemed to understand for the first time that the springs were surrounded by mountains, and she exclaimed:

“The mountains are crowding around the springs to look at their own beautiful reflections!”

I do not know where she obtained this language, yet it is evident that it must have come to her from without, as it would hardly be possible for a person deprived of the visual sense to originate such an idea.

No one shall be allowed to think it was anything wrong; and some day she will write a great, beautiful story or poem that will make many people happy.

Tell her there are a few bitter drops in everyone’s cup, and the only way is to take the bitter patiently, and the sweet thankfully.

I shall love to hear of her reception of the book and how she likes the stories which are new to her.”

Their pleasure charmed away King Frost’s anger, and he, too, began to admire the painted trees, and at last he said to himself, “

My treasures are not wasted if they make little children happy.

I will not be offended at my idle, thoughtless fairies, for they have taught me a new way of doing good.”

The person said her story was called “Frost Fairies.” I am sure I never heard it. It made us feel so bad to think that people thought we had been untrue and wicked.

My heart was full of tears, for I love the beautiful truth with my whole heart and mind.

It troubles me greatly now. I do not know what I shall do. I never thought that people could make such mistakes. I am perfectly sure I wrote the story myself. Mr. Anagnos is much troubled.

She seems to have some idea of the difference between original composition and reproduction. She did not know the meaning of the word “plagiarism” until quite recently, when it was explained to her.

She is absolutely truthful. Veracity is the strongest element of her character.

She was very much surprised and grieved when she was told that her composition was an adaptation of Miss Canby’s story of “Frost Fairies.”

In this case Helen Keller held almost intact in her mind, unmixed with other ideas, the words of a story which at the time it was read to her she did not fully understand. The importance of this cannot be overestimated.

It shows how the child-mind gathers into itself words it has heard, and how they lurk there ready to come out when the key that releases the spring is touched.

The reason that we do not observe this process in ordinary children is, because we seldom observe them at all, and because they are fed from so many sources that the memories are confused and mutually destructive.

The episode had a deadening effect on Helen Keller and on Miss Sullivan, who feared that she had allowed the habit of imitation, which has in truth made Miss Keller a writer, to go too far.

Even today, when Miss Keller strikes off a fine phrase, Miss Sullivan says in humorous despair, “I wonder where she got that?”

But she knows now, since she has studied with her pupil in college the problems of composition, under the wise advice of Mr. Charles T.

Sun is strongest.” Most people will feel the superior imaginative quality of Helen Keller’s opening paragraph.

Surely the writer must become as a little child to see things like that.

“Twelve soldierly-looking white bears” is a stroke of genius, and there is beauty of rhythm throughout the child’s narrative. It is original in the same way that a poet’s version of an old story is original.

Surely the writer must become as a little child to see things like that. “Twelve soldierly-looking white bears” is a stroke of genius, and there is beauty of rhythm throughout the child’s narrative.

It is original in the same way that a poet’s version of an old story is original.

This little story calls into life all the questions of language and the philosophy of style. Some conclusions may be briefly suggested.

Charles T. Copeland, that the style of every writer and indeed, of every human being, illiterate or cultivated, is a composite reminiscence of all that he has read and heard.

Of the sources of his vocabulary he is, for the most part, as unaware as he is of the moment when he ate the food which makes a bit of his thumbnail.

With most of us the contributions from different sources are blended, crossed and confused. A child with but few sources may keep distinct what he draws from each.