The Story of My Life
I should go to Cambridge. This was the nearest approach I could get to
Harvard and to the fulfillment of my childish declaration.
At the Cambridge School the plan was to have Miss Sullivan attend the
classes with me and interpret to me the instruction given.
Of course my instructors had had no experience in teaching any but
normal pupils, and my only means of conversing with them was reading
their lips. My studies for the first year were English history, English
literature, German, Latin, arithmetic, Latin composition and occasional
themes. Until then I had never taken a course of study with the idea of
preparing for college; but I had been well drilled in English by Miss
Sullivan, and it soon became evident to my teachers that I needed no
special instruction in this subject beyond a critical study of the books
prescribed by the college. I had had, moreover, a good start in French,
and received six months' instruction in Latin; but German was the
subject with which I was most familiar.
In spite, however, of these advantages, there were serious drawbacks to
my progress. Miss Sullivan could not spell out in my hand all that the
books required, and it was very difficult to have textbooks embossed in
time to be of use to me, although my friends in London and Philadelphia
were willing to hasten the work. For a while, indeed, I had to copy
my Latin in braille, so that I could recite with the other girls. My
instructors soon became sufficiently familiar with my imperfect speech
to answer my questions readily and correct mistakes. I could not make
notes in class or write exercises; but I wrote all my compositions and
translations at home on my typewriter.
Each day Miss Sullivan went to the classes with me and spelled into my
hand with infinite patience all that the teachers said. In study hours
she had to look up new words for me and read and reread notes and books
I did not have in raised print. The tedium of that work is hard to
conceive. Frau Gröte, my German teacher, and Mr. Gilman, the principal,
were the only teachers in the school who learned the finger alphabet to
give me instruction. No one realized more fully than dear Frau Grote how
slow and inadequate her spelling was. Nevertheless, in the goodness of
her heart she laboriously spelled out her instructions to me in special
lessons twice a week, to give Miss Sullivan a little rest. But, though
everybody was kind and ready to help us, there was only one hand that
could turn drudgery into pleasure.
That year I finished arithmetic, reviewed my Latin grammar, and read
three chapters of Caesar's "Gallic War." In German I read, partly with
my fingers and partly with Miss Sullivan's assistance, Schiller's "Lied
von der Glocke" and "Taucher," Heine's "Harzreise," Freytag's "Aus dem
Staat Friedrichs des Grossen," Riehl's "Fluch Der Schonheit," Lessing's
"Minna von Barnhelm," and Goethe's "Aus meinem Leben." I took the
greatest delight in these German books, especially Schiller's wonderful
lyrics, the history of Frederick the Great's magnificent achievements
and the account of Goethe's life. I was sorry to finish "Die Harzreise,"
so full of happy witticisms and charming descriptions of vine-clad
hills, streams that sing and ripple in the sunshine, and wild regions,
sacred to tradition and legend, the gray sisters of a long-vanished,
imaginative age--descriptions such as can be given only by those to whom
nature is "a feeling, a love and an appetite."
Mr. Gilman instructed me part of the year in English literature. We
read together, "As You Like It," Burke's "Speech on Conciliation with
America," and Macaulay's "Life of Samuel Johnson." Mr. Gilman's broad
views of history and literature and his clever explanations made my
work easier and pleasanter than it could have been had I only read
notes mechanically with the necessarily brief explanations given in the
classes.
Burke's speech was more instructive than any other book on a political
subject that I had ever read. My mind stirred with the stirring times,
and the characters round which the life of two contending nations
centred seemed to move right before me. I wondered more and more, while
Burke's masterly speech rolled on in mighty surges of eloquence, how it
was that King George and his ministers could have turned a deaf ear
to his warning prophecy of our victory and their humiliation. Then I
entered into the melancholy details of the relation in which the great
statesman stood to his party and to the representatives of the people. I
thought how strange it was that such precious seeds of truth and wisdom
should have fallen among the tares of ignorance and corruption.
In a different way Macaulay's "Life of Samuel Johnson" was interesting.
My heart went out to the lonely man who ate the bread of affliction in
Grub Street, and yet, in the midst of toil and cruel suffering of body
and soul, always had a kind word, and lent a helping hand to the poor
and despised. I rejoiced over all his successes, I shut my eyes to
his faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not
crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy
and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and
picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent
sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude
very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the
Demosthenes of Great Britain.
At the Cambridge school, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed the
companionship of seeing and hearing girls of my own age. I lived with
several others in one of the pleasant houses connected with the school,
the house where Mr. Howells used to live, and we all had the advantage
of home life. I joined them in many of their games, even blind man's
buff and frolics in the snow; I took long walks with them; we discussed
our studies and read aloud the things that interested us. Some of the
girls learned to speak to me, so that Miss Sullivan did not have to
repeat their conversation.
At Christmas, my mother and little sister spent the holidays with me,
and Mr. Gilman kindly offered to let Mildred study in his school. So
Mildred stayed with me in Cambridge, and for six happy months we were
hardly ever apart. It makes me most happy to remember the hours we spent
helping each other in study and sharing our recreation together.
I took my preliminary examinations for Radcliffe from the 29th of June
to the 3rd of July in 1897. The subjects I offered were Elementary and
Advanced German, French, Latin, English, and Greek and Roman history,
making nine hours in all. I passed in everything, and received "honours"
in German and English.
Perhaps an explanation of the method that was in use when I took my
examinations will not be amiss here. The student was required to pass in
sixteen hours--twelve hours being called elementary and four advanced.
He had to pass five hours at a time to have them counted. The
examination papers were given out at nine o'clock at Harvard and brought
to Radcliffe by a special messenger. Each candidate was known, not
by his name, but by a number. I was No. 233, but, as I had to use a
typewriter, my identity could not be concealed.
It was thought advisable for me to have my examinations in a room by
myself, because the noise of the typewriter might disturb the other
girls. Mr. Gilman read all the papers to me by means of the manual
alphabet. A man was placed on guard at the door to prevent interruption.
The first day I had German. Mr. Gilman sat beside me and read the paper
through first, then sentence by sentence, while I repeated the words
aloud, to make sure that I understood him perfectly. The papers were
difficult, and I felt very anxious as I wrote out my answers on the
typewriter. Mr. Gilman spelled to me what I had written, and I made such
changes as I thought necessary, and he inserted them. I wish to say here
that I have not had this advantage since in any of my examinations. At
Radcliffe no one reads the papers to me after they are written, and I
have no opportunity to correct errors unless I finish before the time is
up. In that case I correct only such mistakes as I can recall in the few
minutes allowed, and make notes of these corrections at the end of my
paper. If I passed with higher credit in the preliminaries than in the
finals, there are two reasons. In the finals, no one read my work over
to me, and in the preliminaries I offered subjects with some of which I
was in a measure familiar before my work in the Cambridge school; for at
the beginning of the year I had passed examinations in English, History,
French and German, which Mr. Gilman gave me from previous Harvard
papers.
Mr. Gilman sent my written work to the examiners with a certificate that
I, candidate No. 233, had written the papers.
All the other preliminary examinations were conducted in the same
manner. None of them was so difficult as the first. I remember that the
day the Latin paper was brought to us, Professor Schilling came in and
informed me I had passed satisfactorily in German. This encouraged me
greatly, and I sped on to the end of the ordeal with a light heart and a
steady hand.
CHAPTER XIX
When I began my second year at the Gilman school, I was full of hope
and determination to succeed. But during the first few weeks I was
confronted with unforeseen difficulties. Mr. Gilman had agreed that that
year I should study mathematics principally. I had physics, algebra,
geometry, astronomy, Greek and Latin. Unfortunately, many of the books
I needed had not been embossed in time for me to begin with the classes,
and I lacked important apparatus for some of my studies. The classes I
was in were very large, and it was impossible for the teachers to give
me special instruction. Miss Sullivan was obliged to read all the books
to me, and interpret for the instructors, and for the first time in
eleven years it seemed as if her dear hand would not be equal to the
task.
It was necessary for me to write algebra and geometry in class and solve
problems in physics, and this I could not do until we bought a braille
writer, by means of which I could put down the steps and processes of my
work. I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on
the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was
to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires, which had bent
and pointed ends. I had to carry in my mind, as Mr. Keith says in his
report, the lettering of the figures, the hypothesis and conclusion, the
construction and the process of the proof. In a word, every study had
its obstacles. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in
a way I am ashamed to remember, especially as the signs of my trouble
were afterward used against Miss Sullivan, the only person of all the
kind friends I had there, who could make the crooked straight and the
rough places smooth.
Little by little, however, my difficulties began to disappear. The
embossed books and other apparatus arrived, and I threw myself into the
work with renewed confidence. Algebra and geometry were the only studies
that continued to defy my efforts to comprehend them. As I have said
before, I had no aptitude for mathematics; the different points were
not explained to me as fully as I wished. The geometrical diagrams
were particularly vexing because I could not see the relation of the
different parts to one another, even on the cushion. It was not until
Mr. Keith taught me that I had a clear idea of mathematics.
I was beginning to overcome these difficulties when an event occurred
which changed everything.
Just before the books came, Mr. Gilman had begun to remonstrate with
Miss Sullivan on the ground that I was working too hard, and in spite