The Story of My Life
I struggled--not that struggling helped matters, but the spirit of
resistance was strong within me; I generally broke down in tears and
physical exhaustion. If my mother happened to be near I crept into her
arms, too miserable even to remember the cause of the tempest. After
awhile the need of some means of communication became so urgent that
these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.
My parents were deeply grieved and perplexed. We lived a long way from
any school for the blind or the deaf, and it seemed unlikely that any
one would come to such an out-of-the-way place as Tuscumbia to teach
a child who was both deaf and blind. Indeed, my friends and relatives
sometimes doubted whether I could be taught. My mother's only ray of
hope came from Dickens's "American Notes." She had read his account of
Laura Bridgman, and remembered vaguely that she was deaf and blind, yet
had been educated. But she also remembered with a hopeless pang that Dr.
Howe, who had discovered the way to teach the deaf and blind, had been
dead many years. His methods had probably died with him; and if they had
not, how was a little girl in a far-off town in Alabama to receive the
benefit of them?
When I was about six years old, my father heard of an eminent oculist
in Baltimore, who had been successful in many cases that had seemed
hopeless. My parents at once determined to take me to Baltimore to see
if anything could be done for my eyes.
The journey, which I remember well, was very pleasant. I made friends
with many people on the train. One lady gave me a box of shells. My
father made holes in these so that I could string them, and for a long
time they kept me happy and contented. The conductor, too, was kind.
Often when he went his rounds I clung to his coat tails while he
collected and punched the tickets. His punch, with which he let me play,
was a delightful toy. Curled up in a corner of the seat I amused myself
for hours making funny little holes in bits of cardboard.
My aunt made me a big doll out of towels. It was the most comical
shapeless thing, this improvised doll, with no nose, mouth, ears or
eyes--nothing that even the imagination of a child could convert into a
face. Curiously enough, the absence of eyes struck me more than all
the other defects put together. I pointed this out to everybody with
provoking persistency, but no one seemed equal to the task of providing
the doll with eyes. A bright idea, however, shot into my mind, and the
problem was solved. I tumbled off the seat and searched under it until
I found my aunt's cape, which was trimmed with large beads. I pulled two
beads off and indicated to her that I wanted her to sew them on my
doll. She raised my hand to her eyes in a questioning way, and I nodded
energetically. The beads were sewed in the right place and I could not
contain myself for joy; but immediately I lost all interest in the doll.
During the whole trip I did not have one fit of temper, there were so
many things to keep my mind and fingers busy.
When we arrived in Baltimore, Dr. Chisholm received us kindly: but
he could do nothing. He said, however, that I could be educated, and
advised my father to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell of Washington,
who would be able to give him information about schools and teachers
of deaf or blind children. Acting on the doctor's advice, we went
immediately to Washington to see Dr. Bell, my father with a sad heart
and many misgivings, I wholly unconscious of his anguish, finding
pleasure in the excitement of moving from place to place. Child as I
was, I at once felt the tenderness and sympathy which endeared Dr.
Bell to so many hearts, as his wonderful achievements enlist their
admiration. He held me on his knee while I examined his watch, and he
made it strike for me. He understood my signs, and I knew it and loved
him at once. But I did not dream that that interview would be the door
through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to
friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.
Dr. Bell advised my father to write to Mr. Anagnos, director of the
Perkins Institution in Boston, the scene of Dr. Howe's great labours
for the blind, and ask him if he had a teacher competent to begin my
education. This my father did at once, and in a few weeks there came
a kind letter from Mr. Anagnos with the comforting assurance that
a teacher had been found. This was in the summer of 1886. But Miss
Sullivan did not arrive until the following March.
Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine
touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And
from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge is love
and light and vision."
CHAPTER IV
The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my
teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder
when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which
it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was
seven years old.
On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb,
expectant. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the
hurrying to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to
happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun
penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch, and fell
on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the
familiar leaves and blossoms which had just come forth to greet the
sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of marvel or
surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for
weeks and a deep languor had succeeded this passionate struggle.
Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a
tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and
anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line,
and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like
that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or
sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.
"Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light
of love shone on me in that very hour.
I felt approaching footsteps, I stretched out my hand as I supposed to
my mother. Some one took it, and I was caught up and held close in the
arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all
things else, to love me.
The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me
a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent
it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until
afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan
slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested
in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded
in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and
pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the
letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even
that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like
imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this
uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and
a few verbs like sit, stand and walk. But my teacher had been with me
several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.
One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my
big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me
understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had
a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan had tried
to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water,
but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped
the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I
became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll,
I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the
fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret
followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still,
dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.
I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I
had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was
removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm
sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought,
made me hop and skip with pleasure.
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance
of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water
and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed
over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly,
then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions
of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something
forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of
language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the
wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living
word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were
barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept
away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each
name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every
object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because
I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On
entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way
to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them
together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had
done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.
I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they
all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among
them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's
rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child
than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and
lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for
a new day to come.
CHAPTER V
I recall many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's
sudden awakening. I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the
name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and
learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my
sense of kinship with the rest of the world.
When the time of daisies and buttercups came Miss Sullivan took me by
the hand across the fields, where men were preparing the earth for the
seed, to the banks of the Tennessee River, and there, sitting on the
warm grass, I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature. I
learned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every
tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, how birds build
their nests and live and thrive from land to land, how the squirrel, the
deer, the lion and every other creature finds food and shelter. As my
knowledge of things grew I felt more and more the delight of the world I
was in. Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the
shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the
fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples
of my baby sister's hand. She linked my earliest thoughts with nature,
and made me feel that "birds and flowers and I were happy peers."
But about this time I had an experience which taught me that nature is