The Story of My Life
Santiago, and felt the places where she had been pierced with
shells. The Indiana was the largest and finest ship in the
Harbor, and we felt very proud of her.
After we left Halifax, we visited Dr. Bell at Cape Breton. He has
a charming, romantic house on a mountain called Beinn Bhreagh,
which overlooks the Bras d'Or Lake....
Dr. Bell told me many interesting things about his work. He had
just constructed a boat that could be propelled by a kite with
the wind in its favor, and one day he tried experiments to see if
he could steer the kite against the wind. I was there and really
helped him fly the kites. On one of them I noticed that the
strings were of wire, and having had some experience in bead
work, I said I thought they would break. Dr. Bell said "No!" with
great confidence, and the kite was sent up. It began to pull and
tug, and lo, the wires broke, and off went the great red dragon,
and poor Dr. Bell stood looking forlornly after it. After that he
asked me if the strings were all right and changed them at once
when I answered in the negative. Altogether we had great fun....
TO DR. EDWARD EVERETT HALE [Read by Dr. Hale at the celebration
of the centenary of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, at Tremont Temple,
Boston, Nov. 11, 1901.]
Cambridge, Nov. 10, 1901.
My teacher and I expect to be present at the meeting tomorrow in
commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of Dr. Howe's
birth; but I very much doubt if we shall have an opportunity to
speak with you; so I am writing now to tell you how delighted I
am that you are to speak at the meeting, because I feel that you,
better than any one I know will express the heartfelt gratitude
of those who owe their education, their opportunities, their
happiness to him who opened the eyes of the blind and gave the
dumb lip language.
Sitting here in my study, surrounded by my books, enjoying the
sweet and intimate companionship of the great and the wise, I am
trying to realize what my life might have been, if Dr. Howe had
failed in the great task God gave him to perform. If he had not
taken upon himself the responsibility of Laura Bridgman's
education and led her out of the pit of Acheron back to her human
inheritance, should I be a sophomore at Radcliffe College
to-day--who can say? But it is idle to speculate about what might
have been in connection with Dr. Howe's great achievement.
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? 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.
With kind greetings, in which my teacher joins me, I am
Affectionately your friend,
HELEN KELLER.
TO THE HON. GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR
Cambridge, Mass., November 25, 1901.
My Dear Senator Hoar:--
I am glad you liked my letter about Dr. Howe. It was written out
of my heart, and perhaps that is why it met a sympathetic
response in other hearts. I will ask Dr. Hale to lend me the
letter, so that I can make a copy of it for you.
You see, I use a typewriter--it is my right hand man, so to
speak. Without it I do not see how I could go to college. I write
all my themes and examinations on it, even Greek. Indeed, it has
only one drawback, and that probably is regarded as an advantage
by the professors; it is that one's mistakes may be detected at a
glance; for there is no chance to hide them in illegible writing.
I know you will be amused when I tell you that I am deeply
interested in politics. I like to have the papers read to me, and
I try to understand the great questions of the day; but I am
afraid my knowledge is very unstable; for I change my opinions
with every new book I read. I used to think that when I studied
Civil Government and Economics, all my difficulties and
perplexities would blossom into beautiful certainties; but alas,
I find that there are more tares than wheat in these fertile
fields of knowledge....
III: A SUPPLEMENTARY ACCOUNT OF HELEN KELLER'S LIFE AND EDUCATION
CHAPTER I. The Writing of the Book
It is fitting that Miss Keller's "Story of My Life" should appear at
this time. What is remarkable in her career is already accomplished,
and whatever she may do in the future will be but a relatively slight
addition to the success which distinguishes her now. That success has
just been assured, for it is her work at Radcliffe during the last two
years which has shown that she can carry her education as far as if
she were studying under normal conditions. Whatever doubts Miss Keller
herself may have had are now at rest.
Several passages of her autobiography, as it appeared in serial form,
have been made the subject of a grave editorial in a Boston newspaper,
in which the writer regretted Miss Keller's apparent disillusionment in
regard to the value of her college life. He quoted the passages in which
she explains that college is not the "universal Athens" she had hoped to
find, and cited the cases of other remarkable persons whose college life
had proved disappointing. But it is to be remembered that Miss Keller
has written many things in her autobiography for the fun of writing
them, and the disillusion, which the writer of the editorial took
seriously, is in great part humorous. Miss Keller does not suppose her
views to be of great importance, and when she utters her opinions on
important matters she takes it for granted that her reader will receive
them as the opinions of a junior in college, not of one who writes with
the wisdom of maturity. For instance, it surprised her that some people
were annoyed at what she said about the Bible, and she was amused that
they did not see, what was plain enough, that she had been obliged
to read the whole Bible in a course in English literature, not as a
religious duty put upon her by her teacher or her parents.
I ought to apologize to the reader and to Miss Keller for presuming
to say what her subject matter is worth, but one more explanation is
necessary. In her account of her early education Miss Keller is not
giving a scientifically accurate record of her life, nor even of the
important events. She cannot know in detail how she was taught, and her
memory of her childhood is in some cases an idealized memory of what
she has learned later from her teacher and others. She is less able to
recall events of fifteen years ago than most of us are to recollect our
childhood. That is why her teacher's records may be found to differ in
some particulars from Miss Keller's account.
The way in which Miss Keller wrote her story shows, as nothing else can
show, the difficulties she had to overcome. When we write, we can go
back over our work, shuffle the pages, interline, rearrange, see how
the paragraphs look in proof, and so construct the whole work before
the eye, as an architect constructs his plans. When Miss Keller puts her
work in typewritten form, she cannot refer to it again unless some one
reads it to her by means of the manual alphabet.
This difficulty is in part obviated by the use of her braille machine,
which makes a manuscript that she can read; but as her work must be put
ultimately in typewritten form, and as a braille machine is somewhat
cumbersome, she has got into the habit of writing directly on her
typewriter. She depends so little on her braille manuscript, that, when
she began to write her story more than a year ago and had put in
braille a hundred pages of material and notes, she made the mistake of
destroying these notes before she had finished her manuscript. Thus she
composed much of her story on the typewriter, and in constructing it
as a whole depended on her memory to guide her in putting together the
detached episodes, which Miss Sullivan read over to her.
Last July, when she had finished under great pressure of work her final
chapter, she set to work to rewrite the whole story. Her good friend,
Mr. William Wade, had a complete braille copy made for her from the
magazine proofs. Then for the first time she had her whole manuscript
under her finger at once. She saw imperfections in the arrangement of
paragraphs and the repetition of phrases. She saw, too, that her story
properly fell into short chapters and redivided it.
Partly from temperament, partly from the conditions of her work, she has
written rather a series of brilliant passages than a unified narrative;
in point of fact, several paragraphs of her story are short themes
written in her English courses, and the small unit sometimes shows its
original limits.
In rewriting the story, Miss Keller made corrections on separate
pages on her braille machine. Long corrections she wrote out on her
typewriter, with catch-words to indicate where they belonged. Then she
read from her braille copy the entire story, making corrections as she
read, which were taken down on the manuscript that went to the printer.
During this revision she discussed questions of subject matter and
phrasing. She sat running her finger over the braille manuscript,
stopping now and then to refer to the braille notes on which she had
indicated her corrections, all the time reading aloud to verify the
manuscript.
She listened to criticism just as any author listens to his friends or
his editor. Miss Sullivan, who is an excellent critic, made suggestions
at many points in the course of composition and revision. One newspaper
suggested that Miss Keller had been led into writing the book and had
been influenced to put certain things into it by zealous friends. As a
matter of fact, most of the advice she has received and heeded has led
to excisions rather than to additions. The book is Miss Keller's and is
final proof of her independent power.
CHAPTER II. PERSONALITY
Mark Twain has said that the two most interesting characters of the
nineteenth century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. The admiration with
which the world has regarded her is more than justified by what she has
done. No one can tell any great truth about her which has not already
been written, and all that I can do is to give a few more facts about
Miss Keller's work and add a little to what is known of her personality.
Miss Keller is tall and strongly built, and has always had good health.
She seems to be more nervous than she really is, because she expresses
more with her hands than do most English-speaking people. One reason
for this habit of gesture is that her hands have been so long her
instruments of communication that they have taken to themselves the
quick shiftings of the eye, and express some of the things that we say
in a glance. All deaf people naturally gesticulate. Indeed, at one time
it was believed that the best way for them to communicate was through
systematized gestures, the sign language invented by the Abbe de l'Epee.
When Miss Keller speaks, her face is animated and expresses all the
modes of her thought--the expressions that make the features eloquent