The Story of My Life
not always kind. One day my teacher and I were returning from a long
ramble. The morning had been fine, but it was growing warm and sultry
when at last we turned our faces homeward. Two or three times we stopped
to rest under a tree by the wayside. Our last halt was under a wild
cherry tree a short distance from the house. The shade was grateful, and
the tree was so easy to climb that with my teacher's assistance I was
able to scramble to a seat in the branches. It was so cool up in the
tree that Miss Sullivan proposed that we have our luncheon there. I
promised to keep still while she went to the house to fetch it.
Suddenly a change passed over the tree. All the sun's warmth left the
air. I knew the sky was black, because all the heat, which meant light
to me, had died out of the atmosphere. A strange odour came up from the
earth. I knew it, it was the odour that always precedes a thunderstorm,
and a nameless fear clutched at my heart. I felt absolutely alone,
cut off from my friends and the firm earth. The immense, the unknown,
enfolded me. I remained still and expectant; a chilling terror crept
over me. I longed for my teacher's return; but above all things I wanted
to get down from that tree.
There was a moment of sinister silence, then a multitudinous stirring
of the leaves. A shiver ran through the tree, and the wind sent forth a
blast that would have knocked me off had I not clung to the branch with
might and main. The tree swayed and strained. The small twigs snapped
and fell about me in showers. A wild impulse to jump seized me, but
terror held me fast. I crouched down in the fork of the tree. The
branches lashed about me. I felt the intermittent jarring that came now
and then, as if something heavy had fallen and the shock had traveled
up till it reached the limb I sat on. It worked my suspense up to the
highest point, and just as I was thinking the tree and I should fall
together, my teacher seized my hand and helped me down. I clung to her,
trembling with joy to feel the earth under my feet once more. I had
learned a new lesson--that nature "wages open war against her children,
and under softest touch hides treacherous claws."
After this experience it was a long time before I climbed another tree.
The mere thought filled me with terror. It was the sweet allurement
of the mimosa tree in full bloom that finally overcame my fears. One
beautiful spring morning when I was alone in the summer-house, reading,
I became aware of a wonderful subtle fragrance in the air. I started up
and instinctively stretched out my hands. It seemed as if the spirit of
spring had passed through the summer-house. "What is it?" I asked, and
the next minute I recognized the odour of the mimosa blossoms. I felt my
way to the end of the garden, knowing that the mimosa tree was near the
fence, at the turn of the path. Yes, there it was, all quivering in
the warm sunshine, its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long
grass. Was there ever anything so exquisitely beautiful in the world
before! Its delicate blossoms shrank from the slightest earthly touch;
it seemed as if a tree of paradise had been transplanted to earth. I
made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk and for
one minute stood irresolute; then, putting my foot in the broad space
between the forked branches, I pulled myself up into the tree. I had
some difficulty in holding on, for the branches were very large and
the bark hurt my hands. But I had a delicious sense that I was doing
something unusual and wonderful so I kept on climbing higher and higher,
until I reached a little seat which somebody had built there so long ago
that it had grown part of the tree itself. I sat there for a long, long
time, feeling like a fairy on a rosy cloud. After that I spent many
happy hours in my tree of paradise, thinking fair thoughts and dreaming
bright dreams.
CHAPTER VI
I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it.
Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the
words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were,
delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow
and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is
wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until
we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable
and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
At first, when my teacher told me about a new thing I asked very few
questions. My ideas were vague, and my vocabulary was inadequate; but as
my knowledge of things grew, and I learned more and more words, my field
of inquiry broadened, and I would return again and again to the same
subject, eager for further information. Sometimes a new word revived an
image that some earlier experience had engraved on my brain.
I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word,
"love." This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early
violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss
me; but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my
mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my
hand, "I love Helen."
"What is love?" I asked.
She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart,
whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me
very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched
it.
I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs,
a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"
"No," said my teacher.
Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.
"Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the
heat came. "Is this not love?"
It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun,
whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head,
and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my
teacher could not show me love.
A day or two afterward I was stringing beads of different sizes in
symmetrical groups--two large beads, three small ones, and so on. I had
made many mistakes, and Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and
again with gentle patience. Finally I noticed a very obvious error
in the sequence and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the
lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the 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.
For a long time I was still--I was not thinking of the beads in my lap,
but trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new
idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief
showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.
Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"
"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun
came out," she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that
time I could not have understood, she explained: "You cannot touch the
clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers
and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch
love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.
Without love you would not be 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. If I did not know the words and idioms necessary to express my
thoughts she supplied them, even suggesting conversation when I was
unable to keep up my end of the dialogue.
This process was continued for several years; for the deaf child does
not learn in a month, or even in two or three years, the numberless
idioms and expressions used in the simplest daily intercourse.
The little hearing child learns these from constant repetition and
imitation. The conversation he hears in his home stimulates his mind and
suggests topics and calls forth the spontaneous expression of his own
thoughts. This natural exchange of ideas is denied to the deaf child.
My teacher, realizing this, determined to supply the kinds of stimulus
I lacked. This she did by repeating to me as far as possible, verbatim,
what she heard, and by showing me how I could take part in the
conversation. But it was a long time before I ventured to take the
initiative, and still longer before I could find something appropriate
to say at the right time.
The deaf and the blind find it very difficult to acquire the amenities
of conversation. How much more this difficulty must be augmented in the
case of those who are both deaf and blind! They cannot distinguish the
tone of the voice or, without assistance, go up and down the gamut of
tones that give significance to words; nor can they watch the expression
of the speaker's face, and a look is often the very soul of what one
says.
CHAPTER VII
The next important step in my education was learning to read.
As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of
cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly
learned that each printed word stood for an object, an act, or a
quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the words in little
sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make
them in objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for
example, "doll," "is," "on," "bed" and placed each name on its object;
then I put my doll on the bed with the words is, on, bed arranged beside
the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and at the same time
carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves.
One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word girl on my pinafore
and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, is, in,
wardrobe. Nothing delighted me so much as this game. My teacher and I
played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged
in object sentences.
From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my
"Reader for Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found
them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek. Thus I began to
read. Of the time when I began to read connected stories I shall speak
later.
For a long time I had no regular lessons. Even when I studied most
earnestly it seemed more like play than work. Everything Miss Sullivan
taught me she illustrated by a beautiful story or a poem. Whenever
anything delighted or interested me she talked it over with me just
as if she were a little girl herself. What many children think of with
dread, as a painful plodding through grammar, hard sums and harder
definitions, is to-day one of my most precious memories.
I cannot explain the peculiar sympathy Miss Sullivan had with my
pleasures and desires. Perhaps it was the result of long association
with the blind. Added to this she had a wonderful faculty for
description. She went quickly over uninteresting details, and
never nagged me with questions to see if I remembered the
day-before-yesterday's lesson. She introduced dry technicalities of
science little by little, making every subject so real that I could not
help remembering what she taught.
We read and studied out of doors, preferring the sunlit woods to the
house. All my early lessons have in them the breath of the woods--the