The Story of My Life
The next important event in my life was my visit to Boston, in May,
1888. As if it were yesterday I remember the preparations, the departure
with my teacher and my mother, the journey, and finally the arrival
in Boston. How different this journey was from the one I had made to
Baltimore two years before! I was no longer a restless, excitable little
creature, requiring the attention of everybody on the train to keep
me amused. I sat quietly beside Miss Sullivan, taking in with eager
interest all that she told me about what she saw out of the car window:
the beautiful Tennessee River, the great cotton-fields, the hills and
woods, and the crowds of laughing negroes at the stations, who waved to
the people on the train and brought delicious candy and popcorn balls
through the car. On the seat opposite me sat my big rag doll, Nancy, in
a new gingham dress and a beruffled sunbonnet, looking at me out of
two bead eyes. Sometimes, when I was not absorbed in Miss Sullivan's
descriptions, I remembered Nancy's existence and took her up in my arms,
but I generally calmed my conscience by making myself believe that she
was asleep.
As I shall not have occasion to refer to Nancy again, I wish to tell
here a sad experience she had soon after our arrival in Boston. She was
covered with dirt--the remains of mud pies I had compelled her to eat,
although she had never shown any special liking for them. The laundress
at the Perkins Institution secretly carried her off to give her a bath.
This was too much for poor Nancy. When I next saw her she was a formless
heap of cotton, which I should not have recognized at all except for the
two bead eyes which looked out at me reproachfully.
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
"far-away 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! 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; but it did not seem possible that all the eager, loving children
who gathered round me and joined heartily in my frolics were also blind.
I remember the surprise and the pain I felt as I noticed that they
placed their hands over mine when I talked to them and that they read
books with their fingers. Although I had been told this before, and
although I understood my own deprivations, yet I had thought vaguely
that since they could hear, they must have a sort of "second sight,"
and I was not prepared to find one child and another and yet another
deprived of the same precious gift. But they were so happy and contented
that I lost all sense of pain in the pleasure of their companionship.
One day spent with the blind children made me feel thoroughly at home in
my new environment, and I looked eagerly from one pleasant experience to
another as the days flew swiftly by. I could not quite convince myself
that there was much world left, for I regarded Boston as the beginning
and the end of creation.
While we were in Boston we visited Bunker Hill, and there I had my first
lesson in history. The story of the brave men who had fought on the spot
where we stood excited me greatly. I climbed the monument, counting the
steps, and wondering as I went higher and yet higher if the soldiers had
climbed this great stairway and shot at the enemy on the ground below.
The next day we went to Plymouth by water. This was my first trip on the
ocean and my first voyage in a steamboat. How full of life and motion
it was! But the rumble of the machinery made me think it was thundering,
and I began to cry, because I feared if it rained we should not be able
to have our picnic out of doors. I was more interested, I think, in
the great rock on which the Pilgrims landed than in anything else in
Plymouth. I could touch it, and perhaps that made the coming of the
Pilgrims and their toils and great deeds seem more real to me. I have
often held in my hand a little model of the Plymouth Rock which a kind
gentleman gave me at Pilgrim Hall, and I have fingered its curves, the
split in the centre and the embossed figures "1620," and turned over in
my mind all that I knew about the wonderful story of the Pilgrims.
How my childish imagination glowed with the splendour of their
enterprise! I idealized them as the bravest and most generous men that
ever sought a home in a strange land. I thought they desired the freedom
of their fellow men as well as their own. I was keenly surprised and
disappointed years later to learn of their acts of persecution that make
us tingle with shame, even while we glory in the courage and energy that
gave us our "Country Beautiful."
Among the many friends I made in Boston were Mr. William Endicott and
his daughter. Their kindness to me was the seed from which many pleasant
memories have since grown. One day we visited their beautiful home
at Beverly Farms. I remember with delight how I went through their
rose-garden, how their dogs, big Leo and little curly-haired Fritz with
long ears, came to meet me, and how Nimrod, the swiftest of the horses,
poked his nose into my hands for a pat and a lump of sugar. I also
remember the beach, where for the first time I played in the sand.
It was hard, smooth sand, very different from the loose, sharp sand,
mingled with kelp and shells, at Brewster. Mr. Endicott told me about
the great ships that came sailing by from Boston, bound for Europe. I
saw him many times after that, and he was always a good friend to me;
indeed, I was thinking of him when I called Boston "the City of Kind
Hearts."
CHAPTER X
Just before the Perkins Institution closed for the summer, it was
arranged that my teacher and I should spend our vacation at Brewster,
on Cape Cod, with our dear friend, Mrs. Hopkins. I was delighted, for my
mind was full of the prospective joys and of the wonderful stories I had
heard about the sea.
My most vivid recollection of that summer is the ocean. I had always
lived far inland and had never had so much as a whiff of salt air; but
I had read in a big book called "Our World" a description of the ocean
which filled me with wonder and an intense longing to touch the
mighty sea and feel it roar. So my little heart leaped high with eager
excitement when I knew that my wish was at last to be realized.
No sooner had I been helped into my bathing-suit than I sprang out upon
the warm sand and without thought of fear plunged into the cool water.
I felt the great billows rock and sink. The buoyant motion of the water
filled me with an exquisite, quivering joy. Suddenly my ecstasy gave
place to terror; for my foot struck against a rock and the next instant
there was a rush of water over my head. I thrust out my hands to grasp
some support, I clutched at the water and at the seaweed which the waves
tossed in my face. But all my frantic efforts were in vain. The waves
seemed to be playing a game with me, and tossed me from one to another
in their wild frolic. It was fearful! The good, firm earth had slipped
from my feet, and everything seemed shut out from this strange,
all-enveloping element--life, air, warmth and love. At last, however,
the sea, as if weary of its new toy, threw me back on the shore, and in
another instant I was clasped in my teacher's arms. Oh, the comfort
of the long, tender embrace! As soon as I had recovered from my panic
sufficiently to say anything, I demanded: "Who put salt in the water?"
After I had recovered from my first experience in the water, I thought
it great fun to sit on a big rock in my bathing-suit and feel wave after
wave dash against the rock, sending up a shower of spray which quite
covered me. I felt the pebbles rattling as the waves threw their
ponderous weight against the shore; the whole beach seemed racked by
their terrific onset, and the air throbbed with their pulsations. The
breakers would swoop back to gather themselves for a mightier leap, and
I clung to the rock, tense, fascinated, as I felt the dash and roar of
the rushing sea!
I could never stay long enough on the shore. The tang of the untainted,
fresh and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought, and the shells
and pebbles and the seaweed with tiny living creatures attached to it
never lost their fascination for me. One day Miss Sullivan attracted
my attention to a strange object which she had captured basking in the
shallow water. It was a great horseshoe crab--the first one I had ever
seen. I felt of him and thought it very strange that he should carry
his house on his back. It suddenly occurred to me that he might make a
delightful pet; so I seized him by the tail with both hands and carried
him home. This feat pleased me highly, as his body was very heavy, and
it took all my strength to drag him half a mile. I would not leave Miss
Sullivan in peace until she had put the crab in a trough near the well
where I was confident he would be secure. But next morning I went to the
trough, and lo, he had disappeared! Nobody knew where he had gone, or
how he had escaped. My disappointment was bitter at the time; but little
by little I came to realize that it was not kind or wise to force this
poor dumb creature out of his element, and after awhile I felt happy in
the thought that perhaps he had returned to the sea.
CHAPTER XI
In the autumn I returned to my Southern home with a heart full of joyous
memories. As I recall that visit North I am filled with wonder at the
richness and variety of the experiences that cluster about it. It
seems to have been the beginning of everything. The treasures of a
new, beautiful world were laid at my feet, and I took in pleasure and
information at every turn. I lived myself into all things. I was never
still a moment; my life was as full of motion as those little insects
that crowd a whole existence into one brief day. I met many people who
talked with me by spelling into my hand, and thought in joyous sympathy
leaped up to meet thought, and behold, a miracle had been wrought! The
barren places between my mind and the minds of others blossomed like the
rose.
I spent the autumn months with my family at our summer cottage, on a
mountain about fourteen miles from Tuscumbia. It was called Fern Quarry,
because near it there was a limestone quarry, long since abandoned.
Three frolicsome little streams ran through it from springs in the rocks
above, leaping here and tumbling there in laughing cascades wherever the
rocks tried to bar their way. The opening was filled with ferns which
completely covered the beds of limestone and in places hid the streams.
The rest of the mountain was thickly wooded. Here were great oaks and
splendid evergreens with trunks like mossy pillars, from the branches of
which hung garlands of ivy and mistletoe, and persimmon trees, the
odour of which pervaded every nook and corner of the wood--an illusive,
fragrant something that made the heart glad. In places the wild
muscadine and scuppernong vines stretched from tree to tree, making
arbours which were always full of butterflies and buzzing insects. It
was delightful to lose ourselves in the green hollows of that tangled
wood in the late afternoon, and to smell the cool, delicious odours that
came up from the earth at the close of day.
Our cottage was a sort of rough camp, beautifully situated on the top of
the mountain among oaks and pines. The small rooms were arranged on each