The Story of My Life
heart she prayed, "Father in Heaven, spare my baby's life!" But the
fever grew and flamed in my eyes, and for several days my kind physician
thought I would die.
But early one morning the fever left me as mysteriously and unexpectedly
as it had come, and I fell into a quiet sleep. Then my parents knew I
would live, and they were very happy. They did not know for some time
after my recovery that the cruel fever had taken my sight and hearing;
taken all the light and music and gladness out of my little life.
But I was too young to realize what had happened. When I awoke and found
that all was dark and still, I suppose I thought it was night, and I
must have wondered why day was so long coming. Gradually, however, I got
used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me, and forgot that it
had ever been day.
I forgot everything that had been except my mother's tender love. Soon
even my childish voice was stilled, because I had ceased to hear any
sound.
But all was not lost! After all, sight and hearing are but two of the
beautiful blessings which God had given me. The most precious, the
most wonderful of His gifts was still mine. My mind remained clear and
active, "though fled fore'er the light."
As soon as my strength returned, I began to take an interest in what the
people around me were doing. I would cling to my mother's dress as she
went about her household duties, and my little hands felt every object
and observed every motion, and in this way I learned a great many
things.
When I was a little older I felt the need of some means of communication
with those around me, and I began to make simple signs which my parents
and friends readily understood; but it often happened that I was unable
to express my thoughts intelligibly, and at such times I would give way
to my angry feelings utterly....
Teacher had been with me nearly two weeks, and I had learned eighteen
or twenty words, before that thought flashed into my mind, as the sun
breaks upon the sleeping world; and in that moment of illumination the
secret of language was revealed to me, and I caught a glimpse of the
beautiful country I was about to explore.
Teacher had been trying all the morning to make me understand that the
mug and the milk in the mug had different names; but I was very dull,
and kept spelling MILK for mug, and mug for milk until teacher must have
lost all hope of making me see my mistake. At last she got up, gave
me the mug, and led me out of the door to the pump-house. Some one was
pumping water, and as the cool fresh stream burst forth, teacher made me
put my mug under the spout and spelled "w-a-t-e-r," Water!
That word startled my soul, and it awoke, full of the spirit of the
morning, full of joyous, exultant song. Until that day my mind had been
like a darkened chamber, waiting for words to enter and light the lamp,
which is thought....
I learned a great many words that day. I do not remember what they all
were; but I do know that MOTHER, FATHER, SISTER and TEACHER were among
them. It would have been difficult to find a happier little child than I
was that night as I lay in my crib and thought over the joy the day had
brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.
The next morning I awoke with joy in my heart. Everything I touched
seemed to quiver with life. It was because I saw everything with the
new, strange, beautiful sight which had been given me. I was never angry
after that because I understood what my friends said to me, and I was
very busy learning many wonderful things. I was never still during the
first glad days of my freedom. I was continually spelling and acting
out the words as I spelled them. I would run, skip, jump and swing, no
matter where I happened to be. Everything was budding and blossoming.
The honeysuckle hung in long garlands, deliciously fragrant, and
the roses had never been so beautiful before. Teacher and I lived
out-of-doors from morning until night, and I rejoiced greatly in the
forgotten light and sunshine found again....
The morning after our arrival I awoke bright and early. A beautiful
summer day had dawned, the day on which I was to make the acquaintance
of a somber and mysterious friend. I got up, and dressed quickly and ran
downstairs. I met Teacher in the hall, and begged to be taken to the
sea at once. "Not yet," she responded, laughing. "We must have breakfast
first." As soon as breakfast was over we hurried off to the shore. Our
pathway led through low, sandy hills, and as we hastened on, I often
caught my feet in the long, coarse grass, and tumbled, laughing, in the
warm, shining sand. The beautiful, warm air was peculiarly fragrant, and
I noticed it got cooler and fresher as we went on.
Suddenly we stopped, and I knew, without being told, the Sea was at my
feet. I knew, too, it was immense! awful! and for a moment some of the
sunshine seemed to have gone out of the day. But I do not think I was
afraid; for later, when I had put on my bathing-suit, and the little
waves ran up on the beach and kissed my feet, I shouted for joy, and
plunged fearlessly into the surf. But, unfortunately, I struck my foot
on a rock and fell forward into the cold water.
Then a strange, fearful sense of danger terrified me. The salt water
filled my eyes, and took away my breath, and a great wave threw me up on
the beach as easily as if I had been a little pebble. For several days
after that I was very timid, and could hardly be persuaded to go in the
water at all; but by degrees my courage returned, and almost before the
summer was over, I thought it the greatest fun to be tossed about by the
sea-waves....
I do not know whether the difference or the similarity in phrasing
between the child's version and the woman's is the more remarkable. The
early story is simpler and shows less deliberate artifice, though even
then Miss Keller was prematurely conscious of style, but the art of the
later narrative, as in the passage about the sea, or the passage on the
medallion of Homer, is surely a fulfilment of the promise of the early
story. It was in these early days that Dr. Holmes wrote to her: "I am
delighted with the style of your letters. There is no affectation about
them, and as they come straight from your heart, so they go straight to
mine."
In the years when she was growing out of childhood, her style lost its
early simplicity and became stiff and, as she says, "periwigged." In
these years the fear came many times to Miss Sullivan lest the success
of the child was to cease with childhood. At times Miss Keller seemed
to lack flexibility, her thoughts ran in set phrases which she seemed to
have no power to revise or turn over in new ways.
Then came the work in college--original theme writing with new ideals
of composition or at least new methods of suggesting those ideals.
Miss Keller began to get the better of her old friendly taskmaster, the
phrase. This book, her first mature experiment in writing, settles the
question of her ability to write.
The style of the Bible is everywhere in Miss Keller's work, just as
it is in the style of most great English writers. Stevenson, whom
Miss Sullivan likes and used to read to her pupil, is another marked
influence. In her autobiography are many quotations, chiefly from the
Bible and Stevenson, distinct from the context or interwoven with it,
the whole a fabric quite of her own design. Her vocabulary has all
the phrases that other people use, and the explanation of it, and the
reasonableness of it ought to be evident by this time. There is no
reason why she should strike from her vocabulary all words of sound and
vision. Writing for other people, she should in many cases be true to
outer fact rather than to her own experience. So long as she uses words
correctly, she should be granted the privilege of using them freely, and
not be expected to confine herself to a vocabulary true to her lack of
sight and hearing. In her style, as in what she writes about, we must
concede to the artist what we deny to the autobiographer. It should be
explained, too, that LOOK and SEE are used by the blind, and HEAR by the
deaf, for PERCEIVE; they are simple and more convenient words. Only
a literal person could think of holding the blind to PERCEPTION or
APPERCEPTION, when SEEING and LOOKING are so much easier, and have,
moreover, in the speech of all men the meaning of intellectual
recognition as well as recognition through the sense of sight. When Miss
Keller examines a statue, she says in her natural idiom, as her fingers
run over the marble, "It looks like a head of Flora."
It is true, on the other hand, that in her descriptions, she is
best from the point of view of art when she is faithful to her own
sensations; and this is precisely true of all artists.
Her recent training has taught her to drop a good deal of her
conventionality and to write about experiences in her life which are
peculiar to her and which, like the storm in the wild cherry tree, mean
most and call for the truest phrasing. She has learned more and more to
give up the style she borrowed from books and tried to use, because she
wanted to write like other people; she has learned that she is at her
best when she "feels" the lilies sway; lets the roses press into her
hands and speaks of the heat which to her means light.
Miss Keller's autobiography contains almost everything that she ever
intended to publish. It seems worth while, however, to quote from some
of her chance bits of writing, which are neither so informal as her
letters nor so carefully composed as her story of her life. These
extracts are from her exercises in her course in composition, where she
showed herself at the beginning of her college life quite without rival
among her classmates. Mr. Charles T. Copeland, who has been for many
years instructor in English and Lecturer on English Literature at
Harvard and Radcliffe, said to me: "In some of her work she has shown
that she can write better than any pupil I ever had, man or woman. She
has an excellent 'ear' for the flow of sentences." The extracts follow:
A few verses of Omar Khayyam's poetry have just been read to me, and I
feel as if I had spent the last half-hour in a magnificent sepulcher.
Yes, it is a tomb in which hope, joy and the power of acting nobly
lie buried. Every beautiful description, every deep thought glides
insensibly into the same mournful chant of the brevity of life, of the
slow decay and dissolution of all earthly things. The poet's bright,
fond memories of love, youth and beauty are but the funeral torches
shedding their light on this tomb, or to modify the image a little,
they are the flowers that bloom on it, watered with tears and fed by a
bleeding heart. Beside the tomb sits a weary soul, rejoicing neither in
the joys of the past nor in the possibilities of the future, but seeking
consolation in forgetfulness. In vain the inspiring sea shouts to this
languid soul, in vain the heavens strive with its weakness; it still
persists in regretting and seeks a refuge in oblivion from the pangs
of present woe. At times it catches some faint echo from the living,
joyous, real world, a gleam of the perfection that is to be; and,
thrilled out of its despondency, feels capable of working out a grand
ideal even "in the poor, miserable, hampered actual," wherein it is
placed; but in a moment the inspiration, the vision is gone, and
this great, much-suffering soul is again enveloped in the darkness of
uncertainty and despair.
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If
they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow
men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
I often think that beautiful ideas embarrass most people as much as