The Story of My Life
me about this girl's success before I was on fire with eagerness. I
resolved that I, too, would learn to speak. I would not rest satisfied
until my teacher took me, for advice and assistance, to Miss Sarah
Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School. This lovely, sweet-natured
lady offered to teach me herself, and we began the twenty-sixth of
March, 1890.
Miss Fuller's method was this: she passed my hand lightly over her face,
and let me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a
sound. I was eager to imitate every motion and in an hour had learned
six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. Miss Fuller gave me eleven
lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt
when I uttered my first connected sentence, "It is warm." True, they
were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My
soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching
through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.
No deaf child who has earnestly tried to speak the words which he has
never heard--to come out of the prison of silence, where no tone
of love, no song of bird, no strain of music ever pierces the
stillness--can forget the thrill of surprise, the joy of discovery
which came over him when he uttered his first word. Only such a one
can appreciate the eagerness with which I talked to my toys, to stones,
trees, birds and dumb animals, or the delight I felt when at my call
Mildred ran to me or my dogs obeyed my commands. It is an unspeakable
boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no
interpretation. As I talked, happy thoughts fluttered up out of my words
that might perhaps have struggled in vain to escape my fingers.
But it must not be supposed that I could really talk in this short time.
I had learned only the elements of speech. Miss Fuller and Miss Sullivan
could understand me, but most people would not have understood one word
in a hundred. Nor is it true that, after I had learned these elements,
I did the rest of the work myself. But for Miss Sullivan's genius,
untiring perseverance and devotion, I could not have progressed as far
as I have toward natural speech. In the first place, I laboured night
and day before I could be understood even by my most intimate friends;
in the second place, I needed Miss Sullivan's assistance constantly in
my efforts to articulate each sound clearly and to combine all sounds
in a thousand ways. Even now she calls my attention every day to
mispronounced words.
All teachers of the deaf know what this means, and only they can at all
appreciate the peculiar difficulties with which I had to contend. In
reading my teacher's lips I was wholly dependent on my fingers: I had
to use the sense of touch in catching the vibrations of the throat, the
movements of the mouth and the expression of the face; and often this
sense was at fault. In such cases I was forced to repeat the words or
sentences, sometimes for hours, until I felt the proper ring in my own
voice. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and
weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that
I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished,
spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my
achievement.
"My little sister will understand me now," was a thought stronger than
all obstacles. I used to repeat ecstatically, "I am not dumb now." I
could not be despondent while I anticipated the delight of talking to my
mother and reading her responses from her lips. It astonished me to
find how much easier it is to talk than to spell with the fingers, and
I discarded the manual alphabet as a medium of communication on my part;
but Miss Sullivan and a few friends still use it in speaking to me, for
it is more convenient and more rapid than lip-reading.
Just here, perhaps, I had better explain our use of the manual alphabet,
which seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or
talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet
generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the
speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The position of the
hand is as easy to feel as it is to see. I do not feel each letter
any more than you see each letter separately when you read. Constant
practice makes the fingers very flexible, and some of my friends spell
rapidly--about as fast as an expert writes on a typewriter. The mere
spelling is, of course, no more a conscious act than it is in writing.
When I had made speech my own, I could not wait to go home. At last
the happiest of happy moments arrived. I had made my homeward journey,
talking constantly to Miss Sullivan, not for the sake of talking, but
determined to improve to the last minute. Almost before I knew it, the
train stopped at the Tuscumbia station, and there on the platform stood
the whole family. My eyes fill with tears now as I think how my mother
pressed me close to her, speechless and trembling with delight, taking
in every syllable that I spoke, while little Mildred seized my free
hand and kissed it and danced, and my father expressed his pride and
affection in a big silence. It was as if Isaiah's prophecy had been
fulfilled in me, "The mountains and the hills shall break forth before
you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their
hands!"
CHAPTER XIV
The winter of 1892 was darkened by the one cloud in my childhood's
bright sky. Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in
doubt, anxiety and fear. Books lost their charm for me, and even now the
thought of those dreadful days chills my heart. A little story called
"The Frost King," which I wrote and sent to Mr. Anagnos, of the Perkins
Institution for the Blind, was at the root of the trouble. In order to
make the matter clear, I must set forth the facts connected with this
episode, which justice to my teacher and to myself compels me to relate.
I wrote the story when I was at home, the autumn after I had learned to
speak. We had stayed up at Fern Quarry later than usual. While we
were there, Miss Sullivan had described to me the beauties of the late
foliage, and it seems that her descriptions revived the memory of
a story, which must have been read to me, and which I must have
unconsciously retained. I thought then that I was "making up a story,"
as children say, and I eagerly sat down to write it before the ideas
should slip from me. My thoughts flowed easily; I felt a sense of joy in
the composition. Words and images came tripping to my finger ends, and
as I thought out sentence after sentence, I wrote them on my braille
slate. Now, if words and images come to me without effort, it is a
pretty sure sign that they are not the offspring of my own mind, but
stray waifs that I regretfully dismiss. At that time I eagerly absorbed
everything I read without a thought of authorship, and even now I cannot
be quite sure of the boundary line between my ideas and those I find in
books. I suppose that is because so many of my impressions come to me
through the medium of others' eyes and ears.
When the story was finished, I read it to my teacher, and I recall
now vividly the pleasure I felt in the more beautiful passages, and
my annoyance at being interrupted to have the pronunciation of a word
corrected. At dinner it was read to the assembled family, who were
surprised that I could write so well. Some one asked me if I had read it
in a book.
This question surprised me very much; for I had not the faintest
recollection of having had it read to me. I spoke up and said, "Oh, no,
it is my story, and I have written it for Mr. Anagnos."
Accordingly I copied the story and sent it to him for his birthday. It
was suggested that I should change the title from "Autumn Leaves"
to "The Frost King," which I did. I carried the little story to the
post-office myself, feeling as if I were walking on air. I little
dreamed how cruelly I should pay for that birthday gift.
Mr. Anagnos was delighted with "The Frost King," and published it in
one of the Perkins Institution reports. This was the pinnacle of my
happiness, from which I was in a little while dashed to earth. I had
been in Boston only a short time when it was discovered that a story
similar to "The Frost King," called "The Frost Fairies" by Miss Margaret
T. Canby, had appeared before I was born in a book called "Birdie and
His Friends." The two stories were so much alike in thought and language
that it was evident Miss Canby's story had been read to me, and that
mine was--a plagiarism. It was difficult to make me understand this; but
when I did understand I was astonished and grieved. No child ever drank
deeper of the cup of bitterness than I did. I had disgraced myself;
I had brought suspicion upon those I loved best. And yet how could it
possibly have happened? I racked my brain until I was weary to recall
anything about the frost that I had read before I wrote "The Frost
King"; but I could remember nothing, except the common reference to Jack
Frost, and a poem for children, "The Freaks of the Frost," and I knew I
had not used that in my composition.
At first Mr. Anagnos, though deeply troubled, seemed to believe me. He
was unusually tender and kind to me, and for a brief space the shadow
lifted. To please him I tried not to be unhappy, and to make myself as
pretty as possible for the celebration of Washington's birthday, which
took place very soon after I received the sad news.
I was to be Ceres in a kind of masque given by the blind girls. How well
I remember the graceful draperies that enfolded me, the bright autumn
leaves that wreathed my head, and the fruit and grain at my feet and in
my hands, and beneath all the piety of the masque the oppressive sense
of coming ill that made my heart heavy.
The night before the celebration, one of the teachers of the Institution
had asked me a question connected with "The Frost King," and I was
telling her that Miss Sullivan had talked to me about Jack Frost and
his wonderful works. Something I said made her think she detected in my
words a confession that I did remember Miss Canby's story of "The Frost
Fairies," and she laid her conclusions before Mr. Anagnos, although I
had told her most emphatically that she was mistaken.
Mr. Anagnos, who loved me tenderly, thinking that he had been deceived,
turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of love and innocence. He believed,
or at least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen
the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him to win his
admiration. I was brought before a court of investigation composed of
the teachers and officers of the Institution, and Miss Sullivan was
asked to leave me. Then I was questioned and cross-questioned with what
seemed to me a determination on the part of my judges to force me to
acknowledge that I remembered having had "The Frost Fairies" read to
me. I felt in every question the doubt and suspicion that was in
their minds, and I felt, too, that a loved friend was looking at me
reproachfully, although I could not have put all this into words. The
blood pressed about my thumping heart, and I could scarcely speak,
except in monosyllables. Even the consciousness that it was only a
dreadful mistake did not lessen my suffering, and when at last I was
allowed to leave the room, I was dazed and did not notice my teacher's
caresses, or the tender words of my friends, who said I was a brave
little girl and they were proud of me.
As I lay in my bed that night, I wept as I hope few children have wept.
I felt so cold, I imagined I should die before morning, and the thought
comforted me. I think if this sorrow had come to me when I was older,