The Story of My Life, Helen Keller [best book recommendations .txt] 📗

suppose that she had any clear idea what a letter was. One day she brought me a sheet that she had punched full of holes, and wanted to put it in an envelope and take it to the post-office. She said, “Frank—letter.” I asked her what she had written to Frank. She replied, “Much words. Puppy motherdog—five. Baby—cry. Hot. Helen walk—no.

Sunfire—bad. Frank—come. Helen—kiss Frank. Strawberries—very good.”

 

Helen is almost as eager to read as she is to talk. I find she grasps the import of whole sentences, catching from the context the meaning of words she doesn’t know; and her eager questions indicate the outward reaching of her mind and its unusual powers.

 

The other night when I went to bed, I found Helen sound asleep with a big book clasped tightly in her arms. She had evidently been reading, and fallen asleep. When I asked her about it in the morning, she said, “Book—cry,” and completed her meaning by shaking and other signs of fear. I taught her the word AFRAID, and she said: “Helen is not afraid. Book is afraid. Book will sleep with girl.” I told her that the book wasn’t afraid, and must sleep in its case, and that “girl” mustn’t read in bed. She looked very roguish, and apparently understood that I saw through her ruse.

 

I am glad Mr. Anagnos thinks so highly of me as a teacher. But “genius” and “originality” are words we should not use lightly.

If, indeed, they apply to me even remotely, I do not see that I deserve any laudation on that account.

 

And right here I want to say something which is for your ears alone. Something within me tells me that I shall succeed beyond my dreams. Were it not for some circumstances that make such an idea highly improbable, even absurd, I should think Helen’s education would surpass in interest and wonder Dr. Howe’s achievement. I know that she has remarkable powers, and I believe that I shall be able to develop and mould them. I cannot tell how I know these things. I had no idea a short time ago how to go to work; I was feeling about in the dark; but somehow I know now, and I know that I know. I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them; I seem to divine Helen’s peculiar needs. It is wonderful.

 

Already people are taking a deep interest in Helen. No one can see her without being impressed. She is no ordinary child, and people’s interest in her education will be no ordinary interest.

Therefore let us be exceedingly careful what we say and write about her. I shall write freely to you and tell you everything, on one condition: It is this: you must promise never to show my letters to any one. My beautiful Helen shall not be transformed into a prodigy if I can help it.

 

June 5, 1887.

 

The heat makes Helen languid and quiet. Indeed, the Tophetic weather has reduced us all to a semi-liquid state. Yesterday Helen took off her clothes and sat in her skin all the afternoon.

When the sun got round to the window where she was sitting with her book, she got up impatiently and shut the window. But when the sun came in just the same, she came over to me with a grieved look and spelled emphatically: “Sun is bad boy. Sun must go to bed.”

 

She is the dearest, cutest little thing now, and so loving! One day, when I wanted her to bring me some water, she said: “Legs very tired. Legs cry much.”

 

She is much interested in some little chickens that are pecking their way into the world this morning. I let her hold a shell in her hand, and feel the chicken “chip, chip.” Her astonishment, when she felt the tiny creature inside, cannot be put in a letter. The hen was very gentle, and made no objection to our investigations. Besides the chickens, we have several other additions to the family—two calves, a colt, and a penful of funny little pigs. You would be amused to see me hold a squealing pig in my arms, while Helen feels it all over, and asks countless questions—questions not easy to answer either. After seeing the chicken come out of the egg, she asked: “Did baby pig grow in egg? Where are many shells?”

 

Helen’s head measures twenty and one-half inches, and mine measures twenty-one and one-half inches. You see, I’m only one inch ahead!

 

June 12, 1887.

 

The weather continues hot. Helen is about the same—pale and thin; but you mustn’t think she is really ill. I am sure the heat, and not the natural, beautiful activity of her mind, is responsible for her condition. Of course, I shall not overtax her brain. We are bothered a good deal by people who assume the responsibility of the world when God is neglectful. They tell us that Helen is “overdoing,” that her mind is too active (these very people thought she had no mind at all a few months ago!) and suggest many absurd and impossible remedies. But so far nobody seems to have thought of chloroforming her, which is, I think, the only effective way of stopping the natural exercise of her faculties. It’s queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty!

 

I am teaching Helen the square-hand letters as a sort of diversion. It gives her something to do, and keeps her quiet, which I think is desirable while this enervating weather lasts.

She has a perfect mania for counting. She has counted everything in the house, and is now busy counting the words in her primer. I hope it will not occur to her to count the hairs of her head. If she could see and hear, I suppose she would get rid of her superfluous energy in ways which would not, perhaps, tax her brain so much, although I suspect that the ordinary child takes his play pretty seriously. The little fellow who whirls his “New York Flyer” round the nursery, making “horseshoe curves”

undreamed of by less imaginative engineers, is concentrating his whole soul on his toy locomotive.

 

She just came to say, with a worried expression, “Girl—not count very large (many) words.” I said, “No, go and play with Nancy.”

This suggestion didn’t please her, however; for she replied, “No.

Nancy is very sick.” I asked what was the matter, and she said, “Much (many) teeth do make Nancy sick.” (Mildred is teething.) I happened to tell her the other day that the vine on the fence was a “creeper.” She was greatly amused, and began at once to find analogies between her movements and those of the plants.

They run, creep, hop, and skip, bend, fall, climb, and swing; but she tells me roguishly that she is “walk-plant.”

 

Helen held some worsted for me last night while I wound it.

Afterward she began to swing round and round, spelling to herself all the time, “Wind fast, wind slow,” and apparently enjoying her conceit very much.

 

June 15, 1887.

 

We had a glorious thunder-tempest last night, and it’s much cooler to-day. We all feel refreshed, as if we’d had a shower-bath. Helen’s as lively as a cricket. She wanted to know if men were shooting in the sky when she felt the thunder, and if the trees and flowers drank all the rain.

 

June 19, 1887.

 

My little pupil continues to manifest the same eagerness to learn as at first. Her every waking moment is spent in the endeavour to satisfy her innate desire for knowledge, and her mind works so incessantly that we have feared for her health. But her appetite, which left her a few weeks ago, has returned, and her sleep seems more quiet and natural. She will be seven years old the twenty-seventh of this month. Her height is four feet one inch, and her head measures twenty and one-half inches in circumference, the line being drawn round the head so as to pass over the prominences of the parietal and frontal bones. Above this line the head rises one and one-fourth inches.

 

During our walks she keeps up a continual spelling, and delights to accompany it with actions such as skipping, hopping, jumping, running, walking fast, walking slow, and the like. When she drops stitches she says, “Helen wrong, teacher will cry.” If she wants water she says, “Give Helen drink water.” She knows four hundred words besides numerous proper nouns. In one lesson I taught her these words: BEDSTEAD, MATTRESS, SHEET, BLANKET, COMFORTER, SPREAD, PILLOW. The next day I found that she remembered all but spread. The same day she had learned, at different times, the words: hOUSE, WEED, DUST, SWING, MOLASSES, FAST, SLOW, MAPLE-SUGAR and COUNTER, and she had not forgotten one of these last. This will give you an idea of the retentive memory she possesses. She can count to thirty very quickly, and can write seven of the square-hand letters and the words which can be made with them. She seems to understand about writing letters, and is impatient to “write Frank letter.” She enjoys punching holes in paper with the stiletto, and I supposed it was because she could examine the result of her work; but we watched her one day, and I was much surprised to find that she imagined she was writing a letter. She would spell “Eva” (a cousin of whom she is very fond) with one hand, then make believe to write it; then spell, “sick in bed,” and write that. She kept this up for nearly an hour. She was (or imagined she was) putting on paper the things which had interested her. When she had finished the letter she carried it to her mother and spelled, “Frank letter,” and gave it to her brother to take to the post-office. She had been with me to take letters to the post-office.

 

She recognizes instantly a person whom she has once met, and spells the name. Unlike Laura Bridgman, she is fond of gentlemen, and we notice that she makes friends with a gentleman sooner than with a lady.

 

She is always ready to share whatever she has with those about her, often keeping but very little for herself. She is very fond of dress and of all kinds of finery, and is very unhappy when she finds a hole in anything she is wearing. She will insist on having her hair put in curl papers when she is so sleepy she can scarcely stand. She discovered a hole in her boot the other morning, and, after breakfast, she went to her father and spelled, “Helen new boot Simpson (her brother) buggy store man.”

One can easily see her meaning.

 

July 3, 1887.

 

There was a great rumpus downstairs this morning. I heard Helen screaming, and ran down to see what was the matter. I found her in a terrible passion. I had hoped this would never happen again.

She has been so gentle and obedient the past two months, I thought love had subdued the lion; but it seems he was only sleeping. At all events, there she was, tearing and scratching and biting Viney like some wild thing. It seems Viney had attempted to take a glass, which Helen was filling with stones, fearing that she would break it. Helen resisted, and Viney tried to force it out of her hand, and I suspect that she slapped the child, or did something which caused this