The Story of My Life, Helen Keller [e novels to read online .txt] 📗
- Author: Helen Keller
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Of course, we visited the Midway Plaisance. It was a bewildering and fascinating place. I went into the streets of Cairo, and rode on the camel. That was fine fun. We also rode in the Ferris wheel, and on the ice-railway, and had a sail in the Whaleback. …
In the spring of 1893 a club was started in Tuscumbia, of which Mrs. Keller was president, to establish a public library. Miss Keller says:
“I wrote to my friends about the work and enlisted their sympathy. Several hundred books, including many fine ones, were sent to me in a short time, as well as money and encouragement. This generous assistance encouraged the ladies, and they have gone on collecting and buying books ever since, until now they have a very respectable public library in the town.”
To Mrs. Charles E. Inches
Hulton, PA, Oct. 21, 1893.
… We spent September at home in Tuscumbia … and were all very happy together. … Our quiet mountain home was especially attractive and restful after the excitement and fatigue of our visit to the World’s Fair. We enjoyed the beauty and solitude of the hills more than ever.
And now we are in Hulton, PA again where I am going to study this winter with a tutor assisted by my dear teacher. I study Arithmetic, Latin and literature. I enjoy my lessons very much. It is so pleasant to learn about new things. Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more. In literature I am studying Longfellow’s poetry. I know a great deal of it by heart, for I loved it long before I knew a metaphor from a synecdoche. I used to say I did not like arithmetic very well, but now I have changed my mind. I see what a good and useful study it is, though I must confess my mind wanders from it sometimes! for, nice and useful as arithmetic is, it is not as interesting as a beautiful poem or a lovely story. But bless me, how time does fly. I have only a few moments left in which to answer your questions about the “Helen Keller” Public Library.
1. I think there are about 3,000 people in Tuscumbia, AL, and perhaps half of them are colored people. 2. At present there is no library of any sort in the town. That is why I thought about starting one. My mother and several of my lady friends said they would help me, and they formed a club, the object of which is to work for the establishment of a free public library in Tuscumbia. They have now about 100 books and about $55 in money, and a kind gentleman has given us land on which to erect a library building. But in the meantime the club has rented a little room in a central part of the town, and the books which we already have are free to all. 3. Only a few of my kind friends in Boston know anything about the library. I did not like to trouble them while I was trying to get money for poor little Tommy, for of course it was more important that he should be educated than that my people should have books to read. 4. I do not know what books we have, but I think it is a miscellaneous (I think that is the word) collection. …
P.S. My teacher thinks it would be more businesslike to say that a list of the contributors toward the building fund will be kept and published in my father’s paper, the North Alabamian.
H. K.
To Miss Caroline Derby
Hulton, PA, December 28, 1893.
… Please thank dear Miss Derby for me for the pretty shield which she sent me. It is a very interesting souvenir of Columbus, and of the Fair White City; but I cannot imagine what discoveries I have made—I mean new discoveries. We are all discoverers in one sense, being born quite ignorant of all things; but I hardly think that is what she meant. Tell her she must explain why I am a discoverer. …
To Dr. Edward Everett Hale
Hulton, Pennsylvania, January 14. [1894]
My dear Cousin: I had thought to write to you long before this in answer to your kind letter which I was so glad to receive, and to thank you for the beautiful little book which you sent me; but I have been very busy since the beginning of the New Year. The publication of my little story in the Youth’s Companion has brought me a large number of letters—last week I received sixty-one!—and besides replying to some of these letters, I have many lessons to learn, among them Arithmetic and Latin; and, you know, Caesar is Caesar still, imperious and tyrannical, and if a little girl would understand so great a man, and the wars and conquests of which he tells in his beautiful Latin language, she must study much and think much, and study and thought require time.
I shall prize the little book always, not only for its own value; but because of its associations with you. It is a delight to think of you as the giver of one of your books into which, I am sure, you have wrought your own thoughts and feelings, and I thank you very much for remembering me in such a very beautiful way. …
In February Helen and Miss Sullivan returned to Tuscumbia. They spent the rest of the spring reading and studying. In the summer they attended the meeting at Chautauqua of the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, where Miss
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