The Story of My Life, Helen Keller [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

the folds of the paper on the table, and allowed her to examine an alphabet of the square letters, such as she was to make. I then guided her hand to form the sentence, “Cat does drink milk.” When she finished it she was overjoyed. She carried it to her mother, who spelled it to her.

Day after day she moved her pencil in the same tracks along the grooved paper, never for a moment expressing the least impatience or sense of fatigue.

As she had now learned to express her ideas on paper, I next taught her the braille system. She learned it gladly when she discovered that she could herself read what she had written; and this still affords her constant pleasure. For a whole evening she will sit at the table writing whatever comes into her busy brain; and I seldom find any difficulty in reading what she has written.

Her progress in arithmetic has been equally remarkable. She can add and subtract with great rapidity up to the sum of one hundred; and she knows the multiplication tables as far as the fives. She was working recently with the number forty, when I said to her, “Make twos.” She replied immediately, “Twenty twos make forty.” Later I said, “Make fifteen threes and count.” I wished her to make the groups of threes and supposed she would then have to count them in order to know what number fifteen threes would make. But instantly she spelled the answer: “Fifteen threes make forty-five.”

On being told that she was white and that one of the servants was black, she concluded that all who occupied a similar menial position were of the same hue; and whenever I asked her the colour of a servant she would say “black.” When asked the colour of someone whose occupation she did not know she seemed bewildered, and finally said “blue.”

She has never been told anything about death or the burial of the body, and yet on entering the cemetery for the first time in her life, with her mother and me, to look at some flowers, she laid her hand on our eyes and repeatedly spelled “cry⁠—cry.” Her eyes actually filled with tears. The flowers did not seem to give her pleasure, and she was very quiet while we stayed there.

On another occasion while walking with me she seemed conscious of the presence of her brother, although we were distant from him. She spelled his name repeatedly and started in the direction in which he was coming.

When walking or riding she often gives the names of the people we meet almost as soon as we recognize them.

The letters take up the account again.

November 13, 1887.

We took Helen to the circus, and had “the time of our lives”! The circus people were much interested in Helen, and did everything they could to make her first circus a memorable event. They let her feel the animals whenever it was safe. She fed the elephants, and was allowed to climb up on the back of the largest, and sit in the lap of the “Oriental Princess,” while the elephant marched majestically around the ring. She felt some young lions. They were as gentle as kittens; but I told her they would get wild and fierce as they grew older. She said to the keeper, “I will take the baby lions home and teach them to be mild.” The keeper of the bears made one big black fellow stand on his hind legs and hold out his great paw to us, which Helen shook politely. She was greatly delighted with the monkeys and kept her hand on the star performer while he went through his tricks, and laughed heartily when he took off his hat to the audience. One cute little fellow stole her hair-ribbon, and another tried to snatch the flowers out of her hat. I don’t know who had the best time, the monkeys, Helen or the spectators. One of the leopards licked her hands, and the man in charge of the giraffes lifted her up in his arms so that she could feel their ears and see how tall they were. She also felt a Greek chariot, and the charioteer would have liked to take her round the ring; but she was afraid of “many swift horses.” The riders and clowns and rope-walkers were all glad to let the little blind girl feel their costumes and follow their motions whenever it was possible, and she kissed them all, to show her gratitude. Some of them cried, and the wild man of Borneo shrank from her sweet little face in terror. She has talked about nothing but the circus ever since. In order to answer her questions, I have been obliged to read a great deal about animals. At present I feel like a jungle on wheels!

December 12, 1887.

I find it hard to realize that Christmas is almost here, in spite of the fact that Helen talks about nothing else. Do you remember what a happy time we had last Christmas?

Helen has learned to tell the time at last, and her father is going to give her a watch for Christmas.

Helen is as eager to have stories told her as any hearing child I ever knew. She has made me repeat the story of little Red Riding Hood so often that I believe I could say it backward. She likes stories that make her cry⁠—I think we all do, it’s so nice to feel sad when you’ve nothing particular to be sad about. I am teaching her little rhymes and verses, too. They fix beautiful thoughts in her memory. I think, too, that they quicken all the child’s faculties, because they stimulate the imagination. Of course I don’t try to explain everything. If I did, there would be no opportunity for the play of fancy. Too much explanation directs the child’s attention to words and sentences, so that he fails to get