From the time of her recovery until the journey of which we have been reading, Helen Keller lived in silence and darkness. This journey was undertaken in order to consult a famous physician who had cured many cases of blindness. Mr. and Mrs. Keller hoped this gentleman could help their child, and you can imagine how sad they were when he said he could do nothing. However, he sent them to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who had taught many deaf children to speak. Dr. Bell played with Helen and she sat on his knee and fingered curiously his heavy gold watch. He not only advised her parents to get a special teacher for her, but told them of a school in Boston in which he thought they could find some one able to unlock the doors of knowledge for the little girl. This was in the summer, and the next March Miss Sullivan went to Alabama to be Helen Keller’s friend and teacher.
Let us read how the little girl felt when this kind, loving woman came. “On the afternoon of that eventful day I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant. I felt 95 approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand, as I supposed, to my mother. Some one took it and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me.
“The next morning my teacher gave me a doll. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word d-o-l-l. I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I at last succeeded I was flushed with pleasure and pride. In the days that followed I learned to spell a great many words with my fingers, among them were pin, hat, cup, sit, stand, and walk.
“But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.”
Months and years of happy companionship now came to pass for Helen Keller. Every winter she and her teacher went to Boston where they had greater chances for study than in the little southern town. Here Helen learned about snow for the first time and all her memories of her studies in these years are joined with remembrances of the merry times she had after school riding on a sled or toboggan and playing in the snow.
It was when Helen was ten years old that she learned to speak. This was a great and wonderful experience. Her teacher took her to a lady who had offered to teach her. It was not easy for a deaf child to learn to talk, and Miss Keller says:
“The lady passed my hands 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 to make the sounds of M, P, A, S, T, I. In all I had eleven lessons. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt when I uttered my first connected sentence, ‘It is warm.’ After that my work was practise, practise, practise. 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 could do spurred me on and I thought, ‘My little sister will understand me now.’ When I had made speech my own, I could not wait to go home. My eyes fill now as I think how my mother pressed me close to her, taking in every word I spoke, while little Mildred kissed my hand and danced.”
Now a new world was indeed open to the bright girl who was so anxious to learn. She finished studies similar to those taught in the eight grades of our schools and began to prepare for college. Miss Sullivan was still with her and, although she had for a tutor a kind, patient man who taught her algebra, geometry, and Greek, it was Miss Sullivan who sat beside her and talked into the girl’s hands the tutor’s explanations and made it possible for her to enter Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
While at college Miss Keller, with Miss Sullivan, attended classes and followed the lessons through the 97 help of this noble teacher who gave some of her best years to training her pupil. College life brought many pleasures and interests into Helen Keller’s life, and when she finished her work there, it scarcely seemed possible that the bright, informed young woman had ever been kept a prisoner by darkness and silence.