The Story of My Life: With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert MacyKeller, Helen
General
The Story of My Life: With her letters (1887-1901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, by John Albert Macy
Keller, Helen
Deafblind women -- United States -- Biography; Keller, Helen, 1880-1968
Miss Keller's effort to reach out and meet other people on their own
intellectual ground has kept her informed of daily affairs. When her
education became more systematic and she was busy with books, it would
have been very easy for Miss Sullivan to let her draw into herself, if
she had been so inclined. But every one who has met her has given
his best ideas to her and she has taken them. If, in the course of a
conversation, the friend next to her has ceased for some moments to
spell into her hand, the question comes inevitably, "What are you
talking about?" Thus she picks up the fragments of the daily intercourse
of normal people, so that her detailed information is singularly full
and accurate. She is a good talker on the little occasional affairs of
life.
Much of her knowledge comes to her directly. When she is out walking she
often stops suddenly, attracted by the odour of a bit of shrubbery. She
reaches out and touches the leaves, and the world of growing things is
hers, as truly as it is ours, to enjoy while she holds the leaves in her
fingers and smells the blossoms, and to remember when the walk is done.
When she is in a new place, especially an interesting place like
Niagara, whoever accompanies her--usually, of course, Miss Sullivan--is
kept busy giving her an idea of visible details. Miss Sullivan, who
knows her pupil's mind, selects from the passing landscape essential
elements, which give a certain clearness to Miss Keller's imagined
view of an outer world that to our eyes is confused and overloaded with
particulars. If her companion does not give her enough details,
Miss Keller asks questions until she has completed the view to her
satisfaction.
She does not see with her eyes, but through the inner faculty to serve
which eyes were given to us. When she returns from a walk and tells some
one about it, her descriptions are accurate and vivid. A comparative
experience drawn from written descriptions and from her teacher's words
has kept her free from errors in her use of terms of sound and
vision. True, her view of life is highly coloured and full of poetic
exaggeration; the universe, as she sees it, is no doubt a little better
than it really is. But her knowledge of it is not so incomplete as one
might suppose. Occasionally she astonishes you by ignorance of some fact
which no one happens to have told her; for instance, she did not know,
until her first plunge into the sea, that it is salt. Many of the
detached incidents and facts of our daily life pass around and over her
unobserved; but she has enough detailed acquaintance with the world to
keep her view of it from being essentially defective.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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