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
A striking illustration of this strange power was recently shown while
her ears were being examined by the aurists in Cincinnati. Several
experiments were tried, to determine positively whether or not she had
any perception of sound. All present were astonished when she appeared
not only to hear a whistle, but also an ordinary tone of voice. She
would turn her head, smile, and act as though she had heard what was
said. I was then standing beside her, holding her hand. Thinking that
she was receiving impressions from me, I put her hands upon the table,
and withdrew to the opposite side of the room. The aurists then
tried their experiments with quite different results. Helen remained
motionless through them all, not once showing the least sign that she
realized what was going on. At my suggestion, one of the gentlemen took
her hand, and the tests were repeated. This time her countenance changed
whenever she was spoken to, but there was not such a decided lighting up
of the features as when I had held her hand.
In the account of Helen last year it was stated that she knew nothing
about death, or the burial of the body; yet on entering a cemetery
for the first time in her life, she showed signs of emotion--her eyes
actually filling with tears.
A circumstance equally remarkable occurred last summer; but, before
relating it, I will mention what she now knows with regard to death.
Even before I knew her, she had handled a dead chicken, or bird, or some
other small animal. Some time after the visit to the cemetery before
referred to, Helen became interested in a horse that had met with an
accident by which one of his legs had been badly injured, and she went
daily with me to visit him. The wounded leg soon became so much worse
that the horse was suspended from a beam. The animal groaned with pain,
and Helen, perceiving his groans, was filled with pity. At last it
became necessary to kill him, and, when Helen next asked to go and see
him, I told her that he was DEAD. This was the first time that she had
heard the word. I then explained that he had been shot to relieve him
from suffering, and that he was now BURIED--put into the ground. I am
inclined to believe that the idea of his having been intentionally shot
did not make much impression upon her; but I think she did realize the
fact that life was extinct in the horse as in the dead birds she had
touched, and also that he had been put into the ground. Since this
occurrence, I have used the word DEAD whenever occasion required, but
with no further explanation of its meaning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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