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
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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
She shrinks from the thought of death with evident dismay. Recently, on
being shown a deer which had been killed by her brother, she was greatly
distressed, and asked sorrowfully, "Why must everything die, even the
fleet-footed deer?" At another time she asked, "Do you not think we
would be very much happier always, if we did not have to die?" I said,
"No; because, if there were no death, our world would soon be so crowded
with living creatures that it would be impossible for any of them to
live comfortably." "But," said Helen, quickly, "I think God could make
some more worlds as well as He made this one."
When friends have told her of the great happiness which awaits her in
another life, she instantly asked: "How do you know, if you have not
been dead?"
The literal sense in which she sometimes takes common words and idioms
shows how necessary it is that we should make sure that she receives
their correct meaning. When told recently that Hungarians were born
musicians, she asked in surprise, "Do they sing when they are born?"
When her friend added that some of the pupils he had seen in Budapest
had more than one hundred tunes in their heads, she said, laughing, "I
think their heads must be very noisy." She sees the ridiculous quickly,
and, instead of being seriously troubled by metaphorical language, she
is often amused at her own too literal conception of its meaning.
Having been told that the soul was without form, she was much perplexed
at David's words, "He leadeth my soul." "Has it feet? Can it walk? Is it
blind?" she asked; for in her mind the idea of being led was associated
with blindness.
Of all the subjects which perplex and trouble Helen, none distresses her
so much as the knowledge of the existence of evil, and of the suffering
which results from it. For a long time it was possible to keep this
knowledge from her; and it will always be comparatively easy to prevent
her from coming in personal contact with vice and wickedness. The fact
that sin exists, and that great misery results from it, dawned gradually
upon her mind as she understood more and more clearly the lives and
experiences of those around her. The necessity of laws and penalties had
to be explained to her. She found it very hard to reconcile the presence
of evil in the world with the idea of God which had been presented to
her mind.
One day she asked, "Does God take care of us all the time?" She was
answered in the affirmative. "Then why did He let little sister fall
this morning, and hurt her head so badly?" Another time she was asking
about the power and goodness of God. She had been told of a terrible
storm at sea, in which several lives were lost, and she asked, "Why did
not God save the people if He can do all things?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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