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
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If
they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow
men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
I often think that beautiful ideas embarrass most people as much as
the company of great men. They are regarded generally as far more
appropriate in books and in public discourses than in the parlor or at
the table. Of course I do not refer to beautiful sentiments, but to the
higher truths relating to everyday life. Few people that I know seem
ever to pause in their daily intercourse to wonder at the beautiful bits
of truth they have gathered during their years of study. Often when I
speak enthusiastically of something in history or in poetry, I receive
no response, and I feel that I must change the subject and return to the
commonest topics, such as the weather, dressmaking, sports, sickness,
"blues" and "worries." To be sure, I take the keenest interest in
everything that concerns those who surround me; it is this very interest
which makes it so difficult for me to carry on a conversation with some
people who will not talk or say what they think, but I should not be
sorry to find more friends ready to talk with me now and then about the
wonderful things I read. We need not be like "Les Femmes Savantes" but
we ought to have something to say about what we learn as well as about
what we MUST do, and what our professors say or how they mark our
themes.
To-day I took luncheon with the Freshman Class of Radcliffe. This was
my first real experience in college life, and a delightful experience
it was! For the first time since my entrance into Radcliffe I had the
opportunity to make friends with all my classmates, and the pleasure of
knowing that they regarded me as one of themselves, instead of thinking
of me as living apart and taking no interest in the everyday nothings
of their life, as I had sometimes feared they did. I have often been
surprised to hear this opinion expressed or rather implied by girls of
my own age and even by people advanced in years. Once some one wrote to
me that in his mind I was always "sweet and earnest," thinking only of
what is wise, good and interesting--as if he thought I was one of those
wearisome saints of whom there are only too many in the world! I always
laugh at these foolish notions, and assure my friends that it is much
better to have a few faults and be cheerful and responsive in spite of
all deprivations than to retire into one's shell, pet one's affliction,
clothe it with sanctity, and then set one's self up as a monument of
patience, virtue, goodness and all in all; but even while I laugh I feel
a twinge of pain in my heart, because it seems rather hard to me that
any one should imagine that I do not feel the tender bonds which draw
me to my young sisters--the sympathies springing from what we have in
common--youth, hope, a half-eager, half-timid attitude towards the life
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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