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
During the summer of 1893, Miss Sullivan and I visited the World's Fair
with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. I recall with unmixed delight those days
when a thousand childish fancies became beautiful realities. Every day
in imagination I made a trip round the world, and I saw many wonders
from the uttermost parts of the earth--marvels of invention, treasuries
of industry and skill and all the activities of human life actually
passed under my finger tips.
I liked to visit the Midway Plaisance. It seemed like the "Arabian
Nights," it was crammed so full of novelty and interest. Here was
the India of my books in the curious bazaar with its Shivas and
elephant-gods; there was the land of the Pyramids concentrated in a
model Cairo with its mosques and its long processions of camels; yonder
were the lagoons of Venice, where we sailed every evening when the city
and the fountains were illuminated. I also went on board a Viking
ship which lay a short distance from the little craft. I had been on
a man-of-war before, in Boston, and it interested me to see, on this
Viking ship, how the seaman was once all in all--how he sailed and took
storm and calm alike with undaunted heart, and gave chase to whosoever
reechoed his cry, "We are of the sea!" and fought with brains and
sinews, self-reliant, self-sufficient, instead of being thrust into the
background by unintelligent machinery, as Jack is to-day. So it always
is--"man only is interesting to man."
At a little distance from this ship there was a model of the Santa
Maria, which I also examined. The captain showed me Columbus's cabin and
the desk with an hour-glass on it. This small instrument impressed me
most because it made me think how weary the heroic navigator must have
felt as he saw the sand dropping grain by grain while desperate men were
plotting against his life.
Mr. Higinbotham, President of the World's Fair, kindly gave me
permission to touch the exhibits, and with an eagerness as insatiable
as that with which Pizarro seized the treasures of Peru, I took in
the glories of the Fair with my fingers. It was a sort of tangible
kaleidoscope, this white city of the West. Everything fascinated me,
especially the French bronzes. They were so lifelike, I thought they
were angel visions which the artist had caught and bound in earthly
forms.
At the Cape of Good Hope exhibit, I learned much about the processes of
mining diamonds. Whenever it was possible, I touched the machinery
while it was in motion, so as to get a clearer idea how the stones were
weighed, cut, and polished. I searched in the washings for a diamond and
found it myself--the only true diamond, they said, that was ever found
in the United States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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