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
I use the Hammond typewriter. I have tried many machines, and I find the
Hammond is the best adapted to the peculiar needs of my work. With this
machine movable type shuttles can be used, and one can have several
shuttles, each with a different set of characters--Greek, French, or
mathematical, according to the kind of writing one wishes to do on the
typewriter. Without it, I doubt if I could go to college.
Very few of the books required in the various courses are printed
for the blind, and I am obliged to have them spelled into my hand.
Consequently I need more time to prepare my lessons than other girls.
The manual part takes longer, and I have perplexities which they have
not. There are days when the close attention I must give to details
chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a
few chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and
singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but I soon recover my buoyancy
and laugh the discontent out of my heart. For, after all, every one who
wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and
since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own
way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the
edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep
it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more
eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every
struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud,
the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire. I am not always
alone, however, in these struggles. Mr. William Wade and Mr. E. E.
Allen, Principal of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of
the Blind, get for me many of the books I need in raised print. Their
thoughtfulness has been more of a help and encouragement to me than they
can ever know.
Last year, my second year at Radcliffe, I studied English composition,
the Bible as English composition, the governments of America and Europe,
the Odes of Horace, and Latin comedy. The class in composition was the
pleasantest. It was very lively. The lectures were always interesting,
vivacious, witty; for the instructor, Mr. Charles Townsend Copeland,
more than any one else I have had until this year, brings before you
literature in all its original freshness and power. For one short hour
you are permitted to drink in the eternal beauty of the old masters
without needless interpretation or exposition. You revel in their fine
thoughts. You enjoy with all your soul the sweet thunder of the Old
Testament, forgetting the existence of Jahweh and Elohim; and you go
home feeling that you have had "a glimpse of that perfection in which
spirit and form dwell in immortal harmony; truth and beauty bearing a
new growth on the ancient stem of time."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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