20. Helen Keller, Marvel

No fairy tale can be more marvelous than the story of Helen Keller, the wonderful heroine who overcame insurmountable obstacles before she could find her way to mingle with her fellow men and attain her place in the world’s work.

HELEN KELLER

Until she was almost a year old Helen was like other babies—only brighter. She talked when she was six months old, walked as early as one year, and seemed interested in everything her baby eyes saw, and her ears heard. But a serious illness fell upon this bright little baby girl, and she was not expected to live. When at last she was out of danger the light had gone from her beautiful eyes, her tiny ears could not hear the tender crooning of her mother’s voice, and her little tongue was still. In darkness and silence she must pass her days, as if some wicked fairy, had suddenly stolen the greatest treasures of her life. At first she would lie in her mother’s lap, as she had done while she was ill, but as she grew older she learned to play with her little colored girl, Martha Washington, who went everywhere with her. She was also fond of her little dog Belle. She hunted eggs with Martha and Belle, through the tall grass, where the nests of the guinea-hens were, and she always wanted to carry the eggs herself for fear Martha might fall and break them. When she wished to go on an egg-hunt she would double up her hands and stoop down, as if she were feeling for something. She nodded her head for “yes,” shook it for “no,” and shivered for cold, but she would often become angry because she could not make herself understood by any one, and had to live in her dungeon of darkness with all the beautiful things of life shut out. She grew so unhappy in her loneliness that her parents took her to a great specialist to learn if anything could be done to restore her sight, speech, or hearing, but all was hopeless. Dr. Graham Bell, of Washington, told them what was being done for the blind, deaf, and dumb children in Boston, in the school for the blind under Doctor Anagnos. He secured a special teacher, Miss Anne Sullivan, who went to live with the little “shut-in” girl in her home in Tuscumbia, Ala. With infinite patience the teacher taught Helen the sign-language, first spelling the words for things in the little hand. Helen thought this was a new kind of game, but one day when at the pump the teacher held Helen’s hand under the spout and spelled w-a-t-e-r as the water poured over her hand, then Helen knew she was being taught the meaning of words. From that moment she learned very fast. Then she learned to touch the lips of the speaker, with her sensitive finger-tips, and she understood what was said. So Helen Keller came out of her house of bondage into the wonderful world of knowledge and delight. She could “feel” things. She could express herself. Others could understand her. She could tell the color of a flower she held. She learned the blind alphabet, she went to Perkins Institute for the Blind where she learned to read many books in the blind language. At last she learned to speak. Then she resolved to go to college. At length she entered Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., where she studied and listened to the lectures by having some one who could hear spell the lecture out into her hand. She learned, to use the typewriter and make out her lessons. At nineteen, when she entered college, she had accomplished what many girls of that age, in possession of all their senses, have not accomplished. She wrote a book of her life which was published and brought her a great deal of money. She was a general favorite among her schoolmates. She enjoyed her life, and was bright, happy, and gay; having no consciousness of being in any way handicapped. She was fond of fun, and laughed heartily at the funny side of things. She went to the seashore, having pleasant times in bathing. Although still shut away in blindness and in deafness, she lives a courageous life of usefulness in a wonderful degree, and often entertains audiences by the story of her life. Miss Sullivan is married, but still lives with her and loves her as when she was a little girl who depended on her for everything worth having in life.

Helen Keller, this ambitious, brilliant girl who can neither see nor hear, has been likened to Napoleon Bonaparte in her ability to overcome insurmountable obstacles and attain the pinnacle of success through the exercise of an indomitable will-power and the cooperation of those who loved and admired the spirit and ambition of her, whom Mark Twain called the “Marvel of the Twentieth Century,” and of whom Edmund Clarence Stedman sang: