The story of my life by Helen Keller (chp#5)

 Story of my life by Helen Keller Chapter Five 

       I recall many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's sudden awakening I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses the more joyous

and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world when the time of daisies and buttercups came miss sullivan took me by the hand across the fields where men were preparing the earth for the seed to the banks of the river tennessee and there sitting on the warm grass I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature Ilearned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every tree that is pleasant to the site and good for food how birds build their nests and live and thrive from land to land how the squirrel the deer the lion and every other creature finds food and shelter as my knowledge of things grew I felt more and more the delight of the world I was in long before I learned to do a summer in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth ms sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods in every blade of grass and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand she linked my earliest thoughts with nature and made me feel that birds and flowers and I were happy peers but about this time I had an experience which taught me that nature is not always kind one day my teacher and I were returning from a long ramble the morning had been fine but it was growing warm and sultry when at last we turned our faces home wood two or three times we stopped to rest under a tree by the wayside our last halt was under a wild cherry tree a short distance from the house the shade was grateful and the tree was so easy to climb that with my teacher's assistance I was able to scramble to a seat in the branches it was so cool up in the tree that Miss Sullivan proposed that we have our lunch in there I promised to keep still while she went to the house to fetch it suddenly a change passed over the tree all the sun's warmth left the air I knew the sky was black because all the heat which meant light to me had died out of the atmosphere a strange odor came up from the earth I knew it it was the odor that always precedes a thunderstorm and a nameless fear clutched at my heart I felt absolutely alone cut off from my friends and the firm earth the immense the unknown enfolded me I remained still an expectant a chilling terror crept over me I longed for my teacher's return but above all things I wanted to get down from that tree there was a moment of sinister silence then a multitudinous stirring of the leaves a shiver ran through the tree and the wind set forth the blast that would have knocked me off had I not clung to the brunch with might and mane the tree swayed and strained the small twigs snapped and fell about me in showers a wild impulse to jump seize me.

 But terra held me fast I crouched down in the fork of the tree the branches lashed about me I felt the intermittent jarring that came now and then as if something heavy had fallen and the shock had travelled up till it reached the limb I sat on it worked up my suspense up to the highest point and just as I was thinking that the tree and I should fall together my teacher seized my hand and helped me down i clung to her trembling with joy to feel the earth under my feet once more I had learnt a new lesson that nature wages open war against her children and under the softest touch hides treacherous claws after this experience it was a long time before I climbed another tree the mere thought filled me with terror it was the sweet allurement of the mimosa tree in full bloom that finally overcame my fears one beautiful spring morning when I was alone in the summer house reading I became aware of a wonderful subtle fragrance in the air I started up and instinctively stretched out my hands it seemed as if the spirit of spring had passed through the summer house what is it I asked and the next minute I recognized the odor of the mimosa blossoms I felt my way to the end of the garden knowing that the mimosa tree was near the fence at the turn of the path yes there it was all quivering in the warm sunshine its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long grass was there ever anything so inquisitively beautiful in the world before its delicate blossoms shrank from the slightest earthly touch it seemed as if a tree of paradise had been transplanted to earth I made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk and for one minute stood irresolute then putting my foot in the broad space between the forked branches I pulled myself up into the tree I had some difficulty in holding on for the branches were very large and the bark hurt my hands but I had a delicious sense that I was doing something unusual and wonderful so I kept on climbing higher and higher until I had reached a little seat which somebody had built there so long ago that it had grown a part of the tree itself I sat there for a long long time feeling like a fairy on a rosy cloud after that, I spent many happy hours in my tree of paradise thinking fair thoughts and dreaming bright dreams,

                                                            (End of Chapter.)

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The Story Of My Life By Helen Keller (Chp#2)

 Story of my life by Helen Keller Chapter Two

  I cannot recall what happened during the first month after my illness I only know that I sat

in my mother's lap or clung to her dress as she went about her household duties my hands felt every object and observed every emotion and in this way, I learned to know many things soon I felt the need for some communication with others and began to make crude signs a shake of the head meant no and a nod yes a pool meant come and a push go was it bread that I wanted then I would imitate the acts of cutting the slices and buttering them if I wanted my mother to make ice cream for dinner, I made the sign for working the freezer and shivered to indicate cold my mother moreover succeeded in making me understand a good deal I always knew when she wished me to bring her something and I would run upstairs or anywhere else she indicated indeed I owe to her loving wisdom all that was bright and good in my long night i understood a great deal of what was going on about me at five I learned to fold and put away the clean clothes when they were brought in from the laundry and I distinguished my own from the rest i knew by the way my mother aren't dressed when they were going out and I invariably begged to go with them i was always sent for when there was company and when guests took their leave i waved my hand to them I think in vague remembrance of the meaning of the gesture one day some gentleman called on my mother and I felt the shutting of the front door and other sounds that indicated their arrival on a sudden thought, I ran upstairs before anyone could stop me to put on my idea of a company dress standing before the mirror as I had seen others do i anointed my head with oil covered my face thickly with powder then I pinned a veil over my head so that it covered my face and fell in the falls down to my shoulders and tied an enormous bustle around my waist so that it dangled behind almost meeting the hem in my skirt thus the tired I went down to help entertain the company i do not remember when I first realized that I was different from other people but I knew it before my teacher came to me i noticed that my mother and my friends did not use signs as I did when they wanted anything done but talked with their mouths sometimes I stood between two persons who were conversing and touched their lips i could not understand and was vexed i moved my lips and gesticulated frantically without result this made me so angry at times that I kicked and screamed until I was exhausted i think I knew when I was naughty for I knew that it hurt ella my nurse to kick her and when a fit of timber was over I had a feeling akin to regret but I cannot remember any instance in which this feeling prevented me from repeating the naughtiness when I failed to get what I wanted in those days a little colored girl martha Washington.

 The child of ourcook and belle an old setter and a great hunter in her day were my constant companions martha washington understood my signs and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished it pleased me to domineer over her and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter i was strong active indifferent to the i knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it we spent a great deal of time in the kitchen kneading dough balls helping make ice cream grinding coffee quarreling over the cake bowl and feeding hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps many of them were so tamed that they would eat from my hand and let me feel them one big gobbler snatched a tomato for me one day and ran away with it inspired perhaps by master goblin's success we carried off to the wood pile a cake which the cook had just frosted and ate every bit of it i was quite ill afterward and I wonder if retribution also overtook the turkey the guinea fowl likes to hide her nest in out of the way places and it was one of my greatest delights to hunt for the eggs in the long grass i could not tell martha washington when i wanted to go egg hunting but I would double my hands and put them on the ground which meant something round in the grass and martha always understood when we were fortunate enough to find a nest I never allowed her to carry the eggs home making her understand by emphatic signs that she might fall and break them the sheds where the corn was stored the stable where the horses were kept and the yard where the cows were milked morning and evening were unfailing sources of interest to martha and me the milkers would let me keep my hands on the cows while they milked and I often got well switched by the cows for my curiosity the making ready for christmas was always a delight to me of course I did not know what it was all about but I enjoyed the pleasant odors that fill the house and the tidbits that were given to martha washington and me to keep us quiet we were sadly in the way but that did not interfere with our pleasure in the least they allowed us to grind the spices pick over the raisins and lick the stirring spoons i hung my stockings because the others did I cannot remember however that the ceremony interested me especially nor did my curiosity cause me to wake before daylight to look for my gifts martha washington had a greater love of mischief as I two little children were seated on the

veranda steps one hot july afternoon one was black as ebony with little bunches of fuzzy hair tied with shoestrings sticking out all over her head like a corkscrew the other was white with long golden curls one child was six years old the other two or three years older the younger child was blind that was I and the other was martha Washington we were busy cutting out paper dolls but we soon grew weary of this amusement and after cutting up our shoe strings and clipping all the leaves of this honeysuckle within reach I turned my attention to martha's corkscrews she objected at first but finally submitted thinking that turn and turnabout is fair play she sees the scissors and cut off one of my curls and would have cut them all off but for my mother's timely interference belle our dog my other companion was old and lazy and like to sleep by the open fire rather than to romp with me i tried hard to teach her my sign language but she was dull and inattentive she sometimes started and quivered with excitement then she became perfectly rigid as dogs do when they point a bird i did not then know why belle acted in this way but I knew she was not doing as i wished this begs me and the lesson always ended in a one-sided boxing match bell would get up stretch yourself lazily give one or two contemptuous sniffs go to the opposite side of the hearth and lie down and I wearied and disappointed went off in search of Martha many incidents of those early years are fixed in my memory isolated but clear and distinct making the sense of that silent aimless dayless life all the more intense one day I happened to spill water on my apron and I spread it out to dry before the fire which was flickering in the sitting room half the apron did not dry quickly enough to suit me so I drew nearer and threw it right over the hot ashes the fire lipped into life the flames encircled me so that in a moment my clothes were blazing I made a terrified noise that brought vinnie my old nurse to the rescue throwing a blanket over me she almost suffocated me but she put out the fire except for my hands and hair, I was not badly burnt about this time I found out the use of a key one morning I locked my mother up in a pantry where she was obliged to remain three hours as the servants were in the detached part of the house she kept pounding on the door while I sat outside the porch steps and laughed with a glare as I felt the jar of pounding this most naughty prank of mine convinced my parents that I must be taught as soon as possible after my teacher miss sullivan came to me I sought an early opportunity to lock her in her room i went upstairs with something which my mother made me understand I was to give to miss sullivan but no sooner had I given it to her then i slammed the door locked it and hid the key under the wardrobe in the hall i could not be induced to tell where the key was my father was obliged to get a ladder and take miss sullivan out through the window much to my delight months after I produced the ghee when I was about five years old we moved from the little vine-covered house to a large new one the family consisted of my father and mother two older half-brothers and afterward little sister Mildred my earliest distinct recollection of my father is making my way through great drifts of newspaper to his side and finding him alone holding a sheet of paper before his face i was greatly puzzled to know what he was doing I imitated this action even wearing his spectacles thinking they might help solve the mystery but I did not find out the secret for several years then I learned what those papers were and that my father edited one of them my father was most loving and indulgent devoted to his home seldom leaving us except in the hunting season he was a great hunter I have been told in a celebrated shot next to his family he loved his dogs and gun his hospitality was great almost to a fault and he seldom came home without bringing a guest his special pride was the big garden.

 where it was said he raised the finest watermelons and strawberries in the country and to me, he bought the first ripe grapes and choices berries i remember his caressing touch as he led me from tree to tree from vine to vine and his eager delight in whatever pleased me he was a famous storyteller after I had acquired language he used to spell clumsily into my hand his cleverest anecdotes and nothing pleased him more than to have me repeat them at an opportune moment i was in the north enjoying the last beautiful days of summer in 1896 when I heard the news of my father's death he had had a short illness there had been a brief time of acute suffering then all was over this was my first great sorrow my first personal experience with death how shall I write in my mother she's so near to me that it almost seems indelicate to speak of her for a long time, I regarded my little sister as an intruder i knew that I had ceased to be my mother's only darling and the thought filled me with jealousy she sat in my mother's lap constantly where I used to sit and seemed to take up all her care and time one day something happened which seemed to me to be adding insult to injury at that time I had a much petted much abused doll which I afterward named nancy she was alas the helpless victim of my outburst of temper and of affection so that she became much the worse for wear i had dolls that talked and cried and opened and shut their eyes yet often spent an hour or more rocking her i guarded both doll and cradle with the most jealous care but once I discovered my little sister sleeping peacefully in the cradle at this presumption on the part of one to whom as yet no tie of love bound me I grew angry i rushed upon the cradle and overturned it and the baby might have been killed as my mother not catch her as she fell thus it is when we walk in the valley of twofold solitude we know little of the tender affections that grow out of enduring words and actions and companionship but afterwards when I was restored to my human heritage mildred and I grew into each other's hearts so that we would content to go hand in hand wherever caprice led us although she could not understand my finger language Nora her childish battle. 

End of the chapter.

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The story of my life by Helen Keller (Chp#1)

                                                            

Story of my life by Helen Keller, Dedicated to Alexander Graham Bell who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear a speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies I dedicate this story of my life. 

Chapter one.

 It is with the kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life i have as it were a superstitious hesitation and lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist the task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one when I try to classify my earliest impressions I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present the woman paints the child's experiences in their own fantasy a few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life but the shadows of the prison house are on the rest besides many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries in order therefore not to be tedious i shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important i was born on june 27 1880 in tuscumbia a little town of northern Alabama the family on my father's side is descended from kaspar keller a native of switzerland who settled in Maryland one of my swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education a rather singular coincidence though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among these ancestors and no slave who has not had a king among his my grandfather caspar keller son entered large tracts of land and finally settled there i have been told that once a year he went from tuscumbia to philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation and my aunt has in her possession many of these letters to his family which give charming and vivid accounts of these trips my grandmother keller was the daughter of one of the leiafet aide's alexander moore and a granddaughter of alexander spotswood an early colonial governor of virginia was also the second cousin to robert e lee my father arthur h keller was a captain in the confederate army and my mother kate adams was his second wife and many years younger her grandfather benjamin adams married susanna e guhu and lived in newbury massachusetts for many years their son charles adams was born in Newburyport massachusetts and moved to helena Arkansas when the civil war broke out he fought on the side of the south and became a brigadier general he married lucy helen everett who belonged to the same family of everetts as edward everett and dr edward everett hale after the war was over the family moved to memphis tennessee i lived up to the time of the illness that deprived me of my sight and hearing in a tiny house consisting of a large square room and a small one in which the servants slept it is a custom in the south to build a small house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion such a house my father built after the civil war and when he married my mother they went to live in it it was completely covered with vines

 climbing roses and honeysuckle from the garden, it looked like an arbor the little porch was hidden from you by a screen of yellow roses and southern smilex it was a favorite haunt of hummingbirds and bees the killer homestead where the family lived was a few steps from our little rose bower it was called ivy green because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered in beautiful english ivy its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood even in the days before my teacher came i used to feel along with the square stiff boxwood hedges and guided by the sense of smell I would find the first violets and lilies there too after a fit of temper I went to find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass what joy it was to lose myself in that garden of flowers to wander happily from spot to spot until coming suddenly upon a beautiful vine recognized by its leaves and blossoms and knew it was the vine which covered the tumbled down summer house at the farther end of the garden here also were trailing clematis drooping jessamine and some rare sweet flowers called butterfly lilies because their fragile petals resemble butterfly's wings but the roses were the loveliest of all never have I found in the greenhouses of the north such heart satisfying roses as the climbing roses of my southern home they used to hang in long festoons from our porch filling the whole air with their fragrance untainted by any earthly smell and in the early morning wash in the dew they felt so soft so pure I could not help to wonder if they did not resemble the asphodels of god's garden the beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life I came i saw I conquered as the first baby in the family always does there was the usual amount of discussion as to a name for me the first baby in the family was not to be lightly named everyone was emphatic about that my father suggested the name of Mildred Campbell an ancestor whom he highly esteemed and he declined to take any further part in the discussion my mother solved the problem by giving it her as her wish that I should be called after her mother whose maiden name was helen everett but in the excitement of carrying me to church my father lost the name on the way very naturally since it was the one in which he had declined to have a part when the minister asked him for it he had just remembered that it had been decided to call me after my grandmother and he gave her her name as helen adams i'm told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an eager self-asserting disposition everything that I saw other people do I insisted upon imitating at six months I could pipe out how do you and one day.

 I attracted everyone's attention by saying quite plainly even after my illness, i remembered one of the words i had learned in these early months it was the word water and I continued to make some sounds for that word after all other speech was lost i ceased making the sound only when I learned to spell the word they tell me I walked the day I was a year old my mother had just taken me out of the bathtub and was holding me in her lap when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor i slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran towards them the impulse gone i fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms these happy days did not last long one brief spring musical with the song of robin and mockingbird one summer rich in fruit and roses one autumn of golden crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of an eager delighted child then in the dreary month of February came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a newborn baby they called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain the doctor thought I could not live early one morning however the fever left me as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come there was great rejoicing in the family that morning but no one not even the doctor knew that I should never see or hear again i fancy I still have confused recollections of that illness i especially remembered the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in my waking hours of threat and pain and the agony and bewilderment with which I awoke after a tossing half-sleep and turned my eyes so dry and hot to the wall away from the once-loved light which came to me dim and yet moored him each day but except for these fleeting memories if indeed they'd be memories it all seems very unreal like a nightmare gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different until she came my teacher who was to set my spirit free but during the first 19 months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad green fields and luminous sky trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out if we have once seen the day's hours and what the day has shown. 

End of Chapter One.

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