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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