HELEN KELLER. 73 



publislicd in his 'Aineriean Xotes, ' that Mrs. Keller hecaiue acquainted 

 with the possibilities of education for one in Helen's position; and on 

 March 3, 1887, Miss Sullivan came to Tuscumbia from the Perkins 

 Institution in Boston — where Laura Bridgman lived — to take charge 

 of Helen Keller. The first approaches to a mutual understanding 

 between pupil and teacher were naturally dependent upon the utiliza- 

 tion of the primitive sign language to which we all resort, with a suc- 

 cess proportionate to our ingenuity, when thrown among those whose 

 language we do not understand. Of this meeting Miss Sullivan wrote 

 at the time : ' ' She felt my face and dress and my bag, which she took 

 out of my hand and tried to open. It did not open easily, and she 

 felt carefully to see if there was a key-hole. Finding that there was, 

 she turned to me, making the sign of turning a key and pointing to 

 the bag." Later they went upstairs together and there, says Miss 

 Sullivan : "I opened the bag, and she went through it eagerly, prob- 

 ably to find something to eat. Friends had probably brought her 

 candy in their bags, and she expected to find some in mine. I made 

 her understand by pointing to a trunk in the hall and to myself and 

 nodding my head that I had a trunk, and then made the sign which 

 she had used for eating and nodded again. She understood in a flash 

 and ran downstairs to tell her mother by means of emphatic signs that 

 there was some candy in the trunlc for her." Miss Sullivan records a 

 further instance of the child's spontaneous signs. "She had signs 

 for small and large long before I came to her. If she wanted a small 

 object and was given a large one she would shake her head and take 

 up a tiny bit of the skin of one hand between the thumb and finger 

 of the other. If she wanted to indicate something large, she spread 

 the fingers of both hands as wide as she could, and brought them 

 together, as if to clasp a big ball." 



These instances are suggestive of the considerable range of per- 

 ceptions and activities that even a deaf-blind child can acquire with- 

 out the use of words. The concentration point of Miss Sullivan's 

 efforts was the revelation to the 'infant' mind of the existence and 

 the potency of a word. The humble instruments thereof were a doll 

 and a piece of cake. The doll was given to the child and the deaf- 

 mute signs for 'd-o-1-1' made by Miss Sullivan in the child's hand. 

 "She looked puzzled and felt my hand, and I repeated the letters. 

 She imitated them very well and pointed to the doll. Then I took 

 the doll from her, meaning to give it back to her when she had made 

 the letters; but she thought I meant to take it from her, and in an 

 instant she was in a temper and tried to seize the doll. I shook my 

 head and tried to form the letters with her fingers; but she got more 

 and more angry. ... I let her go but refused to give up the doll. I 

 went downstairs and got some cake (she is very fond of sweets). I 



