76 • POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the wardrobe, or the doll on the table. Confusions occurred; 'mug' 

 and 'milk' were associated in a common action, and only gradually 

 was each given its own name. Sentences followed naturally and 

 quickly. Then she was introduced to raised letters and learned the 

 mystery of reading. Later the art of Cadmus was presented, and 

 within less than four months from her first word-lesson she wrote a 

 letter of thirty words, recording childishly but clearly a few simple 

 facts. 



Her desire for exjDression was marked from the outset. "I used 

 to make noises," she recalls, "keeping one hand on my throat while 

 the other felt the movements of my lips. I was pleased with anything 

 that made a noise and liked to feel the cat purr and the dog bark. I 

 also liked to keep my hand on a singer's throat, or on a piano when 

 it was being played." In 1890 the girl of ten years, though convers- 

 ing fluently by the manual alphabet with those who could read these 

 flying symbols of speech, felt that she was cut off from direct inter- 

 course with her fellow creatures. 'How do blind girls know what to 

 say with their mouths?' she asked her teacher. By allowing Helen 

 to place her hands upon the throat and lips of the speaker and then 

 inducing her to place her own vocal organs as nearly as possible in the 

 same position she learned to make the sounds. These, with infinite 

 patience and years of close training, were made to be readily intel- 

 ligible, though naturally far from the perfect articulation that the ear 

 produces. Deaf children are constantly taught to speak in this way; 

 the added difficulty in this case is that the eyes can not read the lips 

 and visually imitate the positions in articulation. For the deaf-blind 

 this task must be delegated to the less ready guidance of the tactile 

 sensibilities. Such an individual learns to speak orally as do the deaf, 

 to read by touch as do the blind. The permanent peculiarity of the 

 double deprivation is for Helen Keller her best and normal mode of 

 receiving words — by interpreting the finger-letters of the deaf as they 

 are made in the palm of her hand. In this way she 'listens with her 

 hands. ' 



The details of her education are now rendered accessible to all. 

 The several stages from kindergarten occupations and spelling-games 

 to courses in philosophy at Eadclifi'e College are graphically set forth. 

 The range of her present capabilities is indeed remarkable; and the 

 writing of the autobiography not the least of them. For the slow 

 process of writing with a pencil — which is reduced to tactual guidance 

 by writing on paper placed against a grooved cardboard back — she has 

 substituted the typewriter, the space relations of the keys being as accu- 

 rately fixed in her motor memory as they arc in the visual memories 

 of those that see. Neither of these forms of record can the blind 

 themselves read. For their own use a system of pricked points — sim- 



