The Story of My Life By Helen Keller-Summary Chapter 9
Helen’s visit to Boston was the next most important event of
her life. She remembers all, the preparations, the departure with her teacher
and her mother, the journey, and finally her arrival in Boston. She had made a
journey to Baltimore two years before this journey. There was a lot of
difference between the two journeys.
That time, she was a restless, excitable little creature who
required the attention of everyone on the train to keep her amused.
She sat quietly near Miss Sullivan and listened to her
teacher’s explanation intently. She explained all she was watching outside the
car window.
She was explaining “all....the beautiful Tennesse river, the
great cotton fields, the crowds of laughing negroes at the stations, who waved
to the people on the train and brought delicious candy and popcorn balls
through the car.
Her big rag doll was placed on the seat just in front of her.
It was in a new dress made of ‘gingham (lightweight cotton cloth)’, looking at
her from her two beady eyes. After some time, when her mind was diverted from
her teacher’s explanation, she remembered her doll, Nancy. She would like to
keep her in her arms, but she convinced herself that she was asleep.
Helen wants to
continue talking about Nancy. She continues with an experience that she had
immediately after they arrived in Boston. She had compelled her doll to eat mud pies, so she was covered with mud, although she had never found any
encouragement from the doll to eat them.
Then, the laundress at the Perkins Institution took it
secretly and gave it a bath, which reduced it to be a formless heap of cotton,
beyond recognition except for its two beady eyes.
At Perkins, Helen immediately started making friends with the
blind children there. It delighted her very much that they knew the manual
alphabet.
