The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
Chapter 8
Helen writes that
the first Christmas that came after Miss Sullivan’s arrival in her house was a
great event and every member of the family wished to surprise her.
What
surprised her most was the fact that Miss Sullivan and she had prepared
surprises for everyone. There was a mystery about the gifts and it amused and
delighted her most.
Her friends did all to increase her curiosity by giving hints by
writing half-spelled words on her hand. Miss Sullivan and she played a game of
guessing and that proved to be very good to teach the use of language. After
that, they practiced it every evening while sitting by a glowing wood fire.
The school
children at Tuscumbia had made a tree on Christmas Eve and they also invited
her. The beautiful tree, “ablaze and shimmering, stood in the center of the
schoolroom. Its branches were loaded with strange wonderful fruits in soft
light. Helen felt extremely happy while dancing and capering around the tree.
Her
happiness doubled up when she came to know that she would distribute gifts to
the children present there with her own hands. Her excitement and impatience
were out of control. The gifts were not those for which her friends had given
her hints. Her teacher told her that the gifts were nicer than those she was
expecting.
At the same
time, she was to remain contented with the gifts she had got from the tree and
others until the next morning.
That night, she hung her stockings and lay awake for a long time,
pretending that she was asleep to know what gifts Santa Claus would give to
her. But she could not continue this for long and at last, she fell asleep
keeping a new doll and a white bear in her arms.
At the same time, she was to remain contented with the gifts she
had got from the tree and others until the next morning.
The next morning, when she woke up, it was she, who woke up the whole family by saying
“Merry Christmas”. She found surprises from everywhere, not only from the
stockings, but also on the table, on the chairs, at the door, on the very window sill.”
But when her teacher presented to her a canary, her joy knew no
bounds.
Her new pet ‘Little Tim” (the singing bird canary) was so tame
that he would go on her fingers and eat sweet cherries out of her hand. She was
taught to take care of the new pet.
She carefully “prepared his bath, made his cage clean and sweet,
filled his cups with fresh seeds and water” and then hung a spray of chickweed
in his swing.”
One morning, she left the cage on the window seat and went to
fetch water for his bath. As she came back and opened the door, she felt a big
cat went out from there.
She didn’t guess at that time as to what a cat could do, but when
she put her hand into the cage, she did not feel Tim’s pretty wings and his
pointed claws take hold of her fingers. She understood that the cat had killed
her pet canary.
The Story of My Life By Helen Keller
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 (light weight cotton cloth)’, looking at her from her two beady eyes. After sometime, 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 their arrival 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 for eating 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 its two beady eyes.
At Perkins, Helen immediately started making friends with the blind children there. It delighted her very much that they knew manual alphabet.
