Page 162 - The Story of My Lif

glad.

Your loving little pupil,

HELEN A. KELLER.

When the Perkins Institution closed for the summer, Helen and Miss Sullivan
went to Tuscumbia. This was the first home-going after she had learned to “talk
with her mouth.”

TO REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS

Tuscumbia, Alabama, July 14, 1890.

My dear Mr. Brooks, I am very glad to write to you this beautiful day because
you are my kind friend and I love you, and because I wish to know many things.
I have been at home three weeks, and Oh, how happy I have been with dear
mother and father and precious little sister. I was very, very sad to part with all of

my friends in Boston, but I was so eager to see my baby sister I could hardly
wait for the train to take me home. But I tried very hard to be patient for
teacher’s sake. Mildred has grown much taller and stronger than she was when I
went to Boston, and she is the sweetest and dearest little child in the world. My
parents were delighted to hear me speak, and I was overjoyed to give them such
a happy surprise. I think it is so pleasant to make everybody happy. Why does
the dear Father in heaven think it best for us to have very great sorrow
sometimes? I am always happy and so was Little Lord Fauntleroy, but dear Little
Jakey’s life was full of sadness. God did not put the light in Jakey’s eyes and he
was blind, and his father was not gentle and loving. Do you think poor Jakey
loved his Father in heaven more because his other father was unkind to him?
How did God tell people that his home was in heaven? When people do very

wrong and hurt animals and treat children unkindly God is grieved, but what will
he do to them to teach them to be pitiful and loving? I think he will tell them
how dearly He loves them and that He wants them to be good and happy, and
they will not wish to grieve their father who loves them so much, and they will