Page 187 - The Story of My Lif

I would like to feel a parrot talk, it would be so much fun! but I would be

pleased with, and love any little creature you send me.

H. K.

TO MISS CAROLINE DERBY

Tuscumbia, Alabama, February 18, 1893.

…You have often been in my thoughts during these sad days, while my heart has
been grieving over the loss of my beloved friend [Phillips Brooks died January
23, 1893], and I have wished many times that I was in Boston with those who
knew and loved him as I did… he was so much of a friend to me! so tender and
loving always! I do try not to mourn his death too sadly. I do try to think that he
is still near, very near; but sometimes the thought that he is not here, that I shall
not see him when I go to Boston,—that he is gone,—rushes over my soul like a
great wave of sorrow. But at other times, when I am happier, I do feel his
beautiful presence, and his loving hand leading me in pleasant ways. Do you
remember the happy hour we spent with him last June when he held my hand, as

he always did, and talked to us about his friend Tennyson, and our own dear poet
Dr. Holmes, and I tried to teach him the manual alphabet, and he laughed so
gaily over his mistakes, and afterward I told him about my tea, and he promised
to come? I can hear him now, saying in his cheerful, decided way, in reply to my
wish that my tea might be a success, “Of course it will, Helen. Put your whole
heart in the good work, my child, and it cannot fail.” I am glad the people are
going to raise a monument to his memory….

In March Helen and Miss Sullivan went North, and spent the next few months
traveling and visiting friends.

In reading this letter about Niagara one should remember that Miss Keller knows
distance and shape, and that the size of Niagara is within her experience after she
has explored it, crossed the bridge and gone down in the elevator. Especially
important are such details as her feeling the rush of the water by putting her hand