Page 194 - The Story of My Lif

My dear Cousin: I had thought to write to you long before this in answer to your

kind letter which I was so glad to receive, and to thank you for the beautiful little
book which you sent me; but I have been very busy since the beginning of the
New Year. The publication of my little story in the Youth’s Companion has
brought me a large number of letters,—last week I received sixty-one!—and
besides replying to some of these letters, I have many lessons to learn, among
them Arithmetic and Latin; and, you know, Caesar is Caesar still, imperious and
tyrannical, and if a little girl would understand so great a man, and the wars and
conquests of which he tells in his beautiful Latin language, she must study much
and think much, and study and thought require time.

I shall prize the little book always, not only for its own value; but because of its
associations with you. It is a delight to think of you as the giver of one of your
books into which, I am sure, you have wrought your own thoughts and feelings,
and I thank you very much for remembering me in such a very beautiful way….

In February Helen and Miss Sullivan returned to Tuscumbia. They spent the rest
of the spring reading and studying. In the summer they attended the meeting at
Chautauqua of the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of
Speech to the Deaf, where Miss Sullivan read a paper on Helen Keller’s
education.

In the fall Helen and Miss Sullivan entered the Wright-Humason School in New
York, which makes a special of lip-reading and voice-culture. The “singing
lessons” were to strengthen her voice. She had taken a few piano lessons at the
Perkins Institution. The experiment was interesting, but of course came to little.

TO MISS CAROLINE DERBY

The Wright-Humason School.

42 West 76th St.