Page 240 - The Story of My Lif

Then she read from her braille copy the entire story, making corrections as she

read, which were taken down on the manuscript that went to the printer. During
this revision she discussed questions of subject matter and phrasing. She sat
running her finger over the braille manuscript, stopping now and then to refer to
the braille notes on which she had indicated her corrections, all the time reading
aloud to verify the manuscript.

She listened to criticism just as any author listens to his friends or his editor.
Miss Sullivan, who is an excellent critic, made suggestions at many points in the
course of composition and revision. One newspaper suggested that Miss Keller
had been led into writing the book and had been influenced to put certain things
into it by zealous friends. As a matter of fact, most of the advice she has received
and heeded has led to excisions rather than to additions. The book is Miss
Keller’s and is final proof of her independent power.

CHAPTER II. PERSONALITY

Mark Twain has said that the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth
century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. The admiration with which the world

has regarded her is more than justified by what she has done. No one can tell any
great truth about her which has not already been written, and all that I can do is
to give a few more facts about Miss Keller’s work and add a little to what is
known of her personality.

Miss Keller is tall and strongly built, and has always had good health. She seems
to be more nervous than she really is, because she expresses more with her hands
than do most English-speaking people. One reason for this habit of gesture is
that her hands have been so long her instruments of communication that they
have taken to themselves the quick shiftings of the eye, and express some of the
things that we say in a glance. All deaf people naturally gesticulate. Indeed, at
one time it was believed that the best way for them to communicate was through
systematized gestures, the sign language invented by the Abbe de l’Epee.