Page 257 - The Story of My Lif

wrote for the ‘report’? Mr. Anagnos was delighted with it. He says Helen’s

progress has been ‘a triumphal march from the beginning,’ and he has many
flattering things to say about her teacher. I think he is inclined to exaggerate; at
all events, his language is too glowing, and simple facts are set forth in such a
manner that they bewilder one. Doubtless the work of the past few months does
seem like a triumphal march to him; but then people seldom see the halting and
painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.”

As Mr. Anagnos was the head of a great institution, what he said had much more
effect than the facts in Miss Sullivan’s account on which he based his statements.
The newspapers caught Mr.

Anagnos’s spirit and exaggerated a hundred-fold. In a year after she first went to
Helen Keller, Miss Sullivan found herself and her pupil the centre of a
stupendous fiction. Then the educators all over the world said their say and for
the most part did not help matters. There grew up a mass of controversial matter
which it is amusing to read now. Teachers of the deaf proved a priori that what
Miss Sullivan had done could not be, and some discredit was reflected on her
statements, because they were surrounded by the vague eloquence of Mr.
Anagnos. Thus the story of Helen Keller, incredible when told with moderation,
had the misfortune to be heralded by exaggerated announcements, and naturally
met either an ignorant credulity or an incredulous hostility.

In November, 1888, another report of the Perkins Institution appeared with a
second paper by Miss Sullivan, and then nothing official was published until
November, 1891, when Mr. Anagnos issued the last Perkins Institution report
containing anything about Helen Keller. For this report Miss Sullivan wrote the
fullest and largest account she has ever written; and in this report appeared the
“Frost King,” which is discussed fully in a later chapter. Then the controversy
waxed fiercer than ever.

Finding that other people seemed to know so much more about Helen Keller
than she did, Miss Sullivan kept silent and has been silent for ten years, except
for her paper in the first volta Bureau Souvenir of Helen Keller and the paper