Page 389 - The Story of My Lif

with perfect freedom, failed to elicit in the least any testimony convicting either

her teacher or any one else of the intention or attempt to practice deception.

In view of these facts I cannot but think that Helen, while writing “The Frost
King,” was entirely unconscious of ever having had the story of “Frost Fairies”
read to her, and that her memory has been accompanied by such a loss of
associations that she herself honestly believed her composition to be original.

This theory is shared by many persons who are perfectly well acquainted with
the child and who are able to rise above the clouds of a narrow prejudice.

Very sincerely yours,

M. ANAGNOS.

Director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind.

The episode had a deadening effect on Helen Keller and on Miss Sullivan, who
feared that she had allowed the habit of imitation, which has in truth made Miss
Keller a writer, to go too far. Even to-day, when Miss Keller strikes off a fine
phrase, Miss Sullivan says in humorous despair, “I wonder where she got that?”
But she knows now, since she has studied with her pupil in college the problems
of composition, under the wise advice of Mr. Charles T.

Copeland, that the style of every writer and indeed, of every human being,
illiterate or cultivated, is a composite reminiscence of all that he has read and
heard. Of the sources of his vocabulary he is, for the most part, as unaware as he
is of the moment when he ate the food which makes a bit of his thumbnail. With
most of us the contributions from different sources are blended, crossed and
confused. A child with but few sources may keep distinct what he draws from
each. In this case Helen Keller held almost intact in her mind, unmixed with

other ideas, the words of a story which at the time it was read to her she did not
fully understand. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. It shows how
the child-mind gathers into itself words it has heard, and how they lurk there
ready to come out when the key that releases the spring is touched. The reason