Page 296 - The Story of My Lif

September 18, 1887.

I do not wonder you were surprised to hear that I was going to write something
for the report. I do not know myself how it happened, except that I got tired of
saying “no,” and Captain Keller urged me to do it. He agreed with Mr. Anagnos
that it was my duty to give others the benefit of my experience. Besides, they
said Helen’s wonderful deliverance might be a boon to other afflicted children.

When I sit down to write, my thoughts freeze, and when I get them on paper they
look like wooden soldiers all in a row, and if a live one happens along, I put him
in a strait-jacket. It’s easy enough, however, to say Helen is wonderful, because
she really is. I kept a record of everything she said last week, and I found that
she knows six hundred words. This does not mean, however, that she always
uses them correctly. Sometimes her sentences are like Chinese puzzles; but they
are the kind of puzzles children make when they try to express their half-formed

ideas by means of arbitrary language. She has the true language-impulse, and
shows great fertility of resource in making the words at her command convey
her meaning.

Lately she has been much interested in colour. She found the word “brown” in

her primer and wanted to know its meaning. I told her that her hair was brown,
and she asked, “Is brown very pretty?”

After we had been all over the house, and I had told her the colour of everything

she touched, she suggested that we go to the hen-houses and barns; but I told her
she must wait until another day because I was very tired. We sat in the
hammock; but there was no rest for the weary there. Helen was eager to know
“more colour.” I wonder if she has any vague idea of colour—any reminiscent
impression of light and sound. It seems as if a child who could see and hear until
her nineteenth month must retain some of her first impressions, though ever so
faintly. Helen talks a great deal about things that she cannot know of through the
sense of touch. She asks many questions about the sky, day and night, the ocean