The next important step in my education was learning to read.
As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of
cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly
learned that each printed word stood for an object, an act, or a
quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the words in little
sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make
them in objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for
example, "doll," "is," "on," "bed" and placed each name on its object;
then I put my doll on the bed with the words is, on, bed arranged beside
the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and at the same time
carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves.
One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word girl on my pinafore
and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, is, in,
wardrobe. Nothing delighted me so much as this game. My teacher and I
played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged
in object sentences.
From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my
"Reader for Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found
them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek. Thus I began to
read. Of the time when I began to read connected stories I shall speak
later.
For a long time I had no regular lessons. Even when I studied most
earnestly it seemed more like play than work. Everything Miss Sullivan
taught me she illustrated by a beautiful story or a poem. Whenever
anything delighted or interested me she talked it over with me just
as if she were a little girl herself. What many children think of with
dread, as a painful plodding through grammar, hard sums and harder
definitions, is to-day one of my most precious memories.
I cannot explain the peculiar sympathy Miss Sullivan had with my
pleasures and desires. Perhaps it was the result of long association
with the blind. Added to this she had a wonderful faculty for
description. She went quickly over uninteresting details, and
never nagged me with questions to see if I remembered the
day-before-yesterday's lesson. She introduced dry technicalities of
science little by little, making every subject so real that I could not
help remembering what she taught.
We read and studied out of doors, preferring the sunlit woods to the
house. All my early lessons have in them the breath of the woods--the
fine, resinous odour of pine needles, blended with the perfume of wild
grapes. Seated in the gracious shade of a wild tulip tree, I learned to
think that everything has a lesson and a suggestion. "The loveliness of
things taught me all their use." Indeed, everything that could hum, or
buzz, or sing, or bloom had a part in my education--noisy-throated
frogs, katydids and crickets held in my hand until forgetting their
embarrassment, they trilled their reedy note, little downy chickens
and wildflowers, the dogwood blossoms, meadow-violets and budding fruit
trees. I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber
and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the
cornstalks, the silky rustling of the long leaves, and the indignant
snort of my pony, as we caught him in the pasture and put the bit in
his mouth--ah me! how well I remember the spicy, clovery smell of his
breath!
Sometimes I rose at dawn and stole into the garden while the heavy dew
lay on the grass and flowers. Few know what joy it is to feel the roses
pressing softly into the hand, or the beautiful motion of the lilies
as they sway in the morning breeze. Sometimes I caught an insect in the
flower I was plucking, and I felt the faint noise of a pair of wings
rubbed together in a sudden terror, as the little creature became aware
of a pressure from without.
Another favourite haunt of mine was the orchard, where the fruit ripened
early in July. The large, downy peaches would reach themselves into my
hand, and as the joyous breezes flew about the trees the apples tumbled
at my feet. Oh, the delight with which I gathered up the fruit in my
pinafore, pressed my face against the smooth cheeks of the apples, still
warm from the sun, and skipped back to the house!
Our favourite walk was to Keller's Landing, an old tumbledown
lumber-wharf on the Tennessee River, used during the Civil War to
land soldiers. There we spent many happy hours and played at learning
geography. I built dams of pebbles, made islands and lakes, and dug
river-beds, all for fun, and never dreamed that I was learning a lesson.
I listened with increasing wonder to Miss Sullivan's descriptions of
the great round world with its burning mountains, buried cities, moving
rivers of ice, and many other things as strange. She made raised maps in
clay, so that I could feel the mountain ridges and valleys, and follow
with my fingers the devious course of rivers. I liked this, too; but the
division of the earth into zones and poles confused and teased my mind.
The illustrative strings and the orange stick representing the poles
seemed so real that even to this day the mere mention of temperate zone
suggests a series of twine circles; and I believe that if any one should
set about it he could convince me that white bears actually climb the
North Pole.
Arithmetic seems to have been the only study I did not like. From the
first I was not interested in the science of numbers. Miss Sullivan
tried to teach me to count by stringing beads in groups, and by
arranging kintergarten straws I learned to add and subtract. I never had
patience to arrange more than five or six groups at a time. When I had
accomplished this my conscience was at rest for the day, and I went out
quickly to find my playmates.
In this same leisurely manner I studied zoology and botany.
Once a gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, sent me a collection of
fossils--tiny mollusk shells beautifully marked, and bits of sandstone
with the print of birds' claws, and a lovely fern in bas-relief. These
were the keys which unlocked the treasures of the antediluvian world for
me. With trembling fingers I listened to Miss Sullivan's descriptions
of the terrible beasts, with uncouth, unpronounceable names, which once
went tramping through the primeval forests, tearing down the branches
of gigantic trees for food, and died in the dismal swamps of an unknown
age. For a long time these strange creatures haunted my dreams, and this
gloomy period formed a somber background to the joyous Now, filled with
sunshine and roses and echoing with the gentle beat of my pony's hoof.
Another time a beautiful shell was given me, and with a child's surprise
and delight I learned how a tiny mollusk had built the lustrous coil
for his dwelling place, and how on still nights, when there is no breeze
stirring the waves, the Nautilus sails on the blue waters of the
Indian Ocean in his "ship of pearl." After I had learned a great many
interesting things about the life and habits of the children of the
sea--how in the midst of dashing waves the little polyps build the
beautiful coral isles of the Pacific, and the foraminifera have made the
chalk-hills of many a land--my teacher read me "The Chambered Nautilus,"
and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is
symbolical of the development of the mind. Just as the wonder-working
mantle of the Nautilus changes the material it absorbs from the water
and makes it a part of itself, so the bits of knowledge one gathers
undergo a similar change and become pearls of thought.
Again, it was the growth of a plant that furnished the text for a
lesson. We bought a lily and set it in a sunny window. Very soon the
green, pointed buds showed signs of opening. The slender, fingerlike
leaves on the outside opened slowly, reluctant, I thought, to reveal
the loveliness they hid; once having made a start, however, the opening
process went on rapidly, but in order and systematically. There was
always one bud larger and more beautiful than the rest, which pushed
her outer covering back with more pomp, as if the beauty in soft, silky
robes knew that she was the lily-queen by right divine, while her more
timid sisters doffed their green hoods shyly, until the whole plant was
one nodding bough of loveliness and fragrance.
Once there were eleven tadpoles in a glass globe set in a window full
of plants. I remember the eagerness with which I made discoveries about
them. It was great fun to plunge my hand into the bowl and feel the
tadpoles frisk about, and to let them slip and slide between my fingers.
One day a more ambitious fellow leaped beyond the edge of the bowl and
fell on the floor, where I found him to all appearance more dead than
alive. The only sign of life was a slight wriggling of his tail. But
no sooner had he returned to his element than he darted to the bottom,
swimming round and round in joyous activity. He had made his leap, he
had seen the great world, and was content to stay in his pretty glass
house under the big fuchsia tree until he attained the dignity of
froghood. Then he went to live in the leafy pool at the end of the
garden, where he made the summer nights musical with his quaint
love-song.
Thus I learned from life itself. At the beginning I was only a little
mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed
them. When she came, everything about me breathed of love and joy and
was full of meaning. She has never since let pass an opportunity to
point out the beauty that is in everything, nor has she ceased trying in
thought and action and example to make my life sweet and useful.
It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which
made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she
seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant
and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's mind is like a shallow
brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its
education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy
cloud; and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like
a brook it should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until
it broadened out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid
surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue
heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.
Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can
make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty
is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory
and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the
tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a
dull routine of textbooks.
My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from
her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how
much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is
inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in
hers. All the best of me belongs to her--there is not a talent, or
an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving
touch.