It was in the spring of 1890 that I learned to speak. The impulse to
utter audible sounds had always been strong within me. I used to make
noises, keeping one hand on my throat while the other hand felt the
movements of my lips. I was pleased with anything that made a noise and
liked to feel the cat purr and the dog bark. I also liked to keep my
hand on a singer's throat, or on a piano when it was being played.
Before I lost my sight and hearing, I was fast learning to talk, but
after my illness it was found that I had ceased to speak because I could
not hear. I used to sit in my mother's lap all day long and keep my
hands on her face because it amused me to feel the motions of her lips;
and I moved my lips, too, although I had forgotten what talking was. My
friends say that I laughed and cried naturally, and for awhile I
made many sounds and word-elements, not because they were a means of
communication, but because the need of exercising my vocal organs was
imperative. There was, however, one word the meaning of which I still
remembered, WATER. I pronounced it "wa-wa." Even this became less and
less intelligible until the time when Miss Sullivan began to teach me.
I stopped using it only after I had learned to spell the word on my
fingers.
I had known for a long time that the people about me used a method of
communication different from mine; and even before I knew that a deaf
child could be taught to speak, I was conscious of dissatisfaction with
the means of communication I already possessed. One who is entirely
dependent upon the manual alphabet has always a sense of restraint,
of narrowness. This feeling began to agitate me with a vexing,
forward-reaching sense of a lack that should be filled. My thoughts
would often rise and beat up like birds against the wind, and I
persisted in using my lips and voice. Friends tried to discourage this
tendency, fearing lest it would lead to disappointment. But I persisted,
and an accident soon occurred which resulted in the breaking down of
this great barrier--I heard the story of Ragnhild Kaata.
In 1890 Mrs. Lamson, who had been one of Laura Bridgman's teachers, and
who had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden, came to see me,
and told me of Ragnhild Kaata, a deaf and blind girl in Norway who had
actually been taught to speak. Mrs. Lamson had scarcely finished telling
me about this girl's success before I was on fire with eagerness. I
resolved that I, too, would learn to speak. I would not rest satisfied
until my teacher took me, for advice and assistance, to Miss Sarah
Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School. This lovely, sweet-natured
lady offered to teach me herself, and we began the twenty-sixth of
March, 1890.
Miss Fuller's method was this: she passed my hand lightly over her face,
and let me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a
sound. I was eager to imitate every motion and in an hour had learned
six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. Miss Fuller gave me eleven
lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt
when I uttered my first connected sentence, "It is warm." True, they
were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My
soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching
through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.
No deaf child who has earnestly tried to speak the words which he has
never heard--to come out of the prison of silence, where no tone
of love, no song of bird, no strain of music ever pierces the
stillness--can forget the thrill of surprise, the joy of discovery
which came over him when he uttered his first word. Only such a one
can appreciate the eagerness with which I talked to my toys, to stones,
trees, birds and dumb animals, or the delight I felt when at my call
Mildred ran to me or my dogs obeyed my commands. It is an unspeakable
boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no
interpretation. As I talked, happy thoughts fluttered up out of my words
that might perhaps have struggled in vain to escape my fingers.
But it must not be supposed that I could really talk in this short time.
I had learned only the elements of speech. Miss Fuller and Miss Sullivan
could understand me, but most people would not have understood one word
in a hundred. Nor is it true that, after I had learned these elements,
I did the rest of the work myself. But for Miss Sullivan's genius,
untiring perseverance and devotion, I could not have progressed as far
as I have toward natural speech. In the first place, I laboured night
and day before I could be understood even by my most intimate friends;
in the second place, I needed Miss Sullivan's assistance constantly in
my efforts to articulate each sound clearly and to combine all sounds
in a thousand ways. Even now she calls my attention every day to
mispronounced words.
All teachers of the deaf know what this means, and only they can at all
appreciate the peculiar difficulties with which I had to contend. In
reading my teacher's lips I was wholly dependent on my fingers: I had
to use the sense of touch in catching the vibrations of the throat, the
movements of the mouth and the expression of the face; and often this
sense was at fault. In such cases I was forced to repeat the words or
sentences, sometimes for hours, until I felt the proper ring in my own
voice. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and
weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that
I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished,
spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my
achievement.
"My little sister will understand me now," was a thought stronger than
all obstacles. I used to repeat ecstatically, "I am not dumb now." I
could not be despondent while I anticipated the delight of talking to my
mother and reading her responses from her lips. It astonished me to
find how much easier it is to talk than to spell with the fingers, and
I discarded the manual alphabet as a medium of communication on my part;
but Miss Sullivan and a few friends still use it in speaking to me, for
it is more convenient and more rapid than lip-reading.
Just here, perhaps, I had better explain our use of the manual alphabet,
which seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or
talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet
generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the
speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The position of the
hand is as easy to feel as it is to see. I do not feel each letter
any more than you see each letter separately when you read. Constant
practice makes the fingers very flexible, and some of my friends spell
rapidly--about as fast as an expert writes on a typewriter. The mere
spelling is, of course, no more a conscious act than it is in writing.
When I had made speech my own, I could not wait to go home. At last
the happiest of happy moments arrived. I had made my homeward journey,
talking constantly to Miss Sullivan, not for the sake of talking, but
determined to improve to the last minute. Almost before I knew it, the
train stopped at the Tuscumbia station, and there on the platform stood
the whole family. My eyes fill with tears now as I think how my mother
pressed me close to her, speechless and trembling with delight, taking
in every syllable that I spoke, while little Mildred seized my free
hand and kissed it and danced, and my father expressed his pride and
affection in a big silence. It was as if Isaiah's prophecy had been
fulfilled in me, "The mountains and the hills shall break forth before
you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their
hands!"