On the recommendation of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the
telephone, Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institute for the
Blind at South Boston, sent Miss Annie Mansfield Sullivan to Tuscumbia
to undertake the difficult task of piercing the veil behind which the
intelligence of the little girl lay sleeping. How well this noble and
devoted teacher has succeeded in her work is amply evidenced by the
brilliancy and thoroughness of her pupil’s attainments.
Miss Sullivan’s method of instruction was similar to that adopted
by Dr. Samuel G. Howe in teaching Laura Bridgman. She used the
manual alphabet, and cards bearing, in raised letters, the names
of objects. At first, the pupil violently resisted the teacher’s
efforts to instruct her, and so determined was her opposition, Miss
Sullivan declares, that, if she had not exercised physical force and a
determination even more strenuous than that of her refractory pupil,
she would never have succeeded in teaching her anything. Night and day
she was at her side, watching for the first gleam of conscious mind;
and at length, after seven weeks of what she says was the hardest
work she had ever done, the faithful teacher received her reward in
the sudden dawning of the child’s intelligence. All at once, the
light seemed to burst in upon her wondering soul; she understood then
that the raised letters which she felt on the cards and the groups
of manual signs on her hands, represented words, or the names of
familiar objects. The delight of the pupil and teacher was unbounded,
and from that moment Helen’s education, though still demanding the
greatest patience and loving care on the part of her teacher, was a
comparatively easy matter.
With the awakening of her intellectual faculties, she seemed literally
to have been “born again.” The stubborn, headstrong, self-willed,
almost unmanageable child became patient, gentle and obedient; and,
instead of resisting instruction, her eagerness to learn was so great
that it had to be restrained. So rapid was her progress that, in a few
weeks, anyone who knew the manual alphabet could easily communicate
with her, and in July, 1887, less than a year from the time Miss
Sullivan first saw her, she could write an intelligent letter.