In September, 1896, accompanied by her teacher, Miss Keller entered
the Cambridge School for Girls, to prepare for Radcliffe College, and
in June, 1897, passed the examinations of the first preparatory year
successfully in every subject, taking “honors” in English and German.
The director of the school, Arthur Gilman, in an article in “American
Annals of the Deaf,” says: “I think that I may say that no candidate
in Harvard or Radcliffe College was graduated higher than Helen in
English. The result is remarkable, especially when we consider that she
had been studying on strictly college preparatory lines for one year
only. She had, it is true, long and careful instruction, and she has
had always the loving ministration of Miss Sullivan, in addition to
the inestimable advantage of a concentration that the rest of us never
know. No other, man or woman,” he adds, “has ever, in my experience,
got ready for those examinations in so brief a time.”
Mr. Gilman, in the same article, pays the following well-deserved
tribute to Miss Sullivan, whose work is as worthy of admiration as that
of her pupil:—
“Miss Sullivan sat at Helen’s side in the classes (in the Cambridge
School), interpreting to her, with infinite patience, the instruction
of every teacher. In study hours, Miss Sullivan’s labors were even
more arduous, for she was obliged to read everything that Helen had
to learn, excepting what was prepared in Braille; she searched the
lexicons and encyclopedias, and gave Helen the benefit of it all.
When Helen went home, Miss Sullivan went with her, and it was hers to
satisfy the busy, unintermitting demands of the intensely active brain;
for, although others gladly helped, there were many matters which
could be treated only by the one teacher who had awakened the activity
and had followed its development from the first. Now, it was a German
grammar which had to be read, now a French story, and then some passage
from ‘Cæsar’s Commentaries.’ It looked like drudgery, and drudgery it
would certainly have been had not love shed its benign influence over
all, lightening each step and turning hardship into pleasure.”
Miss Keller is very patriotic, but large and liberal in her ideas,
which soar far beyond all narrow, partisan or political prejudices.
Her sympathies are with the masses, the burden-bearers, and, like all
friends of the people and of universal progress, she was intensely
interested in the Peace Congress.
Speaking on the subject, she said: “I hope the nations will carry out
the project of disarmament. I wonder which nation will be brave enough
to lay down its arms first!”
“Don’t you hope it will be America?”
“Yes, I hope so, but I do not think it will. We are only just beginning
to fight now,” she went on, sagely, “and I am afraid we like it. I
think it will be one of the old, experienced nations, that has had
enough of war.”