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fever, the senses of sight and hearing. She was thus cut off from the language of the seeing and hearing world, which is written for the eye and spoken for the ear, but has no native form for the sense of touch alone.

The mind of the untaught deaf-mute is in about the same condition as that of the child before it has learned speech. Up to seven years of age, Helen Keller lived very much such a life as a beautiful household pet might live, which had no means of At this age a teacher was procommunication with its owners. vided for her. Here is Helen Keller's own account of their first work together. You can read the whole story (written when she was twelve years old) in the Youth's Companion for January 4, 1894.

The morning after teacher came, I went to her room. gave me a beautiful doll.

She

Then teacher took my hand and slowly made the letters d-o-l-l with her fingers, at the same time making Of course I did not know the motions meant letters, me touch the doll. I did not know what letters were; but I was interested in the finger-play and tried to imitate the motions, and I think I succeeded in spelling doll Then I ran down stairs to show my new doll to in a very little while. my mother, and I am sure she was surprised and pleased when I held up little hand and made the letters for doll.

my

That afternoon, besides doll, I learned to did not understand that everything has a name.

spell pin and hat; but I

I had not the least idea

that my finger-play was the magical key that was to unlock my mind's prison door and open wide the windows of my soul.

Teacher had been with us nearly two weeks, and I had learned eighteen or twenty words, before that thought flashed into my mind, as the sun breaks upon the sleeping world; and in that moment of illumination the secret of language was revealed to me, and I caught a glimpse of the beautiful country I was to explore.

My teacher had been trying all the morning to make me understand

that the mug and the milk in the mug had different names; but I was very dull, and kept spelling milk for mug and mug for milk, until teacher must have lost all hope of making me see my mistake. At last she got up, gave me the mug, and led me out of the door to the pumphouse. Some one was pumping water, and as the cool, fresh stream burst forth, teacher made me put my mug under the spout and spelled w-a-t-e-r, water!

.

That word startled my soul and it awoke, full of the spirit of the morning, full of joyous, exultant song. Until that day my mind had been like a darkened chamber, waiting for words to enter and light the lamp, which is thought. I left the pump-house eager to learn everything. I learned a great many words that day, I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, and teacher were among them. It would have been difficult to find a happier little child than I was that night as I lay in my crib and thought over the joy that the day had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to I was never angry after that, because I understood what my friends said to me, and I was very busy learning many wonderful things.

come.

I was

I would

I was never still during the first glad days of my freedom. continually spelling and acting out words as I spelled them. run, skip, jump, and swing, no matter where I happened to be. Everything I touched seemed to quiver with life. It was because I saw everything with the new, strange, beautiful sight which had been given me.

Three years later she heard about the deaf and blind Norwegian child, Ragnhild Kaata, who had been taught to speak; and she resolved that she also would learn vocal speech. In this she has succeeded very well.

You may be interested to know that she had parents able to give her every advantage. She has had at her side in the classroom in school a devoted teacher who has spelled into her hand the words of the instructor; and some of her other

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teachers learned to read to her with the hand. She has had very many books printed in raised letters for her own use, and she has had various sorts of typewriting machines, one of them being for Greek and one for algebra. At seventeen, she took the preparatory examinations for Radcliffe College, passing in German, French, Latin, English, Greek and Roman history. In German and English she received "honors" for especially fine work. Two years later, at nineteen, after a year of rest and a year of study, she passed triumphantly the examinations for entrance to Radcliffe College, which are the same as those given for entrance to Harvard. She wrote in elementary and advanced Greek, advanced Latin, algebra, and geometry; passed in all, and "with credit" in advanced Latin.

If a girl without eyes or ears such as you possess can do this, what cannot seeing and hearing boys and girls accomplish if they have the will to do?

I shall give you one more selection of her own, an extract from her diary written when she was thirteen years old:

Dear Diary: - Today is the thirteenth of October, 1893, and I have some very pleasant news for you. My studies began today, and I am very, very glad. I study Arithmetic, Latin, History, Geography, and Literature. I am glad, because I want to learn more and more about everything in this beautiful, wonderful world. Every day I find how little lanI know; for I catch glimpses on all sides of treasures of history, and I long to see guage, and science,— a beautiful world of knowledge, everything, know everything, and learn everything. I do not feel discouraged when I think how much I have to learn, because I know the dear God has given me an eternity in which to learn it.

I used to say I did not like Arithmetic very well, but now I have changed my mind; for I see what a good, useful study it is. It helps me to think clearly and logically and strengthens my mind in many ways. I

try to be very calm and patient now when the examples seem very hard, but sometimes in spite of my great effort to keep my mind in the right place, it will flutter like a little bird in a cage and try to escape into the pleasant sunshine; for nice and useful as Arithmetic is, it is not as interesting as a beautiful poem or a lovely story.

Latin is a very beautiful language, and I hope I shall be able to speak and read much of it when I go home next Spring. Already I begin to feel better acquainted with the grand old heroes of Rome, since I know a little of the language in which they thought and talked so long ago.

I love Literature and History too, because they teach me about the great things that have been thought and dreamed and achieved in the world, and help me to understand how the law of good worketh incessantly,

"Without halting, without rest; Planting seeds of knowledge pure,

Through Earth to ripen, through Heaven endure."

From "Helen Keller Souvenir No. 2," published

by the Volta Bureau, Washington, D. C., and cited by permission.

EXERCISES

I. Mental: Imagine yourself a child, or a deaf-mute, who had never heard the word horse, yet who had seen a horse many times. Now try to imagine how you would have thought the idea, horse, without any word to name that idea.

II. Oral, and then Written: Have you ever come into When and where? How did it sound to you? Relate your impressions.

contact with any other language than your own?

She spoke not; but, so richly fraught

With language are her glance and smile,
That, when the curtain fell, I thought
She had been talking all the while.

Frances Sargent Osgood.

CHAPTER IV

་་

LIVING LANGUAGE AND ITS LAW

I told you that language had grown till it is somewhat like an immense tree. Now a tree, even one of the evergreen sort, keeps putting out new leaves and branches from year to year, while some of its old twigs and leaves die or get broken off.

This is just what every living language does. It adds new words every year and it loses others. It changes the manner in which some of its words are used, and the form and the meaning of other words. New words and forms of speech pass from mouth to mouth and from ear to ear, till presently they creep into written speech also, and then they must be put into the newest dictionaries. The last edition of Webster's International (dated 1900) contains 25,000 more words and phrases than the preceding edition. Many of these words came in with the Cuban and Philippine wars. Others have been made purposely by men of science to name new things.

So, you see, it is really the spoken word in our language that throbs with life as if it were the strong heart of a great animal. Once let the spoken word cease, and growth and change would cease also and our language would soon die. Certain languages, as the Greek and the Latin, are called dead. This is just because they cannot now grow or change with the changing use of men, since they are no longer spoken by any living people. That is, they are now merely fixed forms, neither gaining new words nor losing old ones. They have no

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