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". I j If *
*ti* ' l *
MIDSTREAM:
MY LATEK LIFE
BOOKS BV
HELEN KELLER
OPTIMISM (AN ESSAY)
OUT OF THE DARK
MIDSTREAM: MY LATER LIFE
MY RELIGION
THE SONG OF THE STONE WAL3t*
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
THE WORLD I LIVE IN
I! i'li" n lit lit r tin*! K/Vr/iiii/?
REAM
My Later L ife
by
HELEN KELLER
Garden Ctty, Ntm York
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
1929
*** Ju 1
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t TH cttwiu ruiuiUMo <3Wf Ainr
111 TNI twitm
ti couwfftf itf i rRtM
CAHttW CtTV V. V.
TO
ANNE SULLIVAN
WHOSE LOVE
IS
THE STORY OF MY UFB
"There be many shapes of mystery;
And many things God brings to be,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not,
And a path is there where no man thought
So hath it fallen here*"
* EURIPIDES
FOREWORD
SOMEWHERE in the course of her book Miss Keller
speaks of the "sacrosanct privacy to which tradition
and the necessities of concentrated thinking entitle
writers and artists." It is something she has never
known. Since she was seven years old, when she was
hailed as "a most extraordinary little individual,"
"a mental prodigy/ 7 and "an intellectual phenom-
enon," whose achievements were "little short of a
miracle," whose progress was "a sort of triumphant
march a series of dazzling conquests," the great
megaphones of publicity have followed her, trumpet-
ing truth and untruth with equal fury, even when the
truth alone was more wonderful than all the embel-
lishments heated imaginations could add to it
Helen Keller was born, a perfectly healthy and
normal child, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27,
1880, At the age of eighteen months she was stricken
with a severe illness, the exact nature of which is not
known. It left her deaf and blind; as a result
of the deafness she soon became dumb also.
For five years she remained imprisoned. Then,
through Dr* Alexander Graham Bell, to whom her
father appealed because he knew Dr. BelFs interest
x FOREWORD
in the deaf, a deliverer was sent to her in the person
of a twenty-year-old graduate of the Perkins Institu-
tion for the Blind at Boston, Mass., a girl by the
name of Anne Mansfield Sullivan. From the day of
Miss Sullivan's arrival on March 2, 1887, the story
of Miss Keller's life reads like a fairy tale. Within a
month the teacher had presented the gift of language
to her little pupil, an achievement in itself so
miraculous that fifty years earlier no one had be-
lieved it possible. Until Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe
proved through the education of Laura Bridgman
that their minds could be reached and shown how
to reach out, the totally blind and deaf were classi-
fied with idiots and left alone.
Since Laura's education numbers of those afflicted
as she was have been placed in communication with
the world. Some of them have shown considerable
natural ability, but Helen Keller is to-day, as she
has always been, incomparably the greatest among
them. She is the only one who has ever been received,
without apology, into the world of the seeing. In a
college for normal girls to which she was admitted
reluctantly and without favour she won a degree cum
laude in the same length of time it took her classmates
k to win theirs. She has learned to speak the only
deaf -blind person in America of whom this is true.
She has acted in vaudeville and in motion pictures;
she has lectured in every state in the Union except
FOREWORD a
Florida, 1 and in many parts of Canada; she has writ-
ten books of literary distinction and permanent
value; she has, since her graduation from college,
taken an active part in every major movement on
behalf of the blind in this country, and she has
managed to carry on a wide correspondence in Eng-
lish, French, and German, and to keep herself in-
formed by means of books and magazines in those
three languages.
Two years ago she laid down temporarily her
work for the American Foundation for the Blind,
thinking to go quietly to her home on Long Island,
and there with her teacher, Mrs. Macy, 2 her secre-
tary, Miss Thomson, and her Great Dane, Sieglinde,
review the part of her life which had elapsed since
her sophomore year at Radcliffe College when The
Story of My Life, which is the story of her child-
hood and young girlhood, was published.
I think she had not realized how difficult it would
be to isolate herself. She could stop sending letters
out, but she could not stop them coming in, nor could
she head off the beggars who swarmed to her door*
Few people realize what is expected nay, what is
demanded of hen Not a day passes without urgent
and heartbreaking appeals from all over the world.
They come by letter and In person from the blind, *
the deaf, the crippled, the sick, the poverty-stricken,
*Since this was written Miss Keller has also lectured in Florida*
^Formerly Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan.
xii FOREWORD
and the sorrow-laden. In addition to these, there
are, of course, requests for pictures, autographs, testi-
monials, and explanations of what she thinks of re-
incarnation or prohibition. But the majority of Miss
Keller's letters and the majority of her callers come
with distressing pleas for help. "Oh, Miss Keller,
you, with your unparalleled opportunities! You,
with your wealthy friends!"
The letters were turned over to Miss Thomson and
Miss Keller sat down it must be confessed without
special enthusiasm, for she has never been greatly
interested in herself to continue the story of her
life. Almost immediately Miss Thomson was im-
peratively called away, and Mrs. Macy, who is
nearly blind, and Miss Keller, who is quite blind,
were left to struggle along as best they could.
They got their own meals, Mrs. Macy doing most
of the cooking while Miss Keller washed the dishes,
made the beds, did the dusting, and on Monday
pricked out the laundry list in braille so she could
check it when the clothes came back on Saturday.
When the morning chores were done and the most
insistent letters answered she turned to Midstream.
Poignant, heartbreaking days out of the past swept
over her; even to think of them was pain.
She had known for many years that she would one
day have to write this book, and had, in prepara-
tion, jotted down in braille many fragmentary im~
FOREWORD xiii
pressions. Going over them was slow work. Never
believe one who tells you that the blind can read as
rapidly as the seeing. The swiftest finger cannot keep
up with the eye. It is not only much slower, but in-
finitely more laborious. The arm grows tired, the
ends of the fingers ache, and Miss Keller discovered
that the friction of years had worn down the
treacherous little dots to such an extent that in many
cases she could not make out what she had written.
Much of her material was not in braille. The let-
ters from Mark Twain, Dr. Bell, William James,
and others were in hand- or typewriting. So was
most of the data on the blind except that which the
American Foundation for the Blind had put into
raised print Numbers of articles and stray para-
graphs of her own she had typed, thereby, since she
had at the same time destroyed her braille notes,
placing them forever beyond her own reach. All of
this Mrs. Macy, Miss Thomson, and I read to her
by means of the manual alphabet
Miss Keller had not been long at work before
Mrs. Macy became ill, A temporary servant was
called in. Mrs. Macy became much worse. The doc-
tors were grave. She had been abusing her eyes. They
had told her not to use them. Work on Midstream
stopped abruptly. Nervous and anxious, Miss Keller
paced the house and tramped the garden. She could
not read, she could not write, she could not even
FOREWORD
think. It was not until Mrs. Macy was completely
out of danger that the autobiography was resumed.
Most of the time Miss Keller composed in braille
and revised in braille. Sometimes she composed
directly on the typewriter, pricking notations at the
top of the pages with a hairpin so she could keep
track of them. Parts she was most uncertain about she
kept in braille a long time, going over and over them.
Often, as she mulled over what she had written, she
decided to write it again, and sometimes the second
or the third or the fourth version was better than the
first
The mass of material grew. Thousands of pages
lay piled on the floor sprinkled through with thou-
sands of directions: "Put this with what I have
already written about the garden." , . . "Please
see if the letter I had from Mr. Carnegie in 1913
will not fit in here." . . . "I think this quotation
is right, but perhaps someone should verify it. It is
not in raised print." . . . "These paragraphs may
add a pleasant touch to what I have already written
about Dr. Bell."
Under Miss Keller's direction, oral and written,
the typed manuscript was rewritten with scissors and
paste, Mrs. Macy, Miss Thomson, and I constantly
spelling back to her pages, paragraphs, and chapters.
As Miss Keller says, it was like putting a picture
puzzle together, only it was not a puzzle one could
FOREWORD xv
hold in a tray; sometimes it seemed as big as the
whole city of New York, and sometimes it seemed
bigger than that. When we had finished we gave it to
a typist to copy while Miss Keller set to writing
connecting paragraphs for chapters that did not fit
together and rewriting parts she did not like and try-
ing frantically to catch up with the outside claims
upon her. Once she left Forest Hills at eleven o'clock
in the morning, delivered an address in Washington
at four o'clock in the afternoon, returned immedi-
ately to Forest Hills where she arrived so late that
the taxi drivers had gone to bed, walked home from
the station, snatched a few hours' sleep, and went
back to work the next morning at eight o'clock I They
were heroic days.
Even yet the book was to her a thing of shreds
and patches. Naturally, our work did not begin with
page one and run through to the end the way the
reader has it now. It was done in small units and
with many interruptions. When the typist had fin-
ished, scissors and paste were once more brought
out, and for the second time, under Miss Keller's
direction, the manuscript was put together, after
which it was spelled to her again three times from
beginning to end while she made still further alter-
ations. In galley proofs it was read to her once more
and for the last time. To the end she was revising
and rewriting, She has not yet read the book with
xvi FOREWORD
her own fingers ; she cannot do that until the braille
edition is printed,
Of the content perhaps a word is necessary. The
book is Miss Keller's. Doubts concerning the authen-
ticity of her accomplishment have long since been
laid to rest, even in Europe where for many years
she was regarded as nothing more than a fine ex-
ample of American exaggeration. It is only those
who do not know her who suggest, now and then, that
it is Mrs. Macy who tells her what to say. Miss Keller
has convictions of her own, and a stubborn way of
hanging on to them. In most instances they are not
those of her teacher. Temperamentally she and Mrs,
Macy are utterly different, and the word "utterly" is
not carelessly used. Each has chambers in her mind
that the other does not, cannot, penetrate. No one
can be more surprised at some of the revelations in
this book than the woman who has lived in daily
association with Miss Keller for the last forty years.
There are people who think of Miss Keller as cut
off from all that is unpleasant, living in a happy
realm of ideality where everything is as it should
be. This has never been true. Six months after she
went to Alabama Mrs. Macy wrote, "From the be-
ginning I have made it a practice to answer all
Helen's questions to the best of my ability and at the
same time truthfully."
Much has been made of the fact that in the educa-
FOREWORD xvii
tion of Helen Keller Mrs. Macy followed the
methods of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who taught
Laura Bridgman. It is true that they both used the
manual alphabet as their means of communication,
but it is also true that neither of them invented it
Mrs. Macy's method of presenting language to her
pupil was unlike Dr. Howe's, as has been made clear
in The Story of My Life. As for the difference in
method after language was acquired, the statement
of Mrs. Macy's I have just quoted, which was writ-
ten when Miss Keller was seven years old and had
been under instruction four months, may be con-
trasted with this from Dr. Howe in a letter to Laura
when she was fifteen years old and had been under
instruction for seven years: "Your mind is young
and weak and cannot understand hard things, but by
and by it will be stronger and you will be able to
understand hard things." Laura had asked him about
"God and heaven and souls and many questions."
It is annoying to a certain type of mind to have
Miss Keller describe something she obviously can-
not know through direct sensation. The annoyance
is mutual. These sensations, whatever expert opinion
on them may be, are as real to her as any others. Her
idea of colour, to take only one instance, is built up
through association and analogy. Pink is "like a
baby's cheek or a soft Southern breeze." Gray is
"like a soft shawl around the shoulders." Yellow is
xviii FOREWORD
"like the sun. It means life and is rich in promise."
There are two kinds of brown. One is "warm and
friendly like leaf mould." The other is "like the
trunks of aged trees with worm holes in them, or like
withered hands." Lilac, which is her teacher's
favourite colour, "makes her think of faces she has
loved and kissed." The warm sun brings out odours
that make her think of red. Coolness brings out
odours that make her think of green. A sparkling
colour brings to mind soap bubbles quivering under
her hand.
In her descriptions of San Francisco, to which ob-
jections are sure to be raised, she is not repeating
something she has been told. She is telling what she
has built up for herself out of the descriptions she
has read and those that have been spelled to her.
In what way her picture differs from ours we can-
not say, for she has only our language to use in de-
scribing it. Mark Twain used to think that her im-
ages were more beautiful and gave his own experi-
ence with Niagara Falls and the Taj Mahal to prove
it. In his imagination before he saw them Niagara
Falls were "finer than anything God ever thought
of in the way of scenery," and the Taj Mahal was a
"rat hole" compared with what he thought it would
be. "I thank God," he said one day after Miss Keller
had described the face of a friend, "she can't see*"
All that Miss Keller claims for her world is
FOREWORD xix
that there is a workable correspondence between it
and ours, since she finds no incongruity in living in
both at the same time. William James was not sur-
prised at this correspondence. I think few phil-
osophers are. They see only too clearly how much of
what we all know and feel has come to us not through
personal knowledge, but through the accumulated
experience of our ancestors and contemporaries as
it is handed down and given over to us in words. She
is, thinks Professor Pierre Villey, himself a blind
man, and a most careful observer, a dupe of words,
and her aesthetic enjoyment of most of the arts is "a
matter of auto-suggestion rather than perception."
He is right, but this is true of all of us.
It has been doubted that Miss Keller can enjoy
sculpture, since it is addressed to the eye, yet the
sculptor's own contact with his work is as much with
the hand as with the eye.
Her enjoyment of music has also been thrown
open to question. She .has "listened" with her fingers
to the piano and the violin and various devices
have been contrived to make it possible for her to
"hear" an orchestra. Recently she has been listening
over the radio by placing her fingers lightly on a
sounding board of balsa wood. She can tell when the
announcer is talking and she has learned to recognize
station WEAF by the dogmatic staccato of the an-
nouncer's voice when he repeats the letters. She can
xx FOREWORD
tell whether one or more instruments are playing, and
very frequently can tell what the instruments are.
The singing voice she sometimes confuses with the
violin. The 'cello and the bass viol are likewise con-
fused, but there is never a mistake in the rhythm or
the general mood of the selection, though efforts
have been made to trip her up on these two points.
Miss Keller's impressions of the world have come
much as they do to anyone, only the mechanism is
different She reads with her fingers instead of her
eyes and listens with her hands instead of her ears-
Those who are familiar with the manual alphabet
generally use it in talking to her. One who is accus-
tomed to talking in this way talks with as little em-
barrassment as in any other. Those who do not know
the manual alphabet talk with their mouths and Miss
Keller listens by placing her fingers lightly on the
lips. She talks with her mouth and is readily under-
stood by anyone who has been with her a short time,
Her voice is not normal, but to those of us who are
used to it, it seems no more abnormal than that of a
person with a marked foreign accent
So far as tests have been able to determine, her
sensory equipment is in no way, except perhaps in the
sense of smell, superior to that of the normal person*
She seems totally without the sense of direction which
is so pronounced in some of the deaf blind* In her
own home, which is not large, she frequently starts
FOREWORD xxi
toward the opposite wall instead of the door, and
orients herself by contact with the furniture. When
the rugs are taken up she is completely bewildered
and has to learn the whole pattern again. Her sense
of distance is also poor. She does not know when she
has reached the door until she has run into it, and
in winter when the ground is covered with snow and
ice her daily walk becomes a mighty adventure.
Much nonsense has been written about her; no
doubt much more will be. She is perfectly aware of
it, and also of the criticisms that have been levelled
against her. No attack that has ever been made
has been withheld from her, I think she has come
to know that, in judging her, mistakes have been made
on both sides. We have been trying to interpret what
she feels in terms of what we feel, and she, whose
greatest desire has always been, like that of most of
the handicapped, to be like other people, has been
trying to meet us half way. So it is that we find
ourselves in the end where we were in the beginning,
on opposite sides of a wall. Little bits have crumbled
away, but the wall is still there, and there is no
way to break it down.
/ Many have tried. She has been the subject of much
scientific experimentation and philosophical specu-
lation. This has caused a great deal of disturbance in
learned minds, for she has a disconcerting way of
upsetting nearly all preconceived theories about her-
xxii FOREWORD
self. Even William James went through this experi-
ence. No one has yet said the final word about her,
except in one particular. William James did that
when at the end of his consideration he said, "The
sum of it is that you are a blessing, and I'll kill any-
one who says you are not."
NELLA BRADDY.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER AOB
I. Tuning In I
II. Youth, Oh, Youth 7
III. My First Years in Wrentham 27
IV. Our Mark Twain 47
V. Leading the Blind 70
VI. Per Ardua Proxime Ad Astra 90
VIL Wanderings 99
VIIL My Oldest Friend 107
IX. I Capitulate 139
X. On 'The Open Road" 149
XL In the Whirlpool 169
XII. I Make Believe I Am an Actress 186
XIIL The Play World 209
XIV. My Mother 216
XV. Lux in Tenebris 224
XVI. Muted Strings 243
XVII. Varied Chords 262
XVIII. I Go Adventuring 295
XIX. Enchanted Windows 313
XX. Thoughts That Will Not Let Me Sleep 329
XXL My Guardian Angel 342
Index 351
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Miss Keller and Sieglinde Frontispiece
FACING PAGB
Miss Keller's home at Wrentham 36
Miss Keller, Miss Sullivan, and Dr. Bell 132
Miss Keller, Mrs. Macy, Miss Thomson, and
Hans 164
Miss Keller teaching Charlie Chaplin the
manual alphabet 196
Miss Keller's mother, Miss Sullivan '(Mrs.
Macy), Miss Keller 220
Miss Keller "listening" to the violin of Edwin
Grasse 284.
Miss Keller and her sister, Mildred 308
MIDSTREAM
MY LATER LIFE
MIDSTREAM:
MY LATER LIFE
Chapter I
TUNING IN
WHEN people are old enough to write their memoirs,
it is time for them to die, it seems to me. It would
save themselves and others a great deal of trouble
if they did. But since I have the indiscretion to be
still alive, I shall add to their burden by trying to
set down the story of my life since I was a sopho-
more at Radcliffe College.
During many years I have written detached notes
on whatever has interested me, in all kinds of moods,
under all kinds of circumstances. This desultory
manner of writing is temperamental with me, I like
it because it gives me a chance to chat and laugh
a little and be friendly along the way*
I shall not attempt to follow a continuous thread
of thought or give a special message in these pages.
I shall not pursue any one idea up and down the
labyrinths of the mind. It is my wish to jot down
fugitive thoughts and emotions, and let them bear
a MIDSTREAM
what they will I have often been told that if I
would put more such fleeting bits of life into words,
I might add somewhat to the fund of sympathy,
thought, and sincerity from which men draw
strength to live. So if what grows out of my notes
should not prove bright or fair, at least the seed
is sweet the seed of my friends' encouragement
Since I have been at work upon this auto-
biography, I have frequently thought of the occu-
pation which engaged the attention of my friend
Colonel Roebling the latter years of his life. He was
always a builder. In his young manhood he coa-
structed the Brooklyn suspension bridge, and inci*
dentally invalided himself by staying too long under
water in one of the caissons. Years later when I
visited him in Trenton, New Jersey, he showed me
with much enthusiasm a picture which he was build-
ing out of little bits of paper. The picture repre-
sented a great river spanned by a noble bridge, be*
tween green hills; and the fleecy clouds of a sum*
mer day were reflected in the blue waters. Every
tiny bit of paper was tinted and shaped to fit into the
design. Great patience and ingenuity were required
to assemble the thousands of bits that composed the
landscape and the flowing river. From a little tray
he painstakingly selected lights and shadows, leaves
and ripples, and the bridge's flowing spans.
The process of shaping a book is not iralike
TUNING IN 3
Colonel Roebling's picture-building. Into the tray
of one's consciousness are tumbled thousands of
scraps of experience. That tray holds you dismem-
bered, so to speak. Your problem is to synthesize
yourself and the world you live in, with its moun-
tains and streams, its oceans and skies, its volcanoes,
deserts, cities and people, into something like a co-
herent whole. The difficulty multiplies when you
find that the pieces never look the same to you two
minutes in succession. You pick them up, and find
that they are "sicklied o'er" with sentiment, with old
beliefs and relationships. With each new experience
you pass through, they undergo strange transmuta-
tions. I put together my pieces this way and that;
but they will not dovetail properly. When I succeed
in making a fairly complete picture, I discover
countless fragments in the tray, and I do not know,
what to do with them. The longer I work, the more
important these fragments seem; so I pull the pic-
ture apart and start it all over again. I trace the
irregular lines of experience through the design, and
wonder at the queer conjunctions of facts and im-
aginings. My sense of the fitness of things demands
that there should be some degree of beauty in the
composition; but alas, I am driven finally to the
realization that the elements which went into the
shaping of my life were not as carefully tinted and
shaped as those in Colonel Roebling's picture. Per-
4 MIDSTREAM
haps, to the eye of the Creator, there may be sym-
metry and purpose and fulfilment; but the
individual perceives only fragments incongruously
mingled together, and blank spaces which one feels
should be filled by something noble, dramatic, or ex-
traordinary.
The first part of The Story of My Life was writ-
ten in the form of daily and fortnightly themes in
English 22 at Radcliffe College under Professor
Charles Townsend Copeland. I had no idea of pub-
lishing them and I do not remember how Mr. Bok
became interested in them. I only know that one
morning I was called out of my Latin class to meet
Mr. William Alexander of the Ladies' Home Jour-
nal If I remember rightly, Mr* Alexander said that
Mr. Bok wished to publish The Story of My Life in
monthly installments. I told him that it was out of
the question, as my college work was all I could
manage. His answer surprised me. "You have already
written a considerable part of it in your themes."
"How in the world did you find out I was writ-
ing themes?" I exclaimed. He laughed and said it
was his business to find out such things. He talked
so optimistically about how easily the themes could
be connected to form magazine articles that, with-
out having a very clear idea of what I was doing, I
signed an agreement .to furnish the Ladies* JEfome
Journal with The Story of My Life in monthly in*
TUNING IN 5
stallments for three thousand dollars. At the moment
I thought of nothing but the three thousand dollars.
There was magic in those three words. In my im-
agination the story was already written. Indeed, it
had already found a sure place in "The Golden
Treasury of Literature." My happiness and conceit
knew no bounds. Everything went smoothly at first.
I had already written a number of themes which
Mr. Copeland had read and criticized. He had
also made suggestions which I was able to
use in the first chapter. But the day was not far
distant when I found that I had used all the suitable
themes. I was in deep water, and frightened out of
my wits. I was utterly inexperienced in the prepara-
tion of magazine articles. I did not know how to
cut my material to fit the given space. I had no idea
that the time limit was of such importance until
telegrams began to come, thick and fast, like greedy
birds to a cherry tree. Special delivery letters filled
the chorus of dismay : "We must have the next chap-
ter immediately." "There is no connection between
page six and page seven. Wire the missing part."
Mr. Bok told me years afterwards that the
people in Dante's Inferno had a pleasant time of
it compared with what the staff of the Ladies' Home
Journal endured while my story was on its way. He
said he resolved then never again to start publish-
ing a serial until he had the whole manuscript in his
6 MIDSTREAM
hands ; he told me a few years ago that he never had.
When things were at the worst, my friend, Lenore
Kinney, who had just married Philip Sidney Smith,
a classmate of John Macy's, told me about Mr.
Macy. She described him as extremely clever,
and just the sort of knight errant to deliver
me from the jaws of this dilemma. At that time, Mr,
Macy was an English instructor at Harvard Uni-
versity. He had classes in Radcliffe also, but I did
not know him. Lenore arranged for us to meet I
liked him; he was eager, intelligent, gentle. He un-
derstood my difficulties, and promptly set about re-
lieving me of them. We went over the material I had
Accumulated, which was in the state of original
chaos. Quickly and skillfully he brought the re-
calcitrant parts to order ; and we constructed a tol-
erably coherent and readable chapter in a few hours.
Mr. Bok hailed him as a deus ex machina, and from
that time on the Journal got its "copy" in fairly good
time,
Mr. Macy was a writer himself, with a keen, well-
stored mind, and his advice was most precious to me.
He was a friend, a brother, and an adviser all in one,
and if this book is not what it should be, it is be-
cause I feel lonely and bewildered without his sup*
porting hand.
Chapter II
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH
IN The Story of My Life I went quite fully into
my struggle for admission to Radcliffe College. In
these pages, therefore, I shall merely summarize my
experiences and impressions.
I knew that there would be obstacles to conquer;
but they only whetted my desire to try my strength
by the standards of normal students. I thought that
in college I should touch hands with girls who were
interested in the same subjects that I was, and who
were trying like me to hew out their own paths in
life. I began my studies with enthusiasm. I entered
the lecture halls in the spirit of the young men who
gathered about Socrates and Plato. Here were cup-
bearers "of the wine that's meant for souls" who
would answer all the questions that perplexed me.
But soon I found that my great expectation had
sprung from inexperience, I was reminded of the
upright divisions between the shelves in the library
in a house where I lived while attending the Oilman
School for Girls. When my teacher and I first saw
them she exclaimed, "What beautiful books! Just
feel them," I touched the handsome volumes and
7
8 MIDSTREAM
read some of the titles, which were so richly embossed
that I could distinguish the letters. But when I tried
to take one of them down I found that they were
imitation books, all bound and lettered in gold to
look like Chaucer, Montaigne, Bacon, Shakespeare,
and Dante. That is the way I felt as the days in college
passed, and my dreams faded into a rather drab
reality.
Two insurmountable obstacles confronted me
throughout my college course lack of books in
raised letters, and lack of time. Most of the required
books Miss Sullivan read to me, spelling into my
hand. Often when every one else in the house was
asleep, she and I were busy with our books, trying
to catch up with the day's reading. Generous friends
like Mr. H. H. Rogers and Mr. William Wade
would gladly have had the books specially made for
me but often I could not find out from the profes-
sors what books I would need in time to have them
transcribed* No such splendid service as that offered
by the Red Cross was available for blind students
twenty-five years ago. If it had been there would
have been fewer shadows of discontent and more lib-
erty in my work*
Books that were not in braille had to be read to
me by means of the manual alphabet as rapidly as
possible in order that I might keep up with the
classes* I was a slow student and it tried my patience
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 9
not to be able to read for myself the passages I
especially wanted, as often as I pleased. Miss Sulli-
van was ever at my side, not only reading to me and
spelling the lectures into my hand but looking up
words in Latin, German, and French dictionaries.
She was not familiar with any of these languages,
and to this day I marvel how, with her imperfect
sight, she accomplished such an arduous task.
Each volume in braille and I remember
especially "Othello," "A Winter's Tale," "Henry
IV," "Henry V," and the Sonnets, parts of Livy and
Tacitus, Plautus's plays, and the poetry of Catullus,
selections from Pope, Dryden, Addison, and Steele,
and the poets to whose divine songs I still withdraw
from the discords of the world : Keats, Wordsworth,
Browning, and Shelley was a treasure island to me,
and it was an inexpressibly sweet sense of inde-
pendence I had preparing some lessons from pages
over which I could sprawl my fingers and gather the
material for a theme or an examination*
*
As I look back upon it, it seems to me that, my
own special difficulties aside, we were all in too much
of a hurry. It was like rushing through Europe on a
summer holiday. I caught only fleeting gleams of
the blaze and glory of Elizabethan literature, the
satire and the wit of Swift, Johnson, and Goldsmith,
and the splendour of the Nineteenth Century poets
as they poured out their exuberant messages of
jo MIDSTREAM
spiritual power, cheer, and courage from nature,
from men, and from the Divine Life breathing
through all things. But in the harvest of my later
years it is a delight to remember those wandlike
touches of fancy, wisdom, and imagination by which
my soul was set aflame !
.The noble men and women of history and poetry
moved and breathed before me vividly on the pic-
ture screen of time. Generals, kings, and Holy Al-
liances did not concern me much; I could not see
what good could result from the ruthless destruction
wrought by the Alexanders, Caesars, and Napoleons,
but my imagination glowed as I beheld Socrates
fearlessly teaching the youth of Athens*the truth and
drinking the fatal cup rather than surrender. Colum-
bus's sublime perseverance as he sailed chartless seas
with an unfriendly crew quickened my sense of ad-
venture in exploring and perhaps mapping a dark,
soundless world, I had always loved Joan of Arc
with a tender reverence, and her beautiful, tragic
figure in Schiller's play, in English and French his-
tory, and in essays by men of widely different tem-
peraments, her simple wisdom that cut through all
entangling arguments, her undaunted faith in the
midst of betrayal and cruelty, revealed to me new
heights and glories of womanhood. She has remtmed
very close to me "One of the few whom God
whispers in the ear."
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH n
With many an amazing scene the vast drama of
the ages unfolded before me empires rising and
falling, old arts giving way to new ones, races
strangely fused out of the fragments of ancient peo-
ples, heroic doers and thinkers pouring life and en-
ergy into the Dark Ages, scholars defying church
and state, taking the wanderer's staff in hand, suffer-
ing and perishing that paths might be cleared to
higher goals of truth. Fascinated, I watched how
new ideas appeared, waxed great, and waned. I
lost all sense of stability in earthly things, but I
was reassured by the thought that the mind of man
that unmakes what is made can also withdraw into
itself and find peace. This- resource was the elixir
vitae I gained from another study that I took up
at Radcliffe College, philosophy.
I was so happily at home in philosophy, it alone
would have rendered those four difficult years worth
while. As a spring rain makes the fields greener, so
my inner world grew fair beneath the shower of new
ideas that fell from the magic words of the sages! I
had faith and imagination; but philosophy taught
me how to keep on guard against the misconceptions
which spring from the limited experience of one
who lives in a world without colour and without
sound. I gained strength for my groping belief from
thinkers who saw with their eyes, heard with their
ears, touched with their hands and perceived the
12 MIDSTREAM
untrustworthiness of the senses even in the best
equipped human being. Socrates's discourses on
knowledge, friendship, and immortality I found in-
tensely absorbing and stimulating, so full were they
of truth and poetry in declaring that the real world
exists only for the mind. Plato made me happily
aware of an inner faculty an "Absolute" which
gives beauty to the beautiful, music to the musical,
and truth to what we call true, and thus creates
order and light and sound within us, no matter what
calamity may afflict us in the outer world. I was de-
lighted to have my faith confirmed that I could go
beyond the broken arc of my senses and behold the
invisible in the fullness of light, and hear divine
symphonies in silence, I had a joyous certainty that
deafness and blindness were not an essential part of
my existence, since they were not in any way a part
of my immortal mind*
But this idea was faith only until I came to
Descartes's maxim, "I think, therefore I am*" I
realized, then, that my "absolute" was not merely a
possession, but an instrument of happiness, I rose up
actively on my little island of limitations and found
other ways to bridge over the dark, silent void
with concepts of a light-flooded, resonant universe*
In other words, I used my inner senses with a
stronger will to dominate the deaf, blind being grop-
ing its way through a welter of objects, sensations,
/W*4*- YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 13
A /and fragmentary impressions. Before this, through
^ some obtuseness I had failed to "take hold" of
(j the higher consciousness which enlarges life to in-
$wfinity. But those five direct, emphatic words, "I think,
/^therefore I am," waked something in me that has
irtnever slept since.
* Kant and Emerson led me farther on the road to
[j emancipation. I had often before felt bound by
my lack of hearing and sight to such an extent that I
doubted if I could ever have an adequate concep-
tion of what others saw and heard. My crippled
/I Senses and I seemed at times to be one and insepa-
, and I could not see clearly how my ideas or
>Jtestimony of things I touched could be taken
v seriously. I was told that nine tenths of the human
V/being's impressions came to him through his eyes and
^ears, and I wondered if my friends and I would ever
be able to understand each other. However lovingly
lour hearts might meet, there appeared to be an im-
AJpassable gulf between us. The crowded experience of
vour so-different lives obstructed many of the natural
U channels of understanding. I thought I must seem
almost like a ghost to the strong, confident senses that
ruled the world, but when I penetrated into the im-
material realm which is the world of philosophy, I
gained a cheerful, reconciling view of our situa-
tions. I apprehended the truth of what Kant said,
that sensations without concepts are barren, and
I4 MIDSTREAM
concepts without sensations are empty. I put more
thought and feeling into my senses ; I examined as I
had not before my impressions arising from touch
and smell, and was amazed at the ideas with
which they supplied me, and the clues they gave me
to the world of sight and hearing. For example, I
observed the kinds and degrees of fragrance which
gave me pleasure, and that enabled me to imagine
how the seeing eye is charmed by different colours
and their shades. Then I traced the analogies be-
tween the illumination of thought and the light of
day, and perceived more clearly than I ever had the
preciousness of light in the life of the human being.
This way of thinking helped me later when critics
of my writings asked, "But how can she know about
life?" * . . "How can she know what it means
to an adult person to lose his sight, and what kind
of help he especially needs when she has not had his
special experiences?" . , . "What right has she to
write about landscapes she can't see?" and other
questions that showed how little they knew of the
foundations upon which I was building up closer
associations with normal people.
Another shower of thoughts that refreshed my
life-garden fell when I read in Kant that time and
space are not fixed, immutable elements, but change-
able ways of experiencing life* Like most people I
had felt the spell of the senses to such a degree that
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 17
the walls of time and space seemed very solid aaes
inescapable, and that made it harder for me to sit
still and wait when I wanted to be up and getting
somewhere. But when I found that I could over-
leap time and space, crowd years of remembrance
into an hour, or lengthen an hour into eternity, I saw
my true self as a free spirit throwing into the winds
the bonds of body and condition and matter. With
Emerson I read a great poem or listened to a sub-
lime utterance, or held the perfection of a flower in
my hand, and instantly I was over the walls of mortal
life, speeding through the uplands of boundless
beauty. It was in the joy of these new thoughts that
I wrote Optimism and The World I Live In.
For it was Emerson who revealed to me the romance
in Kant's abstract words, and made it easier for me
afterwards to read Swedenborg's discourses on time
and space. I did not then know the importance of
philosophy as a star in lonely hours and dark pas-
sages of my life ; and now it is a delight to recall how
many times it has kept me happy in the face of per-
plexing questions about my little world, and how
often it has made as myown the pleasure of another
la wonders beyond the reach of my two sealed senses!
It was a disappointment to me that I did not have
closer contact with my professors. Most of them
seemed as impersonal as victrolas, I never met Dean
14 MIDSTREAM
C t ?iggs, although I lived next door to him, nor die
*! ever meet Dr. Eliot. He signed my diploma, bu
so far as I know, this was the extent of his interest it
me.
Among the four or five members of the facultj
who took a personal interest in me were Professoj
Bartlett, who taught German, Dr. William Allar
Neilson, who is now President of Smith College
Professor Royce, and Professor Charles T, Cope-
land. My teacher and I saw much of Dr. Neilson
outside the college. He and his sweet sister invited
us to tea sometimes, and their friendliness to us both
was delightful. Dr. Neilson is a charming Scot with
an irrepressible sense of humour and a spirited way
of lecturing on the glories of Elizabethan literature,
He was the only professor who learned the manual
alphabet so that he might talk with me. I have not
seen him as much as I would like in recent years,
but his friendship has continued to this day.
Mr. Copeland was not a professor when I was
at Radcliffe, but he was a great force. His power lay,
I think, in an elusive charm difficult to pot into
words the charm of a unique personality, They told
me his voice was capable of conveying poignant emo-
tion. I could follow it in the ebb and flow of my
teacher's fingers. I never knew any one who could
by a mere word or phrase express so much. His way
of talking was often Carlylesque, and his wit was
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 17
incisive. But even when he read our trivial themes
and unimportant opinions there was a kindly toler-
ance beneath his whimsical mannerisms. He greatly
lightened the dark ways of my understanding of
composition, and his words of praise are among the
most precious encouragements I have ever had in
my work.
Professor Royce was so unfailingly detached that
he seemed more like a statue of Buddha than a
human being, but his serene nature, the kindness of
his greetings, and the nobility of his social ideas,
which he afterwards embodied in his book, The
Philosophy of Loyalty, make me wish I might have
knoWn him better.
I enjoyed the history course under Professor
Archibald Gary Coolidge, but I never talked with
him. He was singularly shy. Once when I wanted
to ask him a question Miss Sullivan stopped him just
as he was leaving his desk. He was so frightened that
she had to repeat the question twice. His answer was
utterly incoherent, and he rushed out of the room
as soon as he had given it. To me he never seemed
a personality. His words came as out of a book read
aloud, but few of my professors were so enlightening.
After my undergraduate days he served on several
missions the American Peace Delegation, the
American Economic Mission, and the American Re-
lief Administration in Russia in 1921, It is no exag-
18 MIDSTREAM
geration to say that he outshone many of his more
talked of compatriots.
The barrier of my physical handicap lay between
me and my classmates. Only one of them learned to
talk with me on her fingers, but they had many
charming ways of showing their friendliness. At
Mrs. Hogan's lunch room, where we ate sandwiches
and chocolate eclairs they gathered around me and
Miss Sullivan spelled their bright chatter into my
hand. The girls made me vice-president of our class.
If my work had not been so strenuous I should prob-
ably not have missed so much of the lighter side of
the college life.
One of my classmates, Bertha Meckstroth, learned
to write braille, and in her free moments copied
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Por-
tuguese for me. This was just before I graduated,
and I never saw or heard from her afterwards. But I
treasure the lovely deed as a precious memento of
my college days.
Another episode I like to recall was a surprise
my class planned for me. One day several girls in-
vited me to go with them to see some jolly friends
in Brookline. That was all they would tell me, and
when we reached our destination, they were very
mysterious, I began to sniff, and in a moment I
realized that instead of a human habitation we were
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 19
entering a kennel, the abode of many Boston terriers.
The dogs gave us a royal welcome, and one ugly
beauty, heir of a noble pedigree, with the title of Sir
Thomas Belvedere, bestowed upon me his special
favour, planting himself resolutely at my feet, pro-
testing with his whole body if I touched any other
dog. The girls asked me if I liked him. I said I
adored him.
"Take him home then," they said. "He is our gift
to you."
Sir Thomas seemed to understand; for he began
spinning round and round me like a top. When he
had quieted down a little I told him I did not care
much for titles. He assured me that he had no ob-
jection to changing his name, and when I told him
that I was going to call him Phiz he rolled over
thrice by way of showing his approval. So we car-
ried him happily back with us to Cambridge.
We were living at that time at 14 Coolidge Avenue,
in part of a house which had once been a fine man-
sion. It was picturesquely situated on a knoll, almost
hidden by great trees, facing Mt Auburn Street,
and so far back that the trolley cars and traffic never
disturbed us. The home of James Russell Lowell was
near by. Dear Bridget kept house for us and was
always there to open the door and bid us welcome,
The land behind was utilized by a florist to raise
several crops of flowers in the season pansies, mar-
20 MIDSTREAM
guerites, geraniums, and carnations. The fragrance
was heavenly, and when Italian women and chil-
dren in bright-coloured dresses and shawls came
to pick the flowers for the market, and waked
us with their laughter and song it was like being in
an Italian village. What an unusual scene it was in
the heart of a busy city women with their arms full
of carnations not mere pictures, but live women
with the fresh colour of country life in their cheeks
and large dark eyes and coils of black hair and
children carrying baskets of bright geraniums and
chattering like birds their happy voices and expres-
sive gestures, and the whiffs of sweetness from the
many flowers I
While we were in Cambridge we made the ac-
quaintance of a number of students and young in-
structors at Harvard. Some of them learned the
manual alphabet, which made real companionship
possible, and we had no end of delightful times to-
gether* Among them was Philip Sidney Smith, who
is now Chief Alaskan Geologist of the National
Geological Survey in Washington* His wife, Lenore,
was one of our most staunch friends, and she helped
me in my studies or went with me to the lectures
when Miss Sullivan was ill or tired* Then there
was John Macy, who afterwards married my teacher,
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 21
and whose name remains forever a part of all that is
most precious in our lives.
What zest we had for life in those days! We
thought nothing of a ten mile tramp over country
roads or a forty mile ride on our tandems. Every-
thing interested us the autumn woods bright with
jewelled leaves and sparkling sunlight, the migrat-
ing birds, the squirrels gathering their winter stores,
the wild apple trees raining their fruit upon our
heads, the Medf ord marshes spangled with sapphire
pools and red cat-tails.
But my memories are not all of summer weather,
with the odours of meadow, field, and orchard float-
ing out to us on balmy breezes. Winter, too, brought
its delights. On clear nights we used to go sleighing
in Shay's express wagon which had been put on run-
ners and filled with sweet-smelling hay, Patrick held
the prancing horses until we climbed in, but no
sooner were we seated than they sprang forward,
and we sped away, to the music of the sleigh bells, to
a universe of snow and stars 1
And the homecoming! How inviting was the cosy
warmth that breathed in our faces as dear Bridget
opened the door for us, her sweet, patient face alight
with welcome! How good the smell of coffee and
muffins! How jolly the confusion of rushing about
and putting the supper on the table, everyone getting
22 MIDSTREAM
in Bridget's way. But she only smiled the more,
happy in our youth. I cannot think of Cambridge
without thinking of Bridget's continual bestowal of
herself in loving service to my teacher and me.
Many times during the long winter evenings we
sat around an open fire with a circle of eager, im-
aginative students, drinking cider, popping corn, and*
joyously tearing to pieces society, philosophies, re-
ligions, and literatures. We stripped everything to
the naked skeleton. Fortunately, the victims of our
superior criticism were unaware of our scorn and
even of -our existence. We did not proclaim our
opinions to the dull world, but enjoyed them the
more keenly within the seclusion of our little circle.
We were passionately independent. All of us were
individualists, yet all of us responded to the altruistic
movements of the time. We believed in the rising
tide of the masses, in peace, and brotherhood, and "a
square deal" for everybody. Each one of us had an
idol around whom our theories revolved like planets
around the sun. These idols had familiar names >
Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Bergson,
Lincoln, Tolstoi, and Max Stirner* We read Shelley,
Whitman, and Swinburne. The more we read and
discussed, the more convinced we were that we be-
longed to that choice coterie who rise in each age,
and manage to attain freedom of thought We felt
that undoubtedly we were a group of modern pio*
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 23
neers who had risen above our materialistic sur-
roundings. Despite a dismal dearth of inspiration,
we succeeded in living a life rich in thought and
spiritual experience. From our lofty, lonely heights
we looked down upon our fellow students with pity
akin to that which the angels feel for mortals. What
*a wealth of wit and wisdom we lavished upon each
other! And the endless discussions that darkened
counsel! For each of us had a panacea to turn this
barren world into a paradise, and each defended his
special kingdom with argument flashed against
argument in true duelling fashion* Nonchalantly we
swept empires into the dust heap, and where they
had flourished we, with astounding ease, established
perfect democracies. In these democracies all the
inhabitants were to display great eagerness to leave
behind commonplace existence. Practical problems
were left to take care of themselves as they are
in most Utopias.
Oh, young days, young days, what are you saying
to me out of the Long Ago? March winds off Fresh
Pond, a hat gone to the fishes! April showers
on the Concord road, two friends under one mackin-
tosh! May days in the Middlesex Fells, following the
delicate scent of the trailing arbutus! A hatless youth
spelling his gay talk into eager hands, unmindful of
wondering sedate folk taking their carriage exer-
cise! It was a joy to feed the squirrels with nuts and
24 MIDSTREAM
sit by the roadside and count the birds. They do not
seem to be so many now, and they do not sing as
merrily as they did when Carl imitated their liquid
notes for me.
But I must move on. I must not appear to my
reader an old woman living over again the events of
her youth.
There was another side to my experience in Rad-
cliffe College which I must present here if I am to
remove some of the errors which have arisen with
regard to my life in Cambridge and the details of my
graduation. It has been said that praises and honours
were showered upon Miss Sullivan and me by all
who saw us grappling with our difficulties. I have
before me a sympathetic article in French, which
contains a description of the ceremony in which I
received the degree of Bachelor of Arts*
Une foule immense emplissait ce jour-la le theatre ou avait lieu
la fete du College. Husieurs autres etudiantes allaient aussi
recevoir des diplomes, mais toutes les attentions, tons les regards,
tons les coeuis etaient fixes sur la gracieuse jeune fille . . * qui se
tenait au premier rang au milieu de ses compagnes. Miss Sullivan,
assise & cote d'elle, partageait naturellement Theure de son
triomphe, corame elle avait partagS les jours et les annSes de son
penible labeur . . * Lorsqu'on appela le nom d'Helen, maitresse
et eleve, ou plutot mere et fille spirituelles, la main dans la main,
montirent ensemble les degres de Testrade, Au milieu de tonnerm
d j appl^udissments freneti'ques qu'elle ne pouvttt entendre, mais
YOUTH, OH, YOUTH 25
dont elle sentait resonner les echos, la jeune fille regut le precieux
diploma portant cette mention speciale "Non seulement a subi
avec succes les examens de tous grades universitaires, mais excelle
en litterature anglaise."*
The words about my teacher are true. The best
part of my success was having her by my side who
had kept me steadfast to my purpose. But the rest of
the account is the stuff that myths are made of. There
were no huge crowds filling the hall that June after-
noon. Only a few friends came especially to see me,
My mother was prevented by illness from being with
me on that occasion, and her disappointment was as
bitter as my own. Dean Briggs delivered the usual
commencement address, but he did not mention Miss
Sullivan. In fact, none of the faculty spoke either to
her or to me. When I received my diploma, I felt no
"thunder of wild applause." It was nothing like the
imposing, brilliant ceremony which has been pictured
in some accounts of my college days. Several of the
students, when they took off their caps and gowns,
*On that day an immense crowd filled the auditorium where the
commencement exercises were held. Other students were to receive
diplomas but all attention, all looks, all hearts were fixed on the lovely
young girl who held first rank among her companions. Miss Sullivan,
seated beside her, naturally shared the hour of her triumph as she had
shared the days and years of her strenuous labour. When the name
of Helen was called, mistress and pupil, or rather spiritual mother and
daughter, hand in hand, mounted the steps. In the midst of thunders of
frantic applause which she could not hear but of which she felt the
echo, the young girl received the precious diploma carrying this special
mention: "Not only has she passed successfully the university examina-
tions, but she excels in English literature/'
a6 MIDSTREAM
expressed indignation, and one sweet girl declared
jthat Miss Sullivan should have received a degree, too.
We had come in to our seats quietly that afternoon,
and we went out as soon as we could, caught a street
car and hastened away to the fragrant peace of the
lovely New England village packed with summer
time, where we were already settling down to live.
That evening I was gliding out on Lake Wollomona-
poag in a canoe with some friends, forgetting my
weariness and the strange ways of the world in
dreams of beauty, the odours which the breezes
carried to me from unseen flowers, and starlit silence,
and little green hills sloping down to the water. May
it ever be thus, may I always return after the clamour
and agitation of eventful days to the great kindliness
of earth and sky and restful twilight!
Chapter III
MY FIRST YEAJIS IN WRENTHAM
THE French article from which I have quoted says
that I was given a home in Wrentham by the public,
who wished to honour me as the ancients did when
they bestowed upon a victorious general an estate
where he could live and enjoy his laurels :
Boston, la ville la plus intellectuelle 1'Athenes des Etats
Unis, a, aii lendemain de ses examens offert cette maison en
hommage a la jeune fille qui a remporte une victoire sans pareille
de 1'esprit sur la matiere, de Fame immortelle sur les sens.*
Others who have tried to describe the house with-
out knowing it have added an extensive park and a
wonderful garden. No such pomp and circumstance
marked my triumphal entrance into the village of
Wrentham. Miss Sullivan and I had already bought
a small, old farmhouse, long and narrow, decidedly
Puritanical in appearance, with a neglected field of
seven acres. Miss Sullivan converted a dairy room
*Boston, the most intellectual city, the Athens of the United States,
had on the day after the examinations offered this house in homage to
the young girl who had won a victory without parallel of the spirit over
matter, the immortal soul over the sense*
a8 MIDSTREAM
and two pantries into a study for me. The French
article describes it as follows :
Helen Keller passe la plupart de ses journees dans son elegant
cabine de travail, orne de bronzes et d'objets d'art offerts pars ses
adorateurs, et dont les murs disparaissent du haut en bas sous des
centaines et des centaines de gros volumes au pages blanches
couvertes de points en relief ses chers livres en Braille.*
As a matter of fact, the study was very simple.
The only "works of art" were a plaster Venus di Milo
which my foster-father, Mr. John Hitz, had given me>
a bas-relief medallion of Homer, a gift from Dr.
Jastrow of the University of Wisconsin, and some
curios sent to me by friends from foreign countries.
Only one wall "disappeared" behind large volumes of
braille, and that did not mean hundreds of books. In
most cases there were three, four, or five big volumes
to a book. They were few enough in comparison with
what I wanted, but to any one as hungry for ideas as
I was any bit of honest thinking was a treasure trove.
The chief attractions of the study were sunshine, the
big eastern window full of plants I tended, and a
glass door through which I could step out into a
cluster of pines and sit alone with my thoughts and
my dreams.
*Helen Keller passes the greater part of her days in her elegant
workroom ornamented with bronzes and objtts d'art presented by her
admirers, with walls which from top to bottom disappear behind hun-
dreds and hundreds of huge volumes with white pages covered with
points in relief her dear books in braille*
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 29
Miss Sullivan had a balcony built for me which
opened out of my bedroom so that I could walk
whenever I wanted to. The evergreens came so close
to the railing I could lean over and feel their rustling
music. It was on this balcony that I once "heard" the
love song of a whippoorwill. I had been walking up
and down for an hour or more, pausing every now
and then to breathe the scented air of May. At the
south end I could reach out and touch a wisteria
vine which clung to the rail with long, tenacious
fingers. At the opposite end I faced the garden and
the apple trees, which were in full bloom, and oh,
so heavenly sweet! I was standing under the wisteria
vine with my thoughts far away when suddenly the
rail began to vibrate unfamiliarly under my hands.
The pulsations were rhythmical, and repeated over
and over, exactly as I have felt a note repeated when
I have placed my fingers on a singer's throat All at
once they ceased, and I felt the wisteria blossom
ticking against my cheek like the pendulum of a
fairy clock. I guessed that a breeze or a bird was
rocking the vine. Then the rail began vibrating again.
A queer beat came always before the rhythmical
beats, like nothing I had ever felt before. I did not
dare move or call, but Miss Sullivan had heard the
sound and put out her hand through the window and
touched me very quietly. I knew I must not speak.
She spelled, "That's a whippoorwill. He is stand-
3 o MIDSTREAM
ing on the corner post so close to you I believe you
could touch him; but you must not he would fly
away and never come back."
Now that I knew he was saying "Whip-poor-will!
Whip-poor-will" over and over I could follow the
intonations exactly. The singing seemed joyous to
my touch, and I could feel the notes grow louder and
louder, faster and faster.
Miss Sullivan touched me again and spelled, "His
lady-love is answering him from the apple trees.
Apparently, she has been there all the time, hiding.
Now they are singing a duet."
When the rail stopped vibrating she spelled, "They
are both in the apple tree now singing under billows
of pink and white blossoms-"
We paid for this house in Wrentham and the
alterations by selling some shares of sugar stock
which Mr, J. P. Spaulding of Boston had given us
about ten years before. I feel moved to say something
here about one who took the most generous interest
in us both at a time when we needed a strong friend.
I was nine years old, I think, when Elsie Leslie
Lyde, the beautiful child actress who played "Little
Lord Fauntleroy," introduced us to Mr. Spaulding*
He was so tender and understanding, he won me at
once, and from that day he was eager to do anything
for our comfort or pleasure. He liked to come to the
Perkins Institution when we stayed there, and join
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 31
in our midday meal. He always brought a big box
of roses, or fruits or candies. He took us for long
drives, and Elsie accompanied us when she was not
appearing at the theatre. She was a lovely, vivacious
child, and Mr. Spaulding beamed with delight to
see "his two darlings together." I was just learning
to speak, and it distressed him very much because
he could not understand what I said. I practised
saying "Elsie Leslie Lyde" one day, and kept on
until I cried; but I wanted Mr. Spaulding to hear
me say it intelligibly, and I shall never forget his
joy when I succeeded. Whenever I failed to articu-
late well, or there was too much noise for him to hear
me, he would hug me and say, "If I can't understand
you, I can always love you," and I know he did with
a deep affection. Indeed, he was beloved by many
people in every walk of life. Elsie called him "King
John," and he was a king in spirit, royal and noble
of heart.
Mr, Spaulding assisted my teacher and me finan-
cially for a number of years. He told us many times
that he would provide for our future. But he died
without making any provision for us in his will, and
his heirs refused to continue the help he had given
us. Indeed, one of his nephews said that we had taken
advantage of his uncle when he was not in a condition
to know his own mind I
I see I have again wandered far afield; but I
32 MIDSTREAM
could hot pass over in silence a rare and beautiful
generosity which imposed no obligations upon us,
nor asked anything in return, except the satisfaction
of having us happy.
Somehow Mr. Spaulding seemed very near indeed
when we threw open the doors and windows of our
home the first home of our own to the June sun-
shine and started our new life full of bright hopes
for the future.
On May 2, 1905, the year after my graduation, my
teacher married John Macy. She had devoted the
best years of her womanhood to me, and I had often
longed to see her blessed with a good man's love; I
felt the tenderest joy in their union. Dr. Edward
Everett Hale, one of our oldest and closest friends,
performed the ceremony in the sunny, flower-filled
sitting room of our white farmhouse, and I stood
beside my teacher. Lenore spelled the ceremony
into my hand. My mother and a few close friends
were present. Then Mr. and Mrs. Macy left for
their wedding trip to New Orleans, and I went south
with my mother for a visit A few days later we were
delightfully surprised to see Mr. and Mrs. Macy
walking into the house! My cup ran over! It seemed
like a dream, having them with me, revelling in the
beauty of early summer in the Southland. The air
was laden with the odour of magnolias, and they
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 33
kept saying how heavenly the song of the mocking
birds was they called it their wedding music. When
we were all back in Wrentham, I heard that several
people thought I was jealous and unhappy, and one
letter of condolence was actually inflicted upon me !
I wish I could engrave upon these pages the pic-
ture in my fingers that I cherish of those two friends
my teacher with her queenly mind and heart,
strong and true, going direct to the core of the subject
under discussion, her delight in beauty, her enthu-
siasm for large service and heroic qualities; her
husband with his brotherly tenderness, his fine sensi-
bilities, his keen sense of humour, and his curious
combination of judicial severity and smiling toler-
ance. Since I was out of active life, they both strove
to keep my narrow round pleasant and interesting.
Both had a magical way of breaking up the monotony
for me with bright comments and rapid, frequent
reports of what I could not see or hear. And such a
difference as there was in the way each talked! My
teacher's comments on scenes and news and people
were like nuggets of gold, lavishly spilled into my
hands, while her husband put his words together
carefully, almost as if he were writing a novel. He
often said he wanted to write a novel, and certainly
there was material for one in his brilliant conversa-
tion. His hands were seldom still, and even when he
was not spelling to me I could tell by his gestures
34 MIDSTREAM
whether he was arguing or joking or simply carry-
ing on an ordinary conversation.
I cannot enumerate the helpful kindnesses with
which he smoothed my rugged paths of endeavour.
Once, when my typewriter was out of order, and I
was tired with the manual labour of copying, he sat
up all night, and typed forty pages of my manuscript,
so that they might reach the press in time.
Next to my teacher, he was the friend who dis-
covered most ways to give me pleasure and gratify
my intellectual curiosity* He kept me faithfully in
touch with the chief happenings of the day, the dis-
coveries of science, and the new trends in literature.
If he was particularly pleased with a book, he would
have Mr. John Hitz put it into braille for me, or
he would read it to me himself when he had time.
Not long after we moved to Wrentham Mr. Gilder
asked me to write a series of essays for the Century
about my ideas of the world around me. The essays
appeared in the magazine under the title, "Sense and
Sensibility," but as Jane Austen had used that tide
for one of her books, I called them the The JForld I
Live In when they came out in book form. I do not
remember writing anything in such a happy mood
as The World I Live In. I poured into it everything
that interested me at one of the happiest periods of
my life my newly discovered wealth of philosophy
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 35
and the feeling of the New England beauty which
surrounded me. I had always revelled in the won-
ders of nature; but I had not dreamed what abun-
dance of physical enjoyment I possessed until I sat
down and tried to express in words the lacy shadows
of little leaves, the filmy wings of insects, the murmur
of breezes, the tremulous flutter of flowers, the soft-
breathing breast of a dove, filaments of sound in the
waving grass, and gossamer threads intertwining and
unreeling themselves endlessly.
The next book I wrote was The Song of the Stone
WalL The idea of writing it came to me with the joy
of spring while we were building up the old walls in
our green field. In it I tried to image the men who
had built the walls long ago. I dedicated the book to
Dr. Edward Everett Hale because he, too, loved the
old walls and the traditions that cling about them.
Moreover, the zeal of the men who built them was
upon his lips and their courage in his heart.
While I was writing these books Mr. Macy was
always near by to help me. He criticized me severely
when my work did not please him, and his praise
was sweet when I wrote something he liked. We read
the pages over and over, weeding out the chaff, until
he thought I had done my best "When one's best
is not satisfactory," he would say, "there is nothing
to do about it"
He had the art of pulling me out of a solemn or
36 MIDSTREAM
discouraged mood with laughter that leaves the
heart light and soothes the ruffled mind, I used to
love to ramble or drive with him along the winding
roads of Wrentham. With a gesture of delight he
would point out a pond smiling like a babe on earth's
breast, or a gorgeous bird on the wing, or a field full
of sunshine and ripening corn, or we would sit to-
gether under the Great Oak on the edge of Lake
Wollomonapoag while he read to me from one of
Thoreau's books. There are no words to tell how
dear he was to me or how much I loved him. Little
incidents hardly noticed at the time but poignantly
remembered afterwards crowd upon me as I write.
On a still summer evening or by a winter fire, my
thoughts still wander back to those days and dwell
with sweet longing on the affection of those two
friends sitting beside me in the library, their hands in
mine, dreaming of a bright future of mutual helpful-
ness. I can never quite accustom myself to the be-
wildering vicissitudes of life, but, despite the shadows
upon it, both my teacher and I feel that all that was
loveliest in the Wrentham days is ours forever.
When we went to Wrentham to live I had in my
mind a vision of a real farm, like my father's in
Tuscumbia, Alabama, where I could live m the
midst of the strong, abiding simplicity of homely
things among trees and crops and animals.
Keller's home at Wrentham. Above, the entrance^
showing the stone wall which Miss Keller helped build.
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 37
The only animal we owned was Phiz, whom we
carried with us from Cambridge. He died a year
after we moved to Wrentham. We buried him at
the end of the field under a beautiful white pine
tree. I grieved for him a long time, and resolved
never to have another dog. But everybody knows
how, in the course of time, the proverbial other
dog arrives. Kaiser was his name. He was a sturdy
French bull terrier. A friend of Mr. Macy's
presented him to the family. Having lived all
the days of his three years with a man, Kaiser was at
first inclined to assume a supercilious attitude to-
wards women folk. He pondered over what we said
to him, and usually decided that it might be ignored.
We undertook to teach him he must obey in order
to eat. But he found out quickly that apples could
be used as a substitute for meat and bread. He learned
to hold an apple between his paws and eat it with a
good deal of gusto. But when he fully made up his
mind that he could not maintain the fallacy of mascu-
line superiority in an establishment where the femi-
nine forces outnumbered the males three to one, he
surrendered all the major points, also his pretence
that he had a special fondness for apples, though to
the end he retained a certain masculine swagger
which was not unbecoming.
There is not much to tell about Kaiser. His
fate confirms the story of modern civilization. He
38 MIDSTREAM
found food abundant and obtainable without
exertion; therefore he took advantage of every op-
portunity to gourmandize. Both dogs and human
beings find this a pleasant pastime, but they must
make up their minds that sooner or later they will
die of it.
A similar fate overtook some Rhode Island Reds,
which we bought from Mr. Dilley, our next door
neighbour, who was a bird fancier. I fed them my-
self, and they soon became very tame. It was fun to
watch them, but after a while I noticed that they sat
down to their meals, and it was very hard to get
them to move about. Our neighbour was called to
give advice. He declared that I had overfed them to
such an extent that he doubted if Mr. Pierce, our
niarketman, would take them. I was so disappointed
with the little gourmands I gave up the idea of ever
trying to raise chickens again.
But it seemed a shame to waste the enclosure we
had put up with so much trouble and expense. So
we bought Thora, a beautiful brindle Dane, I knew
it would be easier to raise puppies; and anyway I
loved dogs better than chickens. In due time Thora's
eleven puppies arrived. Of course I had not dreamed
that there would be so many, or that they would be
so mischievous.
I have not space to give a detailed account of the
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 39
upbringing of that family of Dane puppies. They
were as temperamental as poets and musicians are
supposed to be. There was one everybody singled out
as the gem of the clan. We called her Sieglinde and
lavished special care and affection upon her. Her
colour was red gold, and her head was moulded on
noble lines. Of all the dogs we have ever owned she
was the most beautiful and intelligent, and I am not
belittling my splendid Danish baron, Hans, nor my
fascinating, perverse Scotch lassie, Darky, who are
clamouring at the door of my study as I write.
In the meantime there was the barn a fine, large
barn with no living creature in it. It did not seem
right that there should be no livestock to enjoy it
We began to read the advertisements in the Boston
Transcript. We were surprised to find how many
fine animals were without a comfortable home. The
tears actually came to my eyes when I heard of a
lady who was going abroad, and must leave her noble
Great Dane to the mercy of strangers. She said that
if some one who loved animals would only give
Nimrod a home, she would part with him for seventy-
five dollars, which was like giving him away. We
wrote the lady that we should be glad to take Nim-
rod. It was arranged that Mr, Macy should meet her
and Nimrod at the North Station in Boston. Mrs,
Macy and I waited at home.
4 o MIDSTREAM
I have never seen such a huge dog. He was more
like a young elephant than a dog. Mr. Macy insisted
that he should be left out on the porch until we found
out what his upbringing had been, but we could not
think of such inhospitality to a stranger within our
gates. The door was flung open, and Nimrod was
invited to enter. There was a small table with a lamp
on it near the door. In passing it, he knocked it over.
Fortunately the lamp was not lighted in those days
we used kerosene or I suppose the house would
have been burned. As it was, the crash frightened the
poor dog, so that he charged into the dining room,
knocking Mr. Macy's supper off and the dishes all
over the room. With great difficulty Mr. Macy suc-
ceeded in getting the terrified creature out to the barn.
Family relations were somewhat strained that eve-
ning, and I did not learn much of what happened,
except that the conductor on two trains had refused
to let Nimrod on, and that he had caused a stam-
pede in the waiting room of the station.
Thora would have nothing to do with him. She
even growled at him when he tried to make friends
with the puppies. Out in the field Nimrod seemed
contented to be by himself; but somebody noticed
that he was eating stones. There were too many
stones in the field. Our distress was not caused by
any regret over their disappearance, but we were
concerned about Nimrod's digestion. We sent for
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 41
our neighbour, Dr. Brastow, the state veterinarian.
He controlled his feelings wonderfully when he gave
us the report of his diagnosis.
"The dog," he said, "is about fourteen years old.
He has no teeth, and very little sight Probably he
thinks the stones are bones. His former owner was,
no doubt, too tender-hearted to have him put to
sleep." However, we thought our friend rather heart-
less when he proposed to do forthwith that which
had been left undone. Still it seemed best.
It was some time before we began to read the ad-
vertisements in the Transcript again. But inevitably
history repeats itself. We had a marvellous, versatile
gift of forgetting previous unfortunate ventures and
joyously entering upon new ones. There is nothing
to be said in favour of this gift, except that it lends
spice to life. The day came when we felt that we
must have a horse, and that very day we read a
column of advertisements of wonderful horses which
could be purchased for half or a third of what they
would naturally sell for; but their owners were in
various difficulties, and wanted to part with them for
stated amounts. The horse we decided to buy was
described as a spirited dark bay; weight, 1150
pounds; age, six years; gentle, fearless, broken to
saddle, suitable for a lady to drive or ride.
We three innocents went to Bo3ton to see the
horse. The stable man said the owner wa$ out of
42 MIDSTREAM
town, but he showed us the horse, and certainly the
animal was a beauty. His coat was as smooth as satin
and he held his head so high I could scarcely reach
his ears. One of his feet was white, and there and
then, with several endearing pats and caresses, I
christened him Whitefoot We paid for him on the
spot, and it was arranged that a boy should ride him
out to Wrentham. We learned afterwards that
Whitefoot had thrown the boy three times on the
way; but he never said a word to us. The next morn-
ing Mr. Macy hitched the horse to a light Democrat
wagon we had, and started for the village. He had
not got out of the driveway when Whitefoot began
to give trouble. Mr. Macy jumped out to see if
there was anything wrong with the harness. At that
moment the Foxboro car passed the gate. The
horse reared, and dashed across the lawn and out
through the neighbour's gate. The wagon caught on
a stone post and was smashed to kindling. Two days
later a country man brought the horse home. He had
found him in a wood road with scraps of harness
still hanging to him.
We finally sold Whitefoot to a man in Attleboro
who claimed to be a horse tamer. We learned a year
or so later that Whitefoot had been the cause of the
death of a cabman, and was pronounced crazy by the
state veterinarian and shot
It was a long time before we summoned up coxir*
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 43
age to try our luck with horses again. But we finally
succeeded in getting what we wanted. King was an
English-bred cob, a rich bay in colour. We used
to say that he stepped as Queen Elizabeth danced,
"high and disposedly." He was a horse tempered
like finest steel strong, patient, good-natured with
common sense the kind of horse erratic drivers
should prize above pearls and rubies.
Our various enterprises with livestock having not
only failed, but plunged us into deeper financial
tribulations, we were advised to plant an apple
orchard. This seemed just the thing. We bought a
hundred choice three year nurslings and planted
them according to the rules sent out by the United
States Department of Agriculture. They prospered.
The fifth year we were delighted to find a few apples
on them. I knew how many apples each tree had,
and almost daily I made a note of their size. The
apple orchard was such a comfort to us that we
were annoyed with ourselves for not having thought
of it in the beginning.
All went well until one fateful summer afternoon
when Ian Bittman, our Russian man of all work,
came rushing up to my study where Mrs. Macy and
I were reading. "Look! look! look, Madam 1 See, the
wild cow have come," he cried.
We ran to the window, and in great excitement
Ian pointed out five wonderful creatures disporting
44 MIDSTREAM
themselves through the orchard. Mrs. Macy could
scarcely believe her eyes they were wild deer a
great antlered buck, a doe, and three half-grown
fawns ! They were beautiful in the afternoon sunlight,
skipping from tree to tree and stripping the bark with
their teeth. Indeed, they were so graceful and lovely,
it did not occur to one of us to chase them out of
the orchard. We stood there fascinated until they
had destroyed nearly every tree before we realized
what had happened. That year Massachusetts paid
thousands of dollars to farmers for the losses they
had sustained from marauding deer. It never oc-
curred to us to send the state a bill for our apple trees*
The last time I visited the old place, I saw perhaps
half a dozen of the trees we had planted, and which
had escaped the sharp teeth of the invaders, grown
to a goodly size, and bearing fruit each year.
I used to stay out of doors as much as possible and
watch that most delightful form of progress the
preparation of the old garden for young plants, and
the new vegetation which spread over it more and
more. I found paths I could follow in my daily walk
through the field, and explored the wood at the end
of it which was to be the retreat of my happiest hours.
All this was most pleasant to live through, but not
much to write about However, it indicates the sort of
material I have for an autobiography* I have no
great adventures to record, no thrilling romances, no
MY FIRST YEARS IN WRENTHAM 45
extraordinary successes. This book contains simply
the impressions and feelings which have passed
through my mind. But perhaps, after all, our emo-
tions and sensations are what are most worth relating,
since they are our real selves.
As the seasons came round, I would run out to
gather armfuls of flowers, or watch trees being
pruned, or help bring in wood. There were some
big elms and apple trees which Mr, Macy used to
look after with pride, and they responded beauti-
fully to his care. Every autumn I would put up a
ladder against one of the ancient apple trees, climb
as high as I could, hold to a branch, and shake down
the rosy, fragrant fruit. Then I would descend, pick
up the apples, and fill barrels with them for the
winter. Those were delicious hours when my soul
seemed to cast aside its earthly vesture, glide into the
boughs and sing like the birds about me. I also
walked a great deal. By following the wire which
Mr, Macy had stretched along the field, I easily
found my way to a pine wood, where I could sit and
dream, or wander from tree to tree. In summer there
were tall, bright grasses, timothy, and wonderful
goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, Altogether, it was
the longest and most free walk about a quarter of
a mile that I ever had by myself. These details may
seem trivial, but without this bit of freedom and
sunny solitude I could not have endured the exact-
46 MIDSTREAM
ing nature of my daily work. Occasionally some one
took me for a "spin" on my tandem bicycle. There
were long, delightful rides on the trolley cars
through the New England woods. I remember with
pleasure that no odour of gasoline marred the purity
of the air,
As I look back, everything seems to have moved
with the slowness of a woodland stream no auto-
mobiles or aeroplanes or radios, no revolutions, no
world wars. Such was our life in Wrentham, or
something like it, between 1905 and 1911. For it
seems so far away, I sometimes feel as if it were a
sort of preexistence a dream of days when I wore
another body and had a different consciousness. Yet
I see it clear enough, all the more vivid because it
was free from the external distractions which keep
one's thoughts occupied with trivial things and leave
no leisure for the soul to develop. Where gayety was
infrequent, the simplest amusements had the perfume
of heavenly joy. Where the surroundings were rural,
and life monotonous, any beam that shone upon them
was precious. Any flower discovered among the rocks
and crannies or beside the brook had the rareness of
a star. Small events were full of poetry, and the glory
of the spirit lay over all.
Chapter IV
OUR MARK TWAIN
ONE of the most memorable events of our Wrent-
ham years was our visit to Mark Twain.
My memory of Mr. Clemens runs back to 1894,
when he was vigorous, before the shadows began to
gather- Such was the affection he inspired in my
young heart that my love for him has deepened with
the years. More than anyone else I have ever known
except Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and my teacher,
he aroused in me the feeling of mingled tenderness
and awe. I saw him many times at my friend Mr.
Lawrence Hutton's in New York, and later in
Princeton, also at Mr. H. H. Rogers's and at his own
home at 21 Fifth Avenue, and last of all at Storm-
field, Connecticut, Now and then I received letters
from him. We were both too busy to write often, but
whenever events of importance in our lives occurred
we wrote to each other about them.
I was fourteen years old when I first met Mr.
Clemens one Sunday afternoon when Miss Sullivan
and I were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence
Hutton in New York, During the afternoon several
celebrities dropped in, and among them Mr.
47
4 8 MIDSTREAM
Clemens. The instant I clasped his hand in mine, I
knew that he was my friend. He made me laugh and
feel thoroughly happy by telling some good stories,
which I read from his lips. I have forgotten a great
deal more than I remember, but I shall never for-
get how tender he was.
He knew with keen and sure intuition many things
about me and how it felt to be blind and not to keep
up with the swift ones things that others learned
slowly or not at all. He never embarrassed me by
saying how terrible it is not to see, or how dull life
must be, lived always in the dark. He wove about
my dark walls romance and adventure, which made
me feel happy and important Once when Peter
Dunne, the irrepressible Mr. Dooley, exclaimed:
"God, how dull it must be for her, every day the
same and every night the same as the day," he said,
"You're damned wrong there; blindness is an ex-
citing business, I tell you ; if you don't believe it, get
up some dark night on the wrong side of your bed
when the house is on fire and try to find the door,"
The next time I saw Mr. Clemens was in Prince-
ton during a spring vacation when we were visiting
the Huttons in their new home. We had many happy
hours together at that time.
One evening in the library he lectured to a dis-
tinguished company Woodrow Wilson was pres-
OUR MARK TWAIN 49
ent on the situation in the Philippines. We lis-
tened breathlessly. He described how six hundred
Moros men, women, and children had taken
refuge in an extinct crater bowl near Jolo, where
they were caught in a trap and murdered, by order
of General Leonard Wood. A few days afterwards,
CoL Funston captured the patriot Aguinaldo by dis-
guising his military marauders in the uniform of the
enemy and pretending to be friends of Aguinaldo's
officers. Upon these military exploits, Mr. Clemens
poured out a volcano of invective and ridicule* Only
those who heard him can know his deep fervour and
the potency of his flaming words. All his life he
fought injustice wherever he saw it in the relations
between man and man in politics, in wars, in out-
rages against the natives of the Philippines, the
Congo, and Panama. I loved his views on public
affairs, they were so often the same as my own.
He thought he was a cynic, but his cynicism did
not make him indifferent to the sight of cruelty, un-
kindness, meanness, or pretentiousness, He would
often say, "Helen, the world is full of unseeing eyes>
vacant, staring, soulless eyes." He would work him-
self into a frenzy over dull acquiescence in any evil
that could be remedied. True, sometimes it seemed
as if he let loose all the artillery of Heaven against
an intruding mouse but even then his "resplendent
50 MIDSTREAM
vocabulary" was a delight. Even when his ideas were
quite wrong, they were expressed with such lucidity,
conviction, and aggressiveness that one felt impelled
to accept them for the moment at least.f One is al-
most persuaded to accept any idea which is well ex-
pressed.
He was interested in everything about me my
friends and little adventures and what I was writing.
I loved him for his beautiful appreciation of my
teacher's work. Of all the people who have written
about me he is almost the only one who has realized
the importance of Miss Sullivan in my life, who has
appreciated her "brilliancy, penetration, wisdom,
character, and the fine literary competences of her
pen."
He often spoke tenderly of Mrs. Clemens and
regretted that I had not known her.
"I am very lonely, sometimes, when I sit by the
fire after my guests have departed," he used to say.
"My thoughts trail away into the past. I think of
Livy and Susie and I seem to be fumbling in the
dark folds of confused dreams. I come upon memo-
ries of little intimate happenings of long ago that
drop like stars into the silence. One day every-
thing breaks and crumbles. It did the day Livy
died." Mr. Clemens repeated with emotion and in-
expressible tenderness the lines which he had carved
on her tombstone :
OUR MARK TWAIN 51
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here;
Warm Southern wind,
Blow softly here ;
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light;
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.
The year after her death he said to me, "This has
been the saddest year I have ever known. If it were
not that work brings f orgetfulness, life would be in-
tolerable." He expressed regret that he had not ac-
complished more. I exclaimed, "Why, Mr. Clemens,
the whole world has crowned you. Already your
name is linked with the greatest names in our his-
tory. Bernard Shaw compares your work with that
of Voltaire, and Kipling has called you the Ameri-
can Cervantes."
"Ah, Helen, you have a honeyed tongue; but you
don't understand. I have only amused people. Their
laughter has submerged me."
There are writers who belong to the history of
their nation's literature. Mark Twain is one of them.
When we think of great Americans we think of him.
He incorporated the age he lived in. To me he sym-
bolizes the pioneer qualities the large, free, un-
conventional, humorous point of view of men who
sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wil*
52 MIDSTREAM
derness. Mark Twain and the Mississippi River
are inseparable in my mind. When I told him that
Life on the Mississippi was my favourite story of ad-
venture, he said, "That amazes me. It wouldn't have
occurred to me that a woman would find such rough
reading interesting. But I don't know much about
women. It would be impossible for a person to know
less about women than I do."
After some badinage back and forth about women,
Mr. Clemens's manner changed. A sadness came
into his voice. "Those were glorious days, the days
on the Mississippi. They will come back no more,
life has swallowed them up, and youth will come no
more. They were days when the tide of life was high,
when the heart was full of the sparkling wine of
romance. There have been no other days like them."
It was just after he had read my book The World
I Live In> that he sent a note to Wrentham saying, "I
command you all three to come and spend a few
days with me in StormfiekL"
It was indeed the summons of a beloved king. His
carriage met us at Redding station. If my memory
serves me, it was in February; there was a light snow
upon the Connecticut hills. It was a glorious five
mile drive to Stormfield ; little icicles hung from the
edges of the leaves and there was a tang in the air
of cedar and pine. We drove rapidly along the wind-
ing country roads, the horses were in high spirits.
OUR MARK TWAIN 53
Mr. Macy kept reading signboards bearing the in-
itials "M. T." As we approached the Italian villa
on the very top of the hill, they told me he was stand-
ing on the verandah waiting. As the carriage rolled
between the huge granite pillars, he waved his hand ;
they told me he was all in white and that his beauti-
ful white hair glistened in the afternoon sunshine
like the snow spray on the gray stones.
There was a bright fire on the hearth, and we
breathed in the fragrance of pine and the orange
pekoe tea. I scolded Mr. Clemens a little for coming
out on the verandah without his hat; there was still
a winter chill in the air. He seemed pleased that I
thought about him in that way, and said rather wist-
fully, "It is not often these days that anyone notices
when I am imprudent."
We were in the land of enchantment. We sat by
the fire and had our tea and buttered toast and he
insisted that I must have strawberry jam on my toast
We were the only guests. Miss Lyon, Mr. Clemens's
secretary, presided over the tea table.
Mr* Clemens asked me if I would like to see the
house, remarking that people found it more inter-
esting than himself.
Out of the living room there was a large sunny,
beautiful loggia, full of living plants and great jar-
dinieres filled with wild grasses, cat-tails, goldenrod,
and thistles which had been gathered on the hills in
54 MIDSTREAM
the late fall. We returned through the living room
to the dining room and out on to the pergola and
back again to the house and into the billiard room,
where Mr. Clemens said he spent his happiest hours.
Jle was passionately fond of billiards, and very proud
of the billiard table with which Mrs. H. H. Rogers
had presented him. He said he would teach me to
play.
I answered, "Oh, Mr. Clemens, it takes sight to
play billiards."
"Yes," he teased, "but not the variety of billiards
that Paine and Dunne and Rogers play. The blind
couldn't play worse." Then upstairs to see Mr.
Clemens's bedroom and examine the carved bed-
posts and catch a glimpse of the view out of the
great windows before darkness closed in upon us.
"Try to picture, Helen, what we are seeing out of
these windows. We are high up on a snow-covered
hilL Beyond, are dense spruce and firwoods, other
snow-clad hills and stone walls intersecting the land-
scape everywhere, and over all, the white wizardry
of winter. It is a delight, this wild, free, fir-scented
place."
Our suite of rooms was next to his. On the mantel-
piece, suspended from a candlestick, was a card ex-
plaining to burglars where articles of value were in
the room. There had recently been a burglary in the
OUR MARK TWAIN 55
house, and Mr. Clemens explained that this was a
precaution against being disturbed by intruders.
"Before I leave you," he said, "I want to show you
Clara's room; it is the most beautiful apartment in
the house."
He was not content until he had shown us the
servants' quarters, and he would have taken us to
the attic if Miss Lyon had not suggested that we leave
it for another day. It was obvious that Mr. Clemens
took great satisfaction in his unusual house. He told
us that it had been designed by the son of my life-
long friend, William Dean Howells. Delightfully he
pointed out that the architecture was exactly suited
to the natural surroundings, that the dark cedars and
pines, which were always green, made a singularly
beautiful setting for the white villa. Mr. Clemens
particularly enjoyed the sunlight that came through
the great windows and the glimpse of field and sky
that could be seen through them.
"You observe," he said to us, "there are no pic-
tures on the walls. Pictures in this house would be
an impertinence. No artist, going to this window and
looking out, has ever equalled that landscape."
We stayed in our room till dinner was announced.
Dinner in Mr. Clemens's house was always a func-
tion where conversation was important; yes, more im-
portant than the food. It was a rule in that house
that guests were relieved of the responsibility of con-
5 6 MIDSTREAM
versation. Mr. Clemens said that his personal experi-
ence had taught him that you could not enjoy your
dinner if the burden of finding something to say was
weighing heavily upon you. He made it a rule, he
said, to do all the talking in his own house, and ex-
pected when he was invited out that his hosts would
do the same. He talked delightfully, audaciously,
brilliantly. His talk was fragrant with tobacco and
flamboyant with profanity. I adored him because he
did not temper his conversation to any femininity.
He was a playboy sometimes and on occasions liked to
show off. He had a natural sense of the dramatic, and
enjoyed posing as he talked. But in the core of him
there was no make-believe. He never attempted to
hide his light under a busheL I think it was Goethe
who said, "Only clods are modest" If that is true,
then in the world there was not less of a clod than
Mr. Clemens.
He ate very little himself, and invariably grew
restless before the dinner was finished. He would get
up in the midst of a sentence, walk round the table
or up and down the long dining room, talking all
the while. He would stop behind my chair, and ask
me if there was anything I wanted ; he would some-
times take a flower from a vase and if I happened to
be able to identify it he showed his pleasure by
describing in an exaggerated manner the powers that
lie latent in our faculties, declaring that the ordinary
OUR MARK TWAIN 57
human being had not scratched the surface of his
brain. This line of observation usually led to a tirade
upon the appalling stupidity of all normal human
beings. Watching my teacher spelling to me, he
drawled, "Can you spell into Helen's left hand and
tell her the truth?" Sometimes the butler called his
attention to a tempting dish, and he would sit down
and eat.
To test my powers of observation, he would leave
the room quietly and start the self-playing organ in
the living room. My teacher told me how amusing
it was to see him steal back to the dining room and
watch stealthily for any manifestations on my part
that the vibrations had reached my feet. I did not
often feel the musical vibrations, as I believe the
floor was tiled, which prevented the sound waves
from reaching me, but I did sometimes feel the chord
vibrations through the table. I was always glad when
I did, because it made Mr. Clemens so happy.
We gathered about the warm hearth after dinner,
and Mr. Clemens stood with his back to the fire
talking to us. There he stood our Mark Twain, our
American, our humorist, the embodiment of our
country. He seemed to have absorbed all America
into himself. The great Mississippi River seemed
forever flowing, flowing through his speech, through
the shadowless white sands of thought. His voice
seemed to say like the river, "Why hurry? Eternity
58 MIDSTREAM
is long; the ocean can wait." In reply to some ex-
pression of our admiration for the spaciousness and
the beauty of the room, which was a combination of
living room and library, he said with more enthu-
siasm than was his wont, "It suits me perfectly, I
shall never live anywhere else in this world."
He was greatly interested when we told him that
a friend of ours, Mr. W. S. Booth, had discovered
an acrostic in the plays, sonnets, and poems usually
attributed to Shakespeare, which revealed the author
to be Francis Bacon. He was at first sceptical and in-
clined to be facetious at our expense. He attacked
the subject vigorously, yet less than a month elapsed
before he brought out a new book, Is Shakespeare
Dead? in which he set out, with all his fire, to de-
stroy the Shakespeare legend, but not, he said in a
letter to me, with any hope of actually doing it.
"I wrote the booklet for pleasure not in the ex-
pectation of convincing anybody that Shakespeare
did not write Shakespeare. And don't you," he
warned me, "write in any such expectation. Shake-
speare, the Stratford tradesman, will still be the
divine Shakespeare to our posterity a thousand years
hence."
When the time came to say good night, Mr.
Clemens led me to my room himself and told me
that I would find cigars and a thermos bottle with
Scotch whiskey, or Bourbon if I preferred it, in the
OUR MARK TWAIN 59
bathroom. He told me that he spent the morning in
bed writing, that his guests seldom saw him before
lunch time, but if I felt like coming in to see him
about ten-thirty, he would be delighted, for there
were some things he would like to say to me when
my Guardian Angel was not present
About ten o'clock the next morning, he sent for
me. He liked to do his literary work in bed, propped
up among his snowy pillows looking very handsome
in his dressing gown of rich silk, dictating his notes
to a stenographer. He said if doing my work that
way appealed to me, I might have half the bed,
provided I maintained strict neutrality and did not
talk. I told him the price was prohibitive, I could
never yield woman's only prerogative, great as the
temptation was.
It was a glorious bright day, and the sun streamed
through the great windows. Mr. Clemens said if I
did not feel inclined to work after lunch (which was
by way of sarcasm, as he had previously remarked
that I did not look industrious, and he believed that
I had somebody to write my books for me), he
would take a little walk with us and show us tii
"farm." He said he would not join us at lunch, as
his doctor had put him on a strict diet. He appeared,
however, just as dessert was being served. He said
he had smelt the apple pie and could not resist
Miss ]Lyon protested timidly.
60 MIDSTREAM
"Oh, Mr. Clemens "
"Yes, I know; but fresh apple pie never killed
anybody. But if Helen says I can't, I won't" I did
not have the heart to say he couldn't, so we com-
promised on a very small piece, which was later aug-
mented by a larger piece, after a pantomimic warn-
ing to the others not to betray him.
I suspected what was going on, and said, "Come,
let us go before Mr. Clemens sends to the kitchen
for another pie."
He said, "Tell her I suspected she was a psychic.
That proves she is."
He put on a fur-lined greatcoat and fur cap, filled
his pockets with cigars, and declared himself ready
to start on the walk. He led me through the pergola,
stopping to let me feel the cedars which stood guard
at every step.
"The arches were intended for ramblers," he said,
"but unfortunately they haven't bloomed this winter.
I have spoken to the gardener about it, and I hope
the next time you come we shall have roses bloom-
ing for you." He picked out a winding path which
he thought I could follow easily. It was a delight-
ful path, which lay between rocks and a saucy little
brook that winter had not succeeded in binding with
ice fetters. He asked Mr, Macy to tell me there was
a tall white building across an intervening valley
from where we were standing. "Tell her it's a church*
OUR MARK TWAIN 61
It used to stand on this side of the brook; but the
congregation moved it last summer when I told them
I had no use for it. I had no idea that New England
people were so accommodating. At that distance it
is just what a church should be serene and pure
and mystical." We crossed the brook on a little rustic
footbridge. He said it was a prehistoric bridge, and
that the quiet brown pool underneath was the one
celebrated in the Song of Solomon, I quoted the
passage he referred to : "Thine eyes like the fishpools
in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim." It was a
joy being with him, holding his hand as he pointed
out each lovely spot and told some charming untruth
about it He said, "The book of earth is wonderful.
I wish I had time to read it I think if I had begun in
my youth, I might have got through the first chapter,
But it's too late to do anything about it now."
We wandered on and on, forgetful of time and
distance, beguiled by stream and meadow and seduc-
tive stone walls wearing their antumn draperies of
red and gold vines a little dimmed by rain and snow,
but still exquisitely beautiful When we turned at
last, and started to climb the hill, Mr. Clemens
paused and stood gazing ever the frosty New Eng-
land valley, and said, "Age is like this, we stand on
the summit and look back over the distance and
time. Alas, how swift are the feet of the days of the
years of youth." We realized that he was very tired^
6a MIDSTREAM
Mr. Macy suggested that he should return cross-
lots and meet us on the road with a carriage. Mr.
Clemens thought this a good idea, and agreed to
pilot Mrs. Macy and me to the road, which he had
every reason to suppose was just beyond that ele-
phant of a hilL Our search for that road was a won-
derful and fearsome adventure. It led through cow-
paths, across ditches filled with ice-cold water into
fields dotted with little islands of red and gold which
rose gently out of the white snow. On closer inspec-
tion we found that they were composed of patches
of dry goldenrod and huckleberry bushes. We
picked our way through treacherously smiling cart
roads. He said, "Every path leading out of this
jungle dwindles into a squirrel track and runs up
a tree." The cart roads proved to be ruts that en-
snared our innocent feet Mr, Clemens had the wary
air of a discoverer as he turned and twisted between
spreading branches of majestic pines and dwarfed
hazel bushes. I remarked that we seemed to be away
off our course. He answered, "This is the uncharted
wilderness. We have wandered into the chaos that
existed before Jehovah divided the waters from the
land. The road is just over there," he asserted with
conviction* "Yes," we murmured faintly, wondering
how we should ever ford the roaring, tumbling imp
of a stream which flung itself at us out of the hills.
OUR MARK TWAIN 63
There was no doubt about it The road was just there
"where you see that rail fence." Prophecy deepened
into happy certainty when we saw Mr. Macy and the
coachman waiting for us. "Stay where you are," they
shouted. In a few seconds they had dismembered the
rail fence and were transporting it over the field. It
did not take them long to construct a rough bridge,
over which we safely crossed the Redding Rubicon,
and sure enough, there was the narrow road of civi-
lization winding up the hillside between stone walls
and clustering sumachs and wild cherry trees on
which little icicles were beginning to form like
pendants. Half way down the drive Miss Lyon met
us with tearful reproaches. Mr. Clemens mumbled
weakly, "It has happened again the woman tempted
me."
I think I never enjoyed a walk more. Sweet is the
memory of hours spent with a beloved companion.
Even being lost with Mr. Clemens was delightful,
although I was terribly distressed that he should be
exerting himself beyond his strength. He said many
beautiful things about Stormfield, for instance, "It
is my Heaven. Its repose stills my restlessness. Tlie
view from every point is superb and perpetually
changes from miracle to miracle, yet nature never
runs short of new beauty and charm." I hope the
report is not true that he came to hate the place and
64 MIDSTREAM
feel that he had been defrauded of the society of his
fellow men. But I can understand that a tempera-
ment like Mr. Clemens's would grow weary of the
solitude.
The last evening of our visit we sat around a blaz-
ing log fire, and Mr. Clemens asked me if I would
like to have him read me "Eve's Diary." Of course I
was delighted.
He asked, "How shall we manage it?"
"Oh, you will read aloud, and my teacher will
spell your words into my hand."
He murmured, "I had thought you would read my
lips."
"I should like to, of course; but I am afraid you
will find it very wearisome. We'll start that way any-
how, and if it doesn't work, we'll try the other way."
This was an experience, I am sure, no other person in
the world had ever had.
"You know, Mr. Clemens," I reminded him, "that
we are going home to-morrow, and you promised
to put on your Oxford robe for me before I went,"
"So I did, Helen, and I will I will do it now
before I forget"
Miss Lyon brought the gorgeous scarlet robe
which he had worn when England's oldest university
conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Letters.
He put it on, and stood there in the fire light the
embodiment of gracious majesty. He seemed pleased
OUR MARK TWAIN 65
that I was impressed. He drew me towards him and
kissed me on the brow, as a cardinal or pope or
feudal monarch might have kissed a little child.
How I wish I could paint the picture of that
evening! Mr. Clemens sat in his great armchair,
dressed in his white serge suit, the flaming scarlet
robe draping his shoulders, and his white hair gleam-
ing and glistening in the light of the lamp which
shone down on his head. In one hand he held "Eve's
Diary" in a glorious red cover. In the other hand he
held his pipe. "If it gets in the way," he said, "111
give it up, but I feel embarrassed without it" I sat
down near him in a low chair, my elbow on the arm
of his chair, so that my fingers could rest lightly on
his lips, Mr. Macy lighted his cigar, and the play be-
gan. Everything went smoothly for a time. I had no
difficulty getting the words from his lips. His pleas-
ant drawl was music to my touch, but when he began
gesticulating with his pipe, the actors in the drama
got mixed up with the properties and there was con-
fusion until the ashes were gathered into the fire-
place. Then a new setting was arranged. Mrs. Macy
came and sat beside me and spelled the words into
my right hand, while I looked at Mr. Clemens with
my left, touching his face and hands land the book,
following his gestures and every changing expres-
sion* As the reading proceeded, we became utterly
absorbed in the wistful, tender chronicle of our first
66 MIDSTREAM
parents* Surely the joy, the innocence, the opening
mind of childhood are among life's most sacred
mysteries, and if young Eve laughs she makes crea-
tion all the sweeter for her Heaven-born merriment.
The beauty of Mr. Clemens's voice, when Eve sighed
her love, and when Adam stood at her grave griev-
ing bitterly saying "wheresoever she was, there was
Eden" caused me to weep openly, and the others
swallowed audibly. Every one of us felt the yearn-
ing homesickness in that cry of pain.
To one hampered and circumscribed as I am it
was a wonderful experience to have a friend like Mr,
Clemens. I recall many talks with him about human
affairs. He never made me feel that my opinions were
worthless, as so many people do. He knew that we
do not think with eyes and ears, and that our capacity
for thought is not measured by five senses. He kept
me always in mind while he talked, and he treated
me like a competent human being. That is why I
loved him.
Perhaps my strongest impression of him was that
of sorrow. There was about him the air of one who
had suffered greatly. Whenever I touched his face
his expression was sad, even when he was telling a
funny story. He smiled, not with the mouth but with
his mind a gesture of the soul rather than of the
face. His voice was truly wonderful. To my touch, it
was deep, resonant He had the power of modulating
OUR MARK TWAIN 67
it so as to suggest the most delicate shades of mean-
ing and he spoke so deliberately that I could get
almost every word with my fingers on his lips. Ah,
how sweet and poignant the memory of his soft slow
speech playing over my listening fingers. His words
seemed to take strange lovely shapes on my hands. His
own hands were wonderfully mobile and changeable
under the influence of emotion. It has been said that
life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have
complained in my heart because many pleasures of
human experience have been withheld from me, but
when I recollect the treasure of friendship that has
been bestowed upon me I withdraw all charges
against life. If much has been denied me, much, very
much has been given me. So long as the memory of
certain beloved friends lives in my heart I shall say
that life is good.
The affluence of Mr. Clemens's mind impressed me
vividly. His felicitous words gushed from it with
the abundance of the Shasta Falls. Humour was on
the surface, but in the centre of his nature was a
passion for truth, harmony, beauty.
Once he remarked in his pensive, cynical way,
"There is so little in life that is not pretence*"
u There is beauty, Mr. Clemens."
"Yes, there is beauty, and beauty is the seed of
spirit from which we grow the flowers that shall
endure."
68 MIDSTREAM
I did not realize until I began this sketch how
extremely difficult it would be to recapture Mr.
Clemens's happy phrases from my memory. I am
afraid I should not have succeeded at all if I had
not made a few notes after my conversation with
him. But I believe I have never falsified a word or
an emphasis of the spirit of his utterances.
Time passed at Stormfield as it passes everywhere
else, and the day came when we had to say good-bye.
The kindly white figure stood on the verandah wav-
ing us farewell, as he had waved his welcome when
we arrived. Silently we watched the stately villa on
the white hilltop fading into the purple distance. We
said to each other sadly, "Shall we ever see him
again ?" And we never did. But we three knew that
we had a picture of him in our hearts which would
remain there forever. In my fingertips was graven
the image of his dear face with its halo of shining
white hair, and in my memory his drawling, mar-
vellous voice will always vibrate.
I have visited Stormfield since Mark Twain's
death. The flowers still bloom; the breezes still
whisper and sough in the cedars, which have grown
statelier year by year; the birds still sing, they tell
me. But for me the place is bereft of its lover. The
last time I was there, the house was in ruins. Only
the great chimney was standing, a charred pile of
bricks in the bright autumn landscape,
OUR MARK TWAIN 69
As I sat on the step where he had stood with me
one day, my hand warm in his, thoughts of him, like
shadowy presences, came and went, sweet with
memory and with regret. Then I fancied I felt
someone approaching me; I reached out, and a red
geranium blossom met my touch 1 The leaves of the
plant were covered with ashes, and even the sturdy
stalk had been partly broken off by a chip of falling
plaster. But there was the bright flower smiling at
me out of the ashes. I thought it said to me, "Please
don't grieve." I brought the plant home and set it
in a sunny corner of my garden, where always it
seems to say the same thing to me, "Please don't
grieve." But I grieve, nevertheless.
Chapter V
LEADING THE BLIND
I HAVE been writing about the play days in Wrent-
ham. I have not dwelt upon the perplexities I went
through trying to find my special niche in life. Even
while I was in college I had asked myself how I
could use the education I was receiving. I felt that
there must be some particular task for me, but what
was it?
My friends had all manner of plans. While I
was still at Radcliffe one of them conceived the idea
that I was wasting precious time on books and study
which would do nobody good. She said I was be-
coming self-centred and egotistical and that I could
accomplish more for humanity if I devoted myself to
the education of children afflicted like myself. She
told me that God had laid this work upon me and
that it was my duty to hearken to His voice. She said
it would not be necessary for us to do anything about
financing the project, that she would attend to it
herself. We begged her to wait until I finished my
education, but she said that procrastination was the
greatest of sins. She spent the night with us in Cam-
bridge, arguing, and as hour after hour passed my
70
72 MIDSTREAM
children embodied His idea exactly. I couldn't help
wondering how she got every detail of the divine idea
right when there were no written instructions. Per-
haps the Lord appointed her His deputy with power
to act for Him. There is no other possible explana-
tion of how, out of the countless good ideas for this
institution, she was able to pick the one which had
the Deity's sanction every time."
All through my life people who imagine them-
selves more competent than my teacher and I have
wanted to organize my affairs. No doubt it would
have been to our advantage if some of these ideas
had been carried out On the other hand, it is hard
to see how all their excellent suggestions could
have been followed ; for they had opposite aims. We
were strangers when we met. Usually we were
friends for a space of time, but when we parted, the
bonds of our friendship creaked considerably, and
on several occasions they snapped, These friends
pointed out our incompetence, and assured us that
if we followed their plan, we should win fame and
fortune, and incidentally benefit some good cause.
They talked, they wrote, they brought their friends
to help them, and went away, and the next day others
came. Sometimes it was necessary, as in the case of
the plan about which I have just written, to call
upon my staunch friends Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Hutton,
and Mrs. William Thaw, to get me out of their toils.
LEADING THE BLIND 73
Some of these entanglements had memorable and
unfortunate consequences for me.
There was an effort on the part of Mr. Anagnos,
the successor of Dr. Howe as director of the Perkins
Institution for the Blind when I was a little girl to
keep my teacher and me at the Institution. Miss
Sullivan thought that it would be detrimental to my
development to remain in an institution. She has
always believed that handicapped people should not
be herded together when it is possible to keep them In
a normal environment. There were many reasons why
it would have been delightful for me to live at the
Institution. Nearly everyone there could spell to me,
and I was happy with the blind children. Moreover,
I loved Mr. Anagnos like a father. He was ex-
ceedingly kind to me, and I owe him some of the
brightest memories of my childhood ; best of all, it
was he who sent my teacher to me. When we left the
Institution and went on our wayward quest of edu-
cation Mr. Anagnos bitterly resented what he was
pleased to call Miss Sullivan's ingratitude, and shut
us out from his heart. I like to think that if he lived>
he would have come to see that she chose the wiser
course.
Some of the would-be directors of my life have
staged the little dramas in which I was to play the
leading role with such delicate art, they almost
seemed like my own conceptions, and their failure
74 MIDSTREAM
to materialize gloriously has hurt my pride not a
little. The beautiful Queen of Roumania, who used
to write to me under her nom de plume. Carmen
Sylva, had a plan for gathering all the blind of her
kingdom into one place and giving them pleasant
homes and employment. This city was to be called
"Vatra Luminosa" "Luminous Hearth." She
wanted me to help her finance it. The idea had its
origin in a generous heart ; but it was not in accord-
ance with modern methods of helping the sightless to
help themselves. I wrote Queen Elizabeth that I
did not feel that I could cooperate with her. She was
deeply hurt. She thought I was selfish and had not
the true happiness of the blind at heart Our pleasant
correspondence was broken off, and I never heard
direct from her again.
But I cannot leave this subject without a word of
appreciation of the friends who have not tried to
manage me. Curiously enough, they are the ones who
have contributed most to my usefulness and joy. If
those who believe in us, and give money to enable
us to realize our ambitions, have a right to a say in
the shaping of our lives, certainly my teacher, my
mother, Mr, Rogers, Mr. Carnegie, Mrs. Thaw,
and Dr Bell had that right; but they never exer-
cised it in word or deed. And since they left me free
to choose my own work (within my limitations) I
looked about to see what there was that I could do.
LEADING THE BLIND 75
I resolved that wha
