Prairie Du Sac High School - Prairie Pride Yearbook (Prairie Du Sac, WI)

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deprived lier of both sight and hearing. In this world of silence and darkness she dwelt until her seventh year, when Miss Sullivan, her teacher, came and by love and genius let some intellectual sunlight into her life. It is hard to imagine the mental condition of such a pupil. Sight and sound did not ex- ist for her. They had never existed for her save as a vague baby memory. The blue of the sky, the beautiful birds and flowers and landscapes, the murmur of waters, the ringing of bells, the rich melody of voices in song, she could never know. Her first lessons consisted in the slow and laborious mastery of the fact that certain raised forms of metal which we call letters stood for the idea of a certain thing, as an apple, which she could touch and taste and smell. She was drilled in this until she always thought of that particular object when her fingers came in contact with that special kind of roughness. Later she learned to prick the same name in paper by means of metal guides, to turn the paper over and by means of the little pro- jections to read her own writing. Her knowledge of words grew with her knowledge of things and ideas and was a part of that knowledge. She w as delighted beyond all description when she found that she was learning to communicate with others, and plied her teacher with ceaseless questions. In the case of a fork she was not content to know merely the name, but pointed to the tines, handle, decorations, and must know what move- ment of the fingers stood for the different parts. At times, when a child she gave vent to her anger at her inability to ex- press herself, in violent outbursts of passion; but years and cul- ture have changed her, and made of her a sensible, original, good-humored young woman of endless patience. She studied with Miss Sullivan, attended Perkins institute, then a Cambridge preparatory school, and finally finished her preparation for college under the tutorship of a Mr. Keith. In the fall of 1900 she entered Radcliffe College at Cambridge, Mass, and on the twenty-eighth of this month she will graduate from that institution with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. On the day before graduation she will celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday. In Radcliffe she has competed successfully with girls who can see and hear. Miss Sullivan attends recitations with her and interprets to her the instructions given there. She found Mathematics both uninteresting and difficult. Geometry

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HELEN KELLER Helen Keller is one of the most wonderful personalities of the age and her name is a synonym for the mastery of all but impossible obstacles. Unable to see, and unable to hear, she has through the sense of touch alone, attained to a degree of mental culture that is marvelous. She was born in a vine-covered cottage in Tuscumbria, Alabama, June 27, 1880. Her father was clever, hospitable, loving, indulgent, and devoted to his home. “To describe my mother,” she writes, is like attempting to put into words the fragrance of a flower or the smile on a beloved face.” The beginning of Helen’s life was simple. “I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does.” At the age of nineteen months she was taken ill with a fever which

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was especially confusing as she could not see the geometrical figures, and the only way she could represent them to her mind was by means of a cushion on which straight and curved wires took the place of the ordinary drawings. She is a lover of literature and, besides her unusual mastery of English, has a knowledge of German, French, and Latin which gives her access to the literatures of those languages so far as they have been put into type for the blind. Miss Keller did the same work as the other students and passed the same examinations. The exam- ination questions were put in Braille type, and in the presence of the Dean of the College she took the questions and wrote her answers with an ordinary typewriter. Miss Sullivan was not present at these examinations, and there was no possibility of Miss Keller’s receiving any assistance of any kind whatever. During her career at college she wrote “The Story of My Life,” one of the most interesting of books. She is an artist in expression, and shrinks from no labor necessary to the per- fecting of her work. At first she writes in Braille, the system of raised letters by which the blind read, then transfers it to the typewriter. After that Miss Sullivan reads it into her hand. It passes through her hands five times before she is satisfied with it. She is a worker and an optimist. She is a thinker and a lover of books. Her fondness for poetry, and the poetic trend of her thought has led some to believe she will become a writer of poetry. She cannot see at all. She cannot tell light from darkness except by the difference in the warmth. She has tried very hard to learn to speak but with small success, although her intimate friends can understand her. Sometimes she places her fingers on her friend’s lips and throat and by the muscular mo- tion interprets the words. But whoever can, speaks or reads into her hand by spelling the words with the fingers. We can best close this brief record of her life and genius by a quotation from her own words: “Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation infolds me like a cold, white, mist as I sit alone and wait at Life’s shut gate. Beyond, there is light and music and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, inexorable, bars the way. Fain would I ques- tion his imperious decree; for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate: but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like un-