Page:The Eyes of Max Carrados.pdf/27

Rh remarkable as that of John Metcalf, but, needless to say, the way is a very different one. Her book, The Story of My Life, is a very full and engrossing account of her education (in this instance "life" and "education" are interchangeable) from "the earliest time" until shortly after her entry into Radcliffe College in 1900, she then being in her twenty-first year. The book consists of three parts: (1) her autobiography; (2) her letters; (3) her biography from external sources, chiefly by the account of Miss Sullivan, who trained her.

The difficulty here was not merely blindness. When less than two years old not only sight, but hearing, and with hearing speech, were all lost. Her people were well-to-do, and skilled advice was frequently obtained, but no improvement came. As the months and the years went on, intelligent communication between the child and the world grew less, while a naturally impulsive nature deepened into sullenness and passion in the face of a dimly realised "difference," and of her inability to understand and to be understood. When Miss Sullivan came to live with the Kellers in 1887, on a rather forlorn hope of being able to do something with Helen, the child was six, and relapsing into primitive savagery. The first—and in the event the one and only—problem was that of opening up communication with the stunted mind, of raising or piercing the black veil that had settled around it four years before.

A month after her arrival Miss Sullivan wrote as follows:—"I must write you a line this morning because something very important has happened. Helen has taken the second great step in her education. She has learned that everything has a name, and that the