Helen Keller: A Blind Woman Who Lives in the Light

One of the faces of women fighters: the history of woman has known none like her in the kinds of torments and pains, and known none like her in the kinds of heroism, struggle, and striving.

A great story, with few equals among the great stories; in every one of its letters there are drops of blood and flayings of the heart. It is the story of the soul rising above the body, the story of good rising above evil, and of weakness above strength.

A child wretched to the deepest roots of wretchedness — blind, mute, deaf; her eye in darkness, her hearing in darkness, her tongue in darkness — who rebels against her great calamity, subdues her bleeding pains, binds up her wounds, and lives for life, in the most splendid and beautiful of all its beauty and splendor...

That is the story of the girl Helen Keller.

This “Helen Keller” is the most wretched girl the human mind can conceive.

She was born in 1880 in America, and lived a year and part of a year as all happy children live; then she was struck by fever, and she came out of that illness having lost her sight, her hearing, and her sense of smell.

A crushing calamity descended upon this child and set her down like a worn-out rag in her parents’ house... Her father and mother felt the burden of this calamity upon the little girl’s shoulders, and felt in the depths of their conscience that they had committed against her an unforgivable crime. How often they wished her death, that she might rest from her torment, and they from the torment of conscience.

But the girl did not die, for the will of fate was preparing for her pages black and grim.

And as though heaven wished to take its final revenge on this little blind, deaf girl, matters ended with her becoming mute; for the child, having lost her hearing, could no longer learn words, and her tongue was tied.

But heaven was preparing her to be a splendid model of splendid heroism. She entered the school for the blind at seven years of age; and her teacher saw that “Helen” was a new puzzle worthy of attention and study, and threw herself into her instruction with a will. She taught her, by means of touch, the language of the deaf and mute, then taught her to read by the “Braille” method for the blind.

At ten years of age the child could speak; then her sense of smell returned to her... a first miracle... Then the girl sat for examination at one of America’s famous colleges, and took her certificates with distinction.

A second great miracle.

The girl’s fame spread throughout America, and in 1902 she produced a book on the story of her life, in which she recounted that painful stage of her existence. Five years later she produced

a book entitled “The World I Live In”... and in 1913 she produced her famous book “Out of the Dark.”

Yes — the blind, deaf, mute girl, that miserable heap of pains, came out of the dark. She came out of the darkness of her self victorious, and her self came out of the darkness, to live in the shining light of happiness.

Let us hear her speak, in an article she wrote on happiness, describing her life and her feeling.

She said: “Many people are astonished when I tell them that I am happy. They imagine that the deficiency in my senses is a great burden binding me forever to the rock of despair. They say to me: Do you not weary of the sameness of the things you touch, when you cannot see the play of light and dark upon them? Are not all days alike to you?!

And I say: No — they are all different. No hour is like another with me, for by the sense of touch I feel all the changes that come over the weather. On some days the sun pours into my study, and I feel that the joys of life have gathered in every one of its rays. There are days when the rain comes down, and I feel as though a shadow clung to me, and the smell of the earth spreads everywhere. There are dark days when I feel the windows of my study moan and shiver with the bitter cold of winter. And there are the summer days, when the gentle breeze blows and tempts me out to my awning, where I stretch out and dream. And I have other sensations that join me to people: the sense of smell is among the most precious and important things I possess in my daily life, for the air is full of scents beyond counting, by which I know places and things. I know my flowers by their shapes and their fragrance, and how often I marvel at the kinds of sweetness in leaf and fruit. Smell, for me, is most like a friend who tells me of everything: it tells me of the weather when the rain falls and when spring comes...

My life has been, and still is, a happy one, and I seldom think of the deficiency of my senses...”

This is the story of “Helen Keller” — the story of a girl whose self crossed the dark chasm, to live always and forever in the light.