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20 - Story of My Life by Helen Keller · Story of My Life

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty of the Story of My Life. This LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The Story of My
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  Speaker 1: Life by Helen Keller, Chapter twenty. The struggle for admission
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  Speaker 1: to college was ended, and I could now enter Radcliffe
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  Speaker 1: whenever I pleased. Before I entered college, however, it was
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  Speaker 1: thought best that I should study another year under mister Keith.
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  Speaker 1: It was not therefore, until the fall of nineteen hundred
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  Speaker 1: that my dream of going to college was realized. I
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  Speaker 1: remember my first day at Radcliffe. It was a day
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  Speaker 1: full of interest for me. I had looked forward to
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  Speaker 1: it for years. A potent force within me, stronger than
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  Speaker 1: the persuasion of my friends, stronger even than the pleadings
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  Speaker 1: of my heart, had impelled me to try my strength
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  Speaker 1: by the standards of those who see and hear. I
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  Speaker 1: knew that there were obstacles in the way, but I
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  Speaker 1: was eager to overcome them. I had taken to heart
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  Speaker 1: the words of the wise Roman, who said, to be
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  Speaker 1: banished from Rome is but to live outside of Rome
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  Speaker 1: debarred from the great highways of knowledge. I was compelled
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  Speaker 1: to make the journey across country by unfrequented roads. That
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  Speaker 1: was all, and I knew that in college there were
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  Speaker 1: many by paths where I could touch hands with girls
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  Speaker 1: who were thinking, loving, and struggling like me. I began
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  Speaker 1: my studies with eagerness. Before me, I saw a new
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  Speaker 1: world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within
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  Speaker 1: me the capacity to know old things. In the wonderland
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  Speaker 1: of mind. I should be as free as another its people, scenery, manners, joys, tragedies.
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  Speaker 1: Should be living, tangible interpreters of the real world. The
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  Speaker 1: lecture holds seemed filled with the spirit of the great
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  Speaker 1: and the wise, and I thought the professors were the
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  Speaker 1: embodiment of withersdom. If I have since learned differently, I
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  Speaker 1: am not going to tell anybody, but I soon discovered
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  Speaker 1: that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined.
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  Speaker 1: Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience
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  Speaker 1: became beautifully less and faded into the light of common day. Gradually,
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  Speaker 1: I began to find that there were disadvantages in going
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  Speaker 1: to college. The one I felt and still feel most
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  Speaker 1: is lack of time. I used to have time to think,
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  Speaker 1: to reflect my mind and I we would sit together
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  Speaker 1: of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of
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  Speaker 1: the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments, when
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  Speaker 1: the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet
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  Speaker 1: chord in the soul that until then had been silent.
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  Speaker 1: But in college there is no time to commune with
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  Speaker 1: one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems
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  Speaker 1: not to think. When one enters the portals of learning,
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  Speaker 1: one leaves the dearest pleasures solitude, books and imagination outside
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  Speaker 1: with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find
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  Speaker 1: some comfort in the thought that I am laying up
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  Speaker 1: treasures for future enjoyment. But I am improvident enough to
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  Speaker 1: prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.
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  Speaker 1: My studies the first year were French, German history, English composition,
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  Speaker 1: and English literature. In the French course, I read some
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  Speaker 1: of the works of Coney, Moliere, Racine, Alfred de Muset,
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  Speaker 1: and Saint Beuve, and in the German those of Gerty
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  Speaker 1: and Schiller. I reviewed rapidly the whole period of history
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  Speaker 1: from the fall of the Roman Empire to the eighteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: And in English literature studied critically Milton's poems and areopagetica.
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  Speaker 1: I am frequently asked how I overcome the peculiar conditions
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  Speaker 1: under which I work in college. In the class room,
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  Speaker 1: I am, of course, practically alone. The professor is as
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  Speaker 1: remote as if he were speaking through a telephone. The
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  Speaker 1: lectures are spelled into my hand as rapidly as possible,
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  Speaker 1: and much of the individuality of the lecturer is lost
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  Speaker 1: to me in the effort to keep in the race.
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  Speaker 1: The words rush through my hand like hounds in pursuit
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  Speaker 1: of a hair which they often miss. But in this
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  Speaker 1: respect I do not think I am much worse off
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  Speaker 1: than the girls who take notes. If the mind is
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  Speaker 1: occupied with the mechanical process of hearing and putting words
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  Speaker 1: on paper at pell mell speed, I should not think
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  Speaker 1: one could pay much attention to the subject under consideration,
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  Speaker 1: or the manner in which it is presented. I cannot
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  Speaker 1: make notes during the lectures because my hands are busy listening.
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  Speaker 1: Usually I jot down what I can remember of them
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  Speaker 1: when I get home. I write the exercises, daily themes, criticisms,
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  Speaker 1: and hour tests, the midyear and final examinations on my typewriter,
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  Speaker 1: so that the professors have no difficulty in finding out
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  Speaker 1: how little I know. When I began the study of
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  Speaker 1: Latin prosody. I devised and explained to my professor a
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  Speaker 1: system of signs indicating the different meters and quantities. I
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  Speaker 1: use the Hammond typewriter. I have tried many machines, and
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  Speaker 1: I find the Hammond is the best adapted to the
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  Speaker 1: peculiar needs of my work. With this machine, movable type
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  Speaker 1: shuttles can be used, and one can have several shuttles,
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  Speaker 1: each with a different set of characters Greek, French or mathematical,
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  Speaker 1: according to the kind of writing one wishes to do
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  Speaker 1: on the typewriter. Without it, I doubt if I could
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  Speaker 1: go to college. Very few of the books required in
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  Speaker 1: the various courses are printed for the blind, and I
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  Speaker 1: am obliged to have them spelled into my hand. Consequently,
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  Speaker 1: I need more time to prepare my lessons than other girls.
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  Speaker 1: The manual part takes longer, and I have perplexities which
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  Speaker 1: they have not. There are days when the close attention
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  Speaker 1: I must give to detailed chafes my spirit, and the
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  Speaker 1: thought that I must spend hours reading a few chapters
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  Speaker 1: while in the world without other girls are laughing and
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  Speaker 1: singing and dancing makes me rebellious. But I soon recover
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  Speaker 1: my buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart.
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  Speaker 1: For after all, everyone who wishes to gain true knowledge
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  Speaker 1: must climb the hill difficulty alone. And since there is
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  Speaker 1: no royal road to the summit, I must dig, zagget
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  Speaker 1: in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall,
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  Speaker 1: I stand still. I run against the edge of hidden obstacles.
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  Speaker 1: I lose my temper and find it again and keep
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  Speaker 1: it better. I trudge on, I gain a little, I
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  Speaker 1: feel encouraged. I get more eager, and climb higher and
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  Speaker 1: begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.
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  Speaker 1: One more effort, and I reached the luminous cloud, the
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  Speaker 1: blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.
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  Speaker 1: I am not always alone, however, Indeed, struggles mister William
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  Speaker 1: Wade and mister E. E. Allen, principle of the Pennsylvanian
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  Speaker 1: Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, get for me
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  Speaker 1: many of the books I need in raised print. Their
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  Speaker 1: thoughtfulness has been more of a help and encouragement to
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  Speaker 1: me than they can ever know. Last year, my second
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  Speaker 1: year at Radcliffe, I studied the English composition the Bible
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  Speaker 1: as English Literature. The Governments of America and Europe, the
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  Speaker 1: oes of Horace and Latin comedy. The class in composition
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  Speaker 1: was the pleasantest. It was very lively. The lectures were
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  Speaker 1: always interesting, vivacious, witty. For the instructor, mister Charles Towns
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  Speaker 1: and Copeland, more than any one else I have had
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  Speaker 1: until this year, brings before you literature in all its
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  Speaker 1: original freshness and power. For one short hour you you
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  Speaker 1: are permitted to drink in the eternal beauty of the
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  Speaker 1: old masters, without needless interpretation or exposition. You revel in
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  Speaker 1: their fine thoughts. You enjoy with all your soul the
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  Speaker 1: sweet thunder of the Old Testament forgetting the existence of
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  Speaker 1: Yahweh and Elohim. And you go home feeling that you
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  Speaker 1: have had a glimpse of that perfection in which spirit
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  Speaker 1: inform dwell in immortal harmony, truth and beauty, bearing a
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  Speaker 1: new growth on the ancient stem of time. This year
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  Speaker 1: is the happiest because I am studying subjects that especially
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  Speaker 1: interest me Economics, Elizabethan literature, Shakespeare under Professor George L. Kittridge,
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  Speaker 1: and the history of philosophy under Professor Josiah Royce. Through philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: one enters with sympathy of comprehension into the traditions of
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  Speaker 1: remote ages and other modes of thought, which erewhile seemed
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  Speaker 1: alien and without reason. But college is not the universal
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  Speaker 1: athens I thought it was there. One does not meet
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  Speaker 1: the great and the wise face to face. One does
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  Speaker 1: not even feel their living touch. They are there, it
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  Speaker 1: is true, but they seem mummified. We must extract them
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  Speaker 1: from the crannied wall of learning and dissect and analyze
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  Speaker 1: them before we can be sure that we have a
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  Speaker 1: Milton or an Isiah, and not merely a clever imitation.
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  Speaker 1: Many scholars forget. It seems to me that our enjoyment
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  Speaker 1: of the great works of literature depends more upon the
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  Speaker 1: depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble
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  Speaker 1: is that very few of their laborious explanations stick in
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  Speaker 1: the memory. The mind drops them as a branch drops
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  Speaker 1: its overripe fruit. It is possible to know a flower
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  Speaker 1: root and stem on all and all the processes of growth,
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  Speaker 1: and yet to have no appreciation of the flower, fresh
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  Speaker 1: bathed in Heaven's dew. Again and again, I ask impatiently,
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  Speaker 1: I concern myself with these explanations and hypotheses they fly
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  Speaker 1: hither and thither in my thought, like blind birds beating
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  Speaker 1: the air with ineffectual wings. I do not mean to
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  Speaker 1: object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read.
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  Speaker 1: I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms
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  Speaker 1: that teach but one thing. There are as many opinions
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  Speaker 1: as there are men. But when a great scholar, like
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  Speaker 1: Professor Kittridge interprets what the master said, it is as
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  Speaker 1: if new sight were given the blind he brings back
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  Speaker 1: Shakespeare the poet. There are, however, times when I long
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  Speaker 1: to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn,
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  Speaker 1: for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasury it had
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  Speaker 1: secured at the greatest cost. It is impossible, I think,
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  Speaker 1: to read in one day four or five different books,
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  Speaker 1: in different languages, and treating of widely different subjects, and
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  Speaker 1: not LuSE sight of the very ends for which one reads.
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  Speaker 1: When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written
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  Speaker 1: tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot
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  Speaker 1: of choice bric a brac, for which there seems to
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  Speaker 1: be little use at the present time. My mind is
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  Speaker 1: so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of
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  Speaker 1: ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I
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  Speaker 1: enter the region that was the kingdom of my mind,
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  Speaker 1: I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop.
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  Speaker 1: A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about
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  Speaker 1: my head like hailstones, And when I try to escape them,
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  Speaker 1: theme goblins and college nexties of all sorts pursue me
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  Speaker 1: until I wish, oh, may I be forgiven the wicked
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  Speaker 1: wish that I might smash the idols I came to worship.
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  Speaker 1: But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life.
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  Speaker 1: Although I have faced them many times and cast them
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  Speaker 1: down and made them bite the dust, Yet they rise
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  Speaker 1: again and menace me with pale looks, until, like barbakers,
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  Speaker 1: I feel my courage woozing out at my finger ends.
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  Speaker 1: The days before these ordeals take place are spent in
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  Speaker 1: cramming your mind with mystic formulae and indigestible dates, unpalatable diets,
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  Speaker 1: until you wish that books and science and you were
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  Speaker 1: buried in the depths of the sea. At last, the
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  Speaker 1: dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favored being. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: if you feel prepared and are able at the right
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  Speaker 1: time to call your standard thoughts, that we'll aid you
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  Speaker 1: in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your
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  Speaker 1: trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that,
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  Speaker 1: just at the moment when you need your memory and
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  Speaker 1: a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves
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  Speaker 1: wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with
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  Speaker 1: such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch, give
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  Speaker 1: a brief account of Huss and his work. Huss, Who
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  Speaker 1: was he? And what did he do? The name looks
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  Speaker 1: strangely familiar. You ransack your budget of historic facts much
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  Speaker 1: as you would hunt for a bit of silk in
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  Speaker 1: a rag bag. You are sure it is somewhere in
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  Speaker 1: your mind near the top. You saw it there the
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  Speaker 1: other day when you were looking up the beginnings of
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  Speaker 1: the Reformation. But where is it now? You fish out
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  Speaker 1: all manner of odds and ends of knowledge, revolutions, sisms, massacres,
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  Speaker 1: systems of government. But Hus, where is he? You are
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  Speaker 1: amazed at all the things you know which are not
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  Speaker 1: on the examination paper. In desperation you seize the budget
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  Speaker 1: and dump everything out and there in a corner is
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  Speaker 1: your man, serenely brooding on his own private thought, unconscious
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  Speaker 1: of the catastrophe which he has brought up on you.
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  Speaker 1: Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up.
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  Speaker 1: With a feeling of intense disgust, you kick the mass
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  Speaker 1: of rubbish into a corner and go home, your head
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  Speaker 1: full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the fine rite of
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  Speaker 1: professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.
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  Speaker 1: It comes over me that in the last two or
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  Speaker 1: three pages of this chapter I have used figures which
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  Speaker 1: will turn the laugh against me. Ah. Here they are
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  Speaker 1: the mixed metaphors mocking and strutting about before me, pointing
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  Speaker 1: to the bull in the china shop assailed by hailstones,
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  Speaker 1: and the bugbears with pale looks and unanalyzed species. Let
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  Speaker 1: them mock on. The words describe so exactly the atmosphere
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  Speaker 1: of jostling, tumbling ideas I live in that I will
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  Speaker 1: wink at them for once and put on a deliberate
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  Speaker 1: air to say that my ideas of college have changed.
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  Speaker 1: While my days at Radcliffe were still in the future,
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  Speaker 1: they were encircled with a halo of romance, which they
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  Speaker 1: have lost. But in the transition from romantic to actual
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  Speaker 1: I have learned many things I should never have known
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  Speaker 1: had I not tried the experiment. One of them is
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  Speaker 1: the precious science of patience, which tea that we should
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  Speaker 1: take away education as we would take a walk in
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  Speaker 1: the country leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of
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  Speaker 1: every sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a
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  Speaker 1: soundless tidal wave of deepening thought. Knowledge is power. Rather,
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  Speaker 1: knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge broad deep knowledge
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  Speaker 1: is to know true ends from false and lofty things
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  Speaker 1: from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have
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  Speaker 1: marked man's progress is to feel the great heart throbs
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  Speaker 1: of humanity through the centuries. And if one does not
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  Speaker 1: feel in these pulsations are heavenwards striving, one must indeed
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  Speaker 1: be deaf to the harmonies of life. End of Chapter
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  Speaker 1: twenty