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

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  Speaker 1: Chapter fourteen 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 fourteen. The winter of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety two was darkened by the one cloud in my
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  Speaker 1: childhood's bright sky. Joy deserted my heart, and for a
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  Speaker 1: long long time I lived in doubt, anxiety, and fear.
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  Speaker 1: Books lost their charm for me, and even now the
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  Speaker 1: thought of those dreadful days chills my heart. A little
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  Speaker 1: story called The Frost King, which I wrote and sent
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  Speaker 1: to Mister Anagnos of the Perkins Institution for the Blind,
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  Speaker 1: was at the root of the trouble. In order to
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  Speaker 1: make the matter clear, I must set forth the facts
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  Speaker 1: connected with this episode, which justice to my teacher and
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  Speaker 1: to myself compels me to relate. I wrote the story
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  Speaker 1: when I was at home the autumn, after I had
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  Speaker 1: learnt to speak. We had stayed up at fern Quarry
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  Speaker 1: later than usual. While we were there, Miss Sullivan had
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  Speaker 1: described to me the beauties of the late foliage. And
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  Speaker 1: it seems that her descriptions revived the memory of a
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  Speaker 1: story which must have been read to me, and which
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  Speaker 1: I must have unconsciously retained. I thought then that I
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  Speaker 1: was making up a story as children say, and I
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  Speaker 1: eagerly sat down to write it before the ideas should
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  Speaker 1: slip from me. My thoughts flowed easily. I felt a
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  Speaker 1: sense of joy in the composition. Words and images came
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  Speaker 1: tripping to my finger ends, and as I thought out
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  Speaker 1: sentence after sentence, I wrote them on my Braill's late. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if words and images come to me without effort, it
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  Speaker 1: is a pretty sure sign that they are not the
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  Speaker 1: offspring of my own mind, but stray waifs that I
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  Speaker 1: regretfully dismiss. At that time, I eagerly absorbed everything I
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  Speaker 1: read without the thought of authorship, and even now I
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  Speaker 1: cannot be quite sure of the boundary line between my
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  Speaker 1: ideas and those I find in books. I suppose that
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  Speaker 1: is because so many of my impressions come to me
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  Speaker 1: through the medium of others eyes and ears. When the
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  Speaker 1: story was finished, I read it to my teacher, and
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  Speaker 1: I recall now vividly the pleasure I felt in the
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  Speaker 1: more beautiful passages, and my annoyance at being interrupted to
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  Speaker 1: have the pronunciation of a word corrected. At dinner, it
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  Speaker 1: was read to the assembled family, who were surprised that
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  Speaker 1: I could write so well. Some one asked me if
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  Speaker 1: I had read it in a book. This question surprised
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  Speaker 1: me very much, for I had not the faintest recollection
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  Speaker 1: of having had it read to me. I spoke up
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  Speaker 1: and said, oh, no, it is my story, and I
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  Speaker 1: have written it for mister Anagnos. Accordingly, I copied the
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  Speaker 1: story and sent it to him for his birthday. It
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  Speaker 1: was suggested that I should change the title from Autumn
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  Speaker 1: Leaves to the Frost King, which I did. I carried
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  Speaker 1: the little story to the post office myself feeling as
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  Speaker 1: if I were walking on air. I little dreamed how
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  Speaker 1: cruelly I should pay for that birthday gift. Mister Anagnes
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  Speaker 1: was delighted with The Frost King and published it in
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  Speaker 1: one of the Perkins Institution reports. This was the pinnacle
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  Speaker 1: of my happiness, from which I was, in a little
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  Speaker 1: while dashed to earth. I had been in Boston only
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  Speaker 1: a short time when it was discovered that the story
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  Speaker 1: similar to The Frost King, called the Frost Fairies by
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  Speaker 1: Miss Margaret T. Canby, had appeared before I was born,
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  Speaker 1: in a book called Birdie and His Friends. The two
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  Speaker 1: stories were so much alike in thought and language, that
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  Speaker 1: it was evident Missus Cambide's story had been read to me,
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  Speaker 1: and that mine was a plagiarism. It was difficult to
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  Speaker 1: make me understand this, but when I did understand, I
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  Speaker 1: was astonished and grieved. No child ever drank deeper of
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  Speaker 1: the cup of bitterness than I did. I had disgraced myself,
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  Speaker 1: I had brought suspicion upon those I loved best. And
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  Speaker 1: yet how could it possibly have happened? I racked my
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  Speaker 1: brain until I was weary to recall anything about the
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  Speaker 1: Frost that I had read before I wrote The Frost King.
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  Speaker 1: But I could remember nothing except the common reference to
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  Speaker 1: Jack Frost and a poem for children, the Freaks of
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  Speaker 1: the Frost, and I knew I had not used that
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  Speaker 1: in my composition. At first, mister Anagnes, though deeply troubled,
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  Speaker 1: seemed to believe me. He was unusually tender and kind
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  Speaker 1: to me, and for a brief space, the shadow lifted
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  Speaker 1: to please him. I tried not to be unhappy and
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  Speaker 1: to make myself as pretty as possible for the celebration
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  Speaker 1: of Washington's birthday, which took place very soon after I
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  Speaker 1: received the sad news. I was to be serious in
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  Speaker 1: a kind of mask given by the blind girls. How
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  Speaker 1: well I remember the graceful draperies that enfolded me, the
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  Speaker 1: bright autumn leaves that wreathed my head, and the fruit
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  Speaker 1: and grain at my feet and in my hands, and
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  Speaker 1: beneath all the gaiety of the mask, the oppressive sense
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  Speaker 1: of coming ill that made my heart heavy. The night
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  Speaker 1: before the celebration, one of the teachers of the institution
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  Speaker 1: had asked me a question connected with the Frost King,
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  Speaker 1: and I was telling her that Miss Sullivan had talked
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  Speaker 1: to me about Jack Frost and his wonderful works. Something
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  Speaker 1: I said made her think. She detected in my words
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  Speaker 1: a confession that I did remember Miss Campide's story of
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  Speaker 1: the Frost Fairies, and she laid her conclusions before mister
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  Speaker 1: ann Agnes, although I had told her most emphatically that
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  Speaker 1: she was mistaken. Mister Anagnus, who loved me tenderly, thinking
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  Speaker 1: that he had been deceived, turned a deaf fear to
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  Speaker 1: the pleadings of love and innocence. He believed, or at
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  Speaker 1: least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen
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  Speaker 1: the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him
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  Speaker 1: to win his admiration. I was brought before a court
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  Speaker 1: of investigation composed of the teachers and officers of the institution,
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  Speaker 1: and Miss Sullivan was asked to leave me. Then I
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  Speaker 1: was questioned and cross questioned, with what seemed to me
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  Speaker 1: a determination on the part of my judges to force
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  Speaker 1: me to acknowledge that I remembered having had the Frost
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  Speaker 1: Fairies read to me. I felt in every question the
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  Speaker 1: doubt and suspicion that was in their minds, and I felt,
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  Speaker 1: too that a loved friend was looking at me reproachfully.
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  Speaker 1: Although I could not have put all this into words,
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  Speaker 1: the blood pressed about my thumping heart, and I could
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  Speaker 1: scarcely speak, except in monosyllables. Even the consciousness that it
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  Speaker 1: was only a dreadful mistake did not lessen my suffering,
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  Speaker 1: And when at last I was allowed to leave the room,
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  Speaker 1: I was dazed and did not notice my teacher's caresses
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  Speaker 1: or the tender words of my friends, who said I
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  Speaker 1: was a brave little girl and they were proud of me.
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  Speaker 1: As I lay in my bed that night, I wept
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  Speaker 1: as I hope few children have wept. I felt so
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  Speaker 1: cold I imagined I should die before morning, and the
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  Speaker 1: thought comforted me. I think if this sorrow had come
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  Speaker 1: to me when I was older, it would have broken
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  Speaker 1: my spirit beyond repairing. But the Angel of forgetfulness has
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  Speaker 1: gathered up and carried away much of the misery and
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  Speaker 1: all the bitterness of those sad days. Miss Sullivan had
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  Speaker 1: never heard of the Frost Fairies or of the book
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  Speaker 1: in which it was published. With the assistance of doctor
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  Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bell, she investigated the matter carefully, and at
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  Speaker 1: last it came out that missus Sopheus C. Hopkins had
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  Speaker 1: a copy of Miss Camby's Birdie and his Friends in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, the year that we spent the summer
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  Speaker 1: with her at Brewster. Missus Hopkins was unable to find
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  Speaker 1: her copy, but she has told me that at that time,
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  Speaker 1: while Miss Sullivan was away on a vacation, she tried
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  Speaker 1: to amuse me by reading from various books, and although
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  Speaker 1: she could not remember reading The Frost Fairies any more
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  Speaker 1: than I, yet she felt sure that Birdie and his
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  Speaker 1: Friends was one of them. She explained the disappearance of
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  Speaker 1: the book by the fact that she had a short
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  Speaker 1: time before sold her house and disposed of many juvenile books,
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  Speaker 1: such as old school books and fairy tales, and that
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  Speaker 1: Birdie and his Friends was probably among them. The stories
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  Speaker 1: had little or no meaning for me then, but the
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  Speaker 1: mere spilling of the strange words was sufficient to amuse
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  Speaker 1: a little child who could do all almost nothing to
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  Speaker 1: amuse herself. And although I do not recall a single
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  Speaker 1: circumstance connected with the reading of the stories, yet I
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  Speaker 1: cannot help thinking that I made a great effort to
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  Speaker 1: remember the words with the intention of having my teacher
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  Speaker 1: explain them when she returned. One thing is certain. The
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  Speaker 1: language was ineffacibly stamped upon my brain, though for a
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  Speaker 1: long time no one knew it, least of all myself.
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  Speaker 1: When Miss Sullivan came back, I did not speak to
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  Speaker 1: her about the Frost Fairies, probably because she began at
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  Speaker 1: once to read Little Lord Fauntleroy, which filled my mind
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  Speaker 1: to the exclusion of everything else. But the fact remains
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  Speaker 1: that Miss Cambide's story was read to me once, and
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  Speaker 1: that long after I had forgotten it, it came back
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  Speaker 1: to me so naturally that I never suspected that it
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  Speaker 1: was the child of another mind. In my trouble, I
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  Speaker 1: received many messages of love and sympathy. All the friends
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  Speaker 1: I loved the best except one have remained my own
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  Speaker 1: to the present time. Missus Camby herself wrote kindly, some
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  Speaker 1: day you will write a great story out of your
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  Speaker 1: own head that will be a comfort and help to many.
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  Speaker 1: But this kind prophecy has never been fulfilled. I have
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  Speaker 1: never played with words again for the mere pleasure of
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  Speaker 1: the game. Indeed, I have ever since been tortured by
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  Speaker 1: the fear that what I write is not my own.
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  Speaker 1: For a long time, when I wrote a letter, even
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  Speaker 1: to my mother, I was seized with a sudden feeling
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  Speaker 1: of terror, and I would spell the sentences over and
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  Speaker 1: over to make sure that I had not read them
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  Speaker 1: in a book. Had it not been for the persistent
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  Speaker 1: encouragement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given
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  Speaker 1: up trying to write altogether. I have read The Frost
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  Speaker 1: fairied since. Also the letters I wrote in which I
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  Speaker 1: used other ideas of Miss Camby's. I find in one
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  Speaker 1: of them, a letter to mister Anagner, dated September twenty ninth,
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  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety one, words and sentiments exactly like those of
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  Speaker 1: the book. At the time I was writing The Frost King,
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  Speaker 1: And this letter, like many others, contains phrases which show
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  Speaker 1: that my mind was saturated with the story. I represent
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  Speaker 1: my teacher at saying to me of the golden autumn leaves, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: they are beautiful enough to comfort us for the flight
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  Speaker 1: of summer, an idea direct from Miss Cambide's story. This
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  Speaker 1: habit of assimilating what pleased me and giving it out
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  Speaker 1: again as my own, appears in much of my early
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  Speaker 1: correspondence and my first attempts at writing. In a composition
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  Speaker 1: which I wrote about the old cities of Greece and Italy,
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  Speaker 1: I borrowed my glowing descriptions with variations from sources I
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  Speaker 1: have forgotten. I knew mister a Agnes's great love of
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  Speaker 1: antiquity and his enthusiastic appreciation of all beautiful sentiments about Italy,
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  Speaker 1: and I therefore gathered from all the books I read,
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  Speaker 1: every bit of poetry or of history that I thought
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  Speaker 1: would give him pleasure. Mister Anagnes, in speaking of my
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  Speaker 1: composition on the cities, has said, these ideas are poetic
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  Speaker 1: in their essence. But I do not understand how he
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  Speaker 1: ever thought a blind and deaf child of eleven could
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  Speaker 1: have invented them. Yet I cannot think that because I
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  Speaker 1: did not originate the ideas. My little composition is therefore
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  Speaker 1: quite devoid of interest. It shows me that I could
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  Speaker 1: express my appreciation of beautiful and poetic ideas in clear
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  Speaker 1: and animated language. Those early compositions were mental gymnastics. I
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  Speaker 1: was learning, as all young and experienced persons learn, by
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  Speaker 1: assimilation and imitation, to put ideas into words. Everything I
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  Speaker 1: found in books that pleased me, I retained in my memory,
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  Speaker 1: consciously or unconsciously, and adapted it. The young writer, as
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  Speaker 1: Stevenson had said, instinctively tries to copy whatever seems most admirable,
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  Speaker 1: and he shifts his admiration with astonishing versatility. It is
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  Speaker 1: only after years of this sort of practice that even
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  Speaker 1: great men have learned to marshal the legion of words
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  Speaker 1: which come thronging through every byway of the mind. I
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  Speaker 1: am afraid I have not yet completed this process. It
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  Speaker 1: is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts
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  Speaker 1: from those I read, because what I read become the
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  Speaker 1: very substance and texture of my mind. Consequently, in nearly
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  Speaker 1: all that I write, I produce something which very much
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  Speaker 1: resembles the crazy patchwork I used to make when I
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  Speaker 1: first learned to sew. This patchwork was made of all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of odds and ends, pretty bits of silk and velvet,
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  Speaker 1: but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to touch
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  Speaker 1: always predominate it. Likewise, my composition are made up of
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  Speaker 1: crude notions of my own inlaid with the brighter thoughts
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  Speaker 1: and riper opinions of the authors I have read. It
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  Speaker 1: seems to me that the greater difficulty of writing is
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  Speaker 1: to make the language of the educated mind express our
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  Speaker 1: confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little
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  Speaker 1: more than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is
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  Speaker 1: very much like trying to put the Chinese puzzle together.
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  Speaker 1: We have a pattern in mind which we wish to
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  Speaker 1: work out in words, but the words will not fit
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  Speaker 1: the spaces, or if they do, they will not match
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  Speaker 1: the design. But we keep on trying because we know
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  Speaker 1: that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to
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  Speaker 1: acknowledge defeat. There is no way to become original except
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  Speaker 1: to be born, so said Stevenson. And although I may
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  Speaker 1: not be original, I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial,
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  Speaker 1: periwiged compositions. Then perhaps my own thoughts and experience as
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  Speaker 1: will come to the surface. Meanwhile, I trust in hope
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  Speaker 1: and persevere and try not to let the bitter memory
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  Speaker 1: of the Frost King trammel my efforts. So this sad
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  Speaker 1: experience may have done me good and set me thinking
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  Speaker 1: on some of the problems of composition. My only regret
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  Speaker 1: is that it resulted in the loss of one of
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  Speaker 1: my dearest friends, mister Anagnes. Since the publication of the
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  Speaker 1: story of my life in the Ladies Home Journal, mister
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  Speaker 1: Anagnes has made a statement in a letter to mister
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  Speaker 1: Macie that at the time of the Frost King matter,
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  Speaker 1: he believed I was innocent. He says the court of
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  Speaker 1: investigation before which I was brought consisted of eight people,
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  Speaker 1: four blind foreseeing persons. Four of them, he says, thought
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  Speaker 1: I knew that Miss Cambide's story had been read to me,
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  Speaker 1: and the others did not hold this view. Mister anagns
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  Speaker 1: states that he cast his vote with those who were
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  Speaker 1: favorable to me, but however the case may have been
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  Speaker 1: with whichever side he may have cast his vote. When
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  Speaker 1: I went into the room where mister ann Agnes had
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  Speaker 1: so often held me on his knee and forgetting his
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  Speaker 1: Many cares had shared in my frolics and found there
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  Speaker 1: persons who seemed to doubt me. I felt that there
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  Speaker 1: was something hostile and menacing in the very atmosphere, and
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  Speaker 1: subsequent events have borne out this impression. For two years,
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  Speaker 1: he seems to have held the belief that Miss Sullivan
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  Speaker 1: and I were innocent. Then he evidently retracted his favorable judgment.
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  Speaker 1: Why I do not know, nor did I know the
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  Speaker 1: details of the investigation. I never knew even the names
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  Speaker 1: of the members of the court who did not speak
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  Speaker 1: to me. I was too excited to notice anything, too
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  Speaker 1: frightened to ask questions. Indeed, I could scarcely think what
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  Speaker 1: I was saying or what was being said to me.
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  Speaker 1: I have given this account of the Frost King affair
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  Speaker 1: because it was important in my life and education, and
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  Speaker 1: in order that there might be no misunderstandings. I have
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  Speaker 1: set forth all the facts as they appear to me,
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  Speaker 1: without the thought of defending myself or of laying blame
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  Speaker 1: on any one. End of Chapter fourteen