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The Story Of My Life, Part 1

From: The Story Of My Life Series
Creator: Helen Keller (author)
Date: April 1902
Publication: The Ladies' Home Journal
Source: Available at selected libraries

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Helen Keller's Own Story of Her Life

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Written Entirely by the Wonderful Girl Herself

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In the story of my life here presented to the readers of The Ladies' Home Journal, I have tried to show that afflictions may be looked at in such a way that they become privileges.

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Helen Keller
Cambridge, 1902

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AN EDITORIAL FOREWORD

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AS THE feat may seem almost incredible, it may be in order to say at the beginning that every word of this story as printed in THE JOURNAL has actually been written by Helen Keller herself -- not dictated, but first written in "Braille" (raised points); then transferred to the typewriter by the wonderful girl herself; next read to her by her teacher by means of the fingers; corrected; then read again to her, and in the proof finally read to her once more. It is the editor's hope to be able to publish at the conclusion of Miss Keller's own story a supplementary article by one of her friends, explaining, in detail, exactly how this marvelous work was done.

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THE EDITOR OF THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL.

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PART ONE: THE LONG NIGHT

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IT IS with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. When I try to classify my earliest impressions I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link that period with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from "the first years of my life; but the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest." Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been lost sight of in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important.

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I WAS born June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of Northern Alabama, and lived up to the time of the illness that deprived me of my sight and hearing in a tiny cottage consisting of a large square room, and a small one in which the servant slept. My father built this cottage for an office after the Civil War, and when he married my mother they went to live in it. It was completely covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckle. From the garden it looked like an arbor. The little porch was hidden from view by a screen of yellow roses and Southern smilax. It was the favorite haunt of humming-birds and bees. The old house where the family lived was a few steps from our little rose bower, and was also vine-covered.

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The homestead was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood. Even in the days before my teacher came I used to feel along the square, stiff boxwood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell, would find the first violets and lilies. There, too, after my fits of temper I went to find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass. What joy it was to lose myself in that garden of flowers, to wander happily from spot to spot, until coming suddenly upon a beautiful vine, I recognized it by its leaves and blossoms, and knew it was the vine which covered the tumble-down summer-house at the farther end of the garden! Close by were trailing clematis, drooping jessamine, and some rare sweet flowers called butterfly lilies, because their fragile petals resembled the butterfly's wings. But the roses -- they were loveliest of all. Never have I found in the greenhouses of the North such heart-satisfying roses as the climbing roses of my Southern home. They used to hang in long festoons from our porch, filling the whole air with their fragrance, untainted by any earthly smell; and in the early morning, washed in the dew, they felt so soft and seemed so pure. I could not help wondering if they did not resemble the asphodels of God's garden.

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THE family on my father's side are descended from Caspar Keller, a native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education -- rather a singular coincidence. My grandfather, Caspar Keller's son, "entered" large tracts of land in Alabama and finally settled there. I have been told that once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the letters to his family, giving charming and vivid accounts of these trips. My Grandmother Keller was a daughter of Alexander Moore, one of Lafayette's aides, and granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early Colonial Governor of Virginia. She was also second cousin to Robert E. Lee. My father, Arthur Keller, was a Captain in the Confederate Army, and my mother was his second wife and many years younger. Her grandfather, Benjamin Adams, lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts, for many years. His wife was Anna E. Goodhue. Their son, Charles Adams, was born in Boston and moved to Helena, Arkansas, before the Civil War; and when the war broke out took sides with the South and became a Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army. He married Helen Everett who belonged to the same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.

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