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First Steps Toward Learning to Read

THE next important step in my education which I remember distinctly was learning to read. As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly learned that each printed word stood for an object, an act or a quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the words so that they would make little sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make them with objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for example, "doll," "is," "On," "bed," and placed each name on its object; then I put my doll on the bed with the words "is," "on," "bed" arranged beside the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and, at the same time, carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves. One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word "girl" on my pinafore and stood in the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, "is," "in," "wardrobe." Nothing delighted me so much as this game. I played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged in object-sentences.

From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my "Reader for Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found them my joy knew no bounds. Thus I began to read. Of the time when I began to read connected stories I shall speak later.

I had now the key to all language, and 1 was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; they catch the words that fall from others' lips on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually, from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable to the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare. At first, when my teacher told me about a new thing, I asked very few questions. My ideas were vague, and my vocabulary was inadequate; but as my knowledge of things grew, and I learned more and more words, my field of inquiry broadened, and I would return again and again to the same subject, eager for further information. Sometimes a new word revived an image that some earlier experience had engraved on my brain.

Puzzled by the Meaning of "Love"

I REMEMBER the morning that I first asked the meaning I of the word love. This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me; but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my mother. She put her arm gently around me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen;" "What is love?" I asked. She drew me closer to her and said "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it. I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?" "No," said my teacher. Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us. "Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came -- "Is this not love?" It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head, and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. It seemed strange to me that my teacher could not show me love.

A day or two afterward I was stringing beads of different sizes in symmetrical groups --two large beads, three small ones, and so on. I had made many mistakes. Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and again with gentle patience. Finally I noticed a very obvious error in the sequence, and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads. Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with emphasis, "Think." In a flash I knew that that word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.

I was still for a long time, trying to find a meaning for love in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its Southern splendor. Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?" "Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out," she replied. And then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained: "You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play." Then the beautiful truth burst upon my mind -- I realized that there were invisible lines stretched between my mind and the minds of others..