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No deaf child who has earnestly tried to speak the words which he has never heard -- to come out of the prison of silence, where no tone of love, no song of bird, no strain of music can ever pierce the stillness -- can forget the thrill of surprise, the pathos of pain, the joy of discovery which have come over him when he first learns to utter a word. Only such a one can appreciate the eagerness with which I talked to my toys, to stones, to trees, to birds and dumb animals, or the delight I felt when at my call my little sister ran to me or my dogs obeyed my commands. It is an unspeakable boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no interpretation. As I talk, happy thoughts flutter up out of my words that might perhaps have struggled in vain to escape the barriers of my fingers. Before I even heard that a deaf child could learn to speak I was conscious of dissatisfaction with the means of communication I already possessed. One who is entirely dependent upon the manual alphabet has always a sense of restraint, of narrowness in one's sphere of life. Such was the feeling that began to agitate me with a vexing, forward-reaching sense of a lack that should be filled. My thoughts would often rise and beat up like birds against the wind; and I persisted in using my lips and voice. Friends tried to discourage this tendency, fearing lest it would hurry me on to sorrow and disappointment; but I never heeded them; and an incident soon occurred which led to the breaking down of this great barrier: I heard the story of Ragnhild Kaata.

In 1890 Mrs. Lampson, who had been one of Laura Bridgman's teachers, and who had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden, came to see me and told me of Ragnhild Kaata, a deaf and blind girl in Norway who had actually been taught to speak. The lady had scarcely finished telling me about this girl's success before I was on fire with eagerness: I resolved that I, too, would learn to speak. I would not rest satisfied until my teacher took me, for advice and assistance, to Miss Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School. This lovely, sweet-natured lady offered to teach me herself, and we began the twenty-sixth of March.

Method of Teaching the Deaf to Speak

HER method was this: she passed my hand lightly over her face, and let me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a sound. I was eager to imitate every motion and in an hour had learned six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. Miss Fuller gave me eleven lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt when I uttered my first connected sentence: "It is warm." True, they were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech! My soul, conscious of new strength, came out from its prison-house, and was reaching through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.

But it must not be supposed that I could really talk in this short time. Far from it. I had learned only the elements of speech. Miss Fuller and my teacher, Miss Sullivan, could understand me, but most people would not have understood one word in a hundred. Nor is it true that, after I had learned these elements, I did the rest of the work myself. But for Miss Sullivan's genius, untiring perseverance and devotion, I could not have progressed as far as I have toward perfect, natural speech. In the first place, I labored night and day before I could be understood even by my most intimate friends; in the second place, I needed Miss Sullivan's assistance constantly in my efforts to articulate each sound clearly and to combine all sounds in a thousand ways. Even now she calls my attention daily to mispronounced words. All teachers of the deaf know what this means, and only they can at all appreciate the peculiar difficulties with which I had to contend. I was wholly dependent on my fingers: I had to use the sense of touch in catching the vibrations of the throat, the movements of the mouth and the expression of the face; and often this sense was at fault. In such cases I was forced to repeat the words or sentences, sometimes for hours, until I felt the proper "ring" in my own voice. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished renewed my courage and spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.

Speech is the Dearest Treasure

"MY LITTLE sister will understand me now," was a thought stronger than all obstacles. I used to repeat ecstatically, "I am not dumb now." I thought especially of my dear mother, and I could not be despondent while I anticipated the delight of talking to her myself and reading her responses from her lips. It astonished me to find how much easier it is to talk than to spell on the hand, and I discarded the manual alphabet as a medium of communication on my part; but Miss Sullivan and a few friends still use it in speaking to me, for it is more convenient than lip-reading.