Library Collections: Document: Full Text

It was necessary for me to write Algebra and Geometry in class and solve problems in Physics, and this I could not do until we bought a Braille writer, by means of which I could put down the steps of my work. I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires which had bent and pointed ends. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in a way I am ashamed to remember, especially as the signs of my trouble were afterward used against Miss Sullivan, the only person of all the kind friends I had there who could make the rough places smooth.

Little by little, however, my difficulties began to disappear. The embossed books and other apparatus arrived, and I threw myself into the work with renewed confidence. Algebra and Geometry were the only studies that continued to defy my efforts to comprehend them. As I have said before, I had no aptitude for Mathematics; the different points were not explained to me as fully as I wished. The geometrical diagrams were particularly vexing because I could not see the relation of the different parts to each other, even on the cushion.

Withdrawal from the Cambridge School

JUST before the books came Mr. Gilman had begun to remonstrate with Miss Sullivan on the ground that I was working too hard, and in spite of my earnest protestations he reduced the number of my recitations. At the beginning we had agreed that I should take five years to prepare for college, but at the end of the first year the success of my examinations led Miss Sullivan and two of the most experienced teachers at the school to assert that I could without too much effort complete my preparation in two years more. Mr. Gilman at first agreed to this, but when my tasks had become somewhat perplexing he insisted that I was overworked, and that I should remain at his school three years longer. I steadily protested that I could and would do everything to enter college on the same terms as the girls in my classes. In vain. On the seventeenth of November I was not very well and did not go to school. Although Miss Sullivan knew that it was not serious, yet Mr. Gilman, on hearing of my indisposition, was convinced that I was breaking down and made changes in my studies which would have rendered it impossible for me to take my final examinations with my class. Finally the difference of opinion between Mr. Gilman and Miss Sullivan resulted in my mother's withdrawing me and my sister from the Cambridge school.

After some delay it was arranged that I should continue my studies under a tutor, Mr. Merton S. Keith, of Cambridge. Miss Sullivan and I spent that winter with friends in Wrentham, twenty-five miles from Boston. From February to July, 1898, Mr. Keith came out to Wrentham twice a week and taught me Algebra, Geometry, Greek and Latin, Miss Sullivan interpreting his instruction. In October, 1898, we returned to Boston. For eight months Mr. Keith gave me lessons five times a week, in periods of about an hour. He explained each time what I did not understand in the previous lesson, assigned new work, and took home with him the Greek exercises which I had written during the week on my typewriter, corrected them fully and clearly, and returned them to me. In this way my preparation for college went on uninterruptedly. I found it much easier and pleasanter to be taught by myself than to receive instruction in classes. There was no hurry, no confusion. My teacher had plenty of time to explain what I did not understand, so I got on faster and did better work than I ever did in school. I still found more difficulty in mastering problems in Mathematics than I did in any other of my studies. I wish Algebra and Geometry had been half as easy for me as the Languages and Literature. But even Mathematics Mr. Keith made interesting; he succeeded in whittling problems small enough to get through my brain. He kept my mind alert and eager, and trained it to reason clearly, and to seek conclusions calmly and logically, instead of jumping wildly into space, as it were, and arriving nowhere. Moreover, he was always forbearing, no matter how dull I might be, and, believe me, my stupidity would often have exhausted the patience of that phenomenally patient man, Job!

Final Examinations to Enter College

ON JUNE 29 and 30, 1899, I took my final examinations for Radcliffe College. The first day I had elementary Greek and advanced Latin, and the second day Geometry, Algebra and advanced Greek.

The college authorities objected to Miss Sullivan's reading the examination papers to me; so Mr. Eugene C. Vining, one of the instructors at the Perkins Institution for the Blind, was employed to copy the papers for me in American Braille. Mr. Vining was a stranger to me and could not communicate with me except by writing Braille. The Proctor was also a stranger, and did not attempt to communicate with me in any way.