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The Harvard examinations were held from the twenty-ninth of June to the third of July. As that time approached, I practised Helen on examination-papers of previous years in French, German, History, and Latin. Latin was not one of the subjects that we had intended to permit Helen to be examined in. She had not studied the subject one-half so long as normal pupils are accustomed to study it. I was surprised, as the close of the work of the year approached, to have the teacher of Latin tell me that Helen was as well fitted to take the admission examination in her subject as any of the candidates who had been through the usual course. I hesitated, fearful at first lest the warm feeling that I knew had grown up between Helen and her teachers might have led to a too partial estimate of the pupil's ability. However, it was shown to me that no doubt existed, and I gave my consent, thus adding two hours to the number that we had at first planned, making nine for these "preliminaries," and leaving but seven hours for the "finals," which were to come at some future year.

So much for the interesting process of preparing a young girl blind and deaf for the entrance examinations of Harvard College. It only remains to summarize the result. Examinations are not a perfect test, but my experience of many years, during which hundreds of girls have passed under my personal view, has satisfied me that among the great number who are examined there are very few who are not, on the whole, properly weighed and classified. It is usually the nervous, anxious candidate who fails when she is prepared; and occasionally, on the other hand, a cool, collected girl will pass though she is not perfectly fitted. There was little anxiety about the result in the present instance. Helen was able to marshal her mental forces and to bring them to bear upon the subject before her much better than the average girl. It is, doubtless, a wonder that she could be fitted at all; but after we have overcome our surprise at that, we find no difficulty in believing that she is able to accomplish any mental feat that is possible to woman. The examination was to be a test, not only of the ability of Miss Keller, but also of the processes designed and carried out for years by Miss Sullivan.

It happened that Helen's most difficult examination was the first on the list. Advanced German came on Tuesday, June 29th, from nine to eleven o'clock. I had arranged to have a room where we could be free from all interruptions, and I had posted at the door a man who had orders not to admit any one except officers of Harvard or Radcliffe College. The papers were given out at nine o'clock at Harvard College, and were brought to me under seal. Helen sat at her type-writer, and I took a position at her side, so that my right hand could grasp hers. We had often done the same thing before, but no previous effort had been quite like this one, and we both were conscious of it. On other occasions we had tried to see if we could cope with the paper; now we were actually to write something to be submitted to Harvard examiners as a final test. It was plain to me that Helen felt this. I read the entire paper through at first, and then I read it sentence by sentence. Helen repeated the words with her voice as my hands made the signs, because I was determined that she should not be prejudiced by any failure of mine to present to her mind the paper as it was printed, and, as I could not read the manual alphabet, there was no way to make sure of this except by having her repeat the words that I spelled.

The paper was not an easy one. It was evident that Helen felt that. Her brow was knit; her fingers seemed to want to clutch an idea; perspiration came; but with regularity the type-writer spelled out the English of the German text. Helen forged ahead, and I anxiously kept her supplied with new sentences to translate. By ten forty-one she had put into English all of the German from the German books that she had read. Then she took up the English to be translated into German. At eleven five this, too, had been done. Next there was a passage from a book that Helen had never seen. This was completed at eleven forty-four. I then read to Helen what she had written, so far as the time permitted, and she dictated such changes as she thought necessary. These I interlined. It then went to the examiners, with a certificate from me that it was the sole and unaided work of candidate number 233.

There was no ordeal on Wednesday, but at nine on Thursday the examination in Latin began. I read the paper just as I had read that in German. It was not easy, but it was plain that it did not present the difficulties that the German paper had, and Helen was very cool. She was confident. The work went steadily forward, and was duly completed and sent to the College as before. On Friday, July 2, at a little before noon, we began the one-hour paper on the history of Greece and Rome, and it was followed, with a slight intermission, by the two-hour paper on English. These were uneventful. They were play for Helen, though naturally there were matters in the history papers of which she had never heard. She could have written indefinitely on both of these papers. We had spent weeks in the critical study of Burke's speech, but not a question was based on it. We had thought that DeFoe's journal of the plague was too horrible to trouble Helen with, and but a few pages had been read to her. She found some questions on it, however, and she was able to write satisfactorily on the subject.