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For three years the manual alphabet had therefore been Helen's only medium of intercourse with the outside world, and by means of it she had acquired a comprehensive vocabulary, which enabled her to converse freely, read intelligently, and write good idiomatic English. Nevertheless, the impulse to utter audible sounds was strong within her, and the constant efforts which I made to repress this instinctive tendency were of no avail. It did not occur to me that my pupil might possess unusual aptitude for learning articulation. I knew that Laura Bridgman had shown the same intuitive desire to produce sounds, and had even learned to pronounce a few simple words, which she took great delight in using, and I did not doubt that Helen could accomplish as much as this. I thought, however, that the advantage she would derive would not repay her for the time and labor that such an experiment would cost.

Moreover, the absence of hearing renders the voice monotonous and often very disagreeable; and such speech is generally unintelligible except to those familiar with the speaker. Even if Helen could learn to speak, I regarded her inability to watch the lips of others as an insurmountable obstacle in the way of her intelligent use of oral language Too much stress, it seems to me, is often laid upon the importance of teaching a deaf child to articulate, -- a process which may he detrimental to the pupil's intellectual development. In the very nature of things articulation is an unsatisfactory means of education; while the use of the manual alphabet quickens and invigorates mental activity, since through it the deaf child is brought into close contact with the English language, and the highest and most abstract ideas may be conveyed to the mind readily and accurately. Helen's case proved it to be also an invaluable aid in acquiring articulation, as she was already perfectly familiar with words and the construction of sentences and had only mechanical difficulties to overcome.

Before describing the process of teaching Helen to speak, it may be well to state briefly to what extent she had used the vocal organs before she began to receive regular instruction in articulation. When she was stricken down with the illness which resulted in her loss of sight and hearing, at the age of nineteen months, she was fast learning to talk. The unmeaning babblings of the infant were becoming day by day conscious and voluntary signs of what she felt and thought. But the disease checked her progress in the acquisition of oral language, and when her physical strength returned it was found that she had ceased to speak intelligibly because she could no longer hear a sound. She continued to exercise her vocal organs mechanically, as ordinary children do. Her cries and laughter and the tones of her voice as she pronounced many word elements were perfectly natural, but the child evidently attached no significance to them, and with one exception they were produced not with any intention of communicating with those around her, but from the sheer necessity of exercising her innate, organic and hereditary faculty of expression. She always attached a meaning to the word water, which was one of the first sounds her baby lips learned to form, and it was the only word which she continued to articulate after she lost her hearing. Her pronunciation of this gradually became indistinct, and when I first knew her it was nothing more than a peculiar noise. Nevertheless, it was the only sign she ever made for water, and not until she had learned to spell the word with her fingers did she forget the spoken symbol. The word water and the gesture which corresponds to the word good-bye seem to have been all that the child remembered of the natural and acquired signs with which she had been familiar before her illness.

As she became acquainted with her surroundings through the sense of feeling (I use the word in the broadest sense, as including all tactile impressions), she felt more and more the pressing necessity of communicating with those around her. Her little hands felt of every object and observed every movement of the persons about her, and she was quick to imitate these movements. She was thus able to express her more imperative needs and many of her thoughts.

At the time when I became her teacher she had made for herself upwards of sixty signs, all of which were more or less ingenious, and were readily understood by those who knew her. Whenever she wished for anything very much she would gesticulate in a very expressive manner. Failing to make herself understood, she would become violent and often uncontrollable. This shows that in the years of her mental imprisonment she depended entirely upon the natural language of the heart for knowledge of the outside world; and it is interesting to observe that, although abandoned at this early age solely to resources of hereditary transmission and imitation, she did not work out for herself any sort of articulate language capable of expressing the ideas which were evolved from her busy brain. It seems, however, that, while she was still suffering from severe pain, she noticed the movements of her mother's lips when the latter was talking; for she recalls some of these early impressions in a letter written to Mr. Anagnos.