Seeing and Hearing with the Hands

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 904, 22 February 1930, Page 18

Seeing and Hearing with the Hands

Amazing Helen Keller, Blind and Deaf, Enjoys Life Fully and Plays Her Part in the World.

HAVE read several books about Helen Keller and two or three from her own pen, and the marvel of her

achievement grows by what it feeds on, writes Robert Blatchford in “John o’ London’s Weekly.” How insoluble seems the initial problem. Here is a child, deaf and dumb and blind. How is she to be taught to read and write and speak and think? We can say to a blind child; “These touches of the fingers, so and so, mean ’doll,’ and ’cup’ and ’water.’ ” We can show a deaf child letters and words and point to a doll, a cup, some water. But confront an average person, who has not read of the Keller miracle, with a child who can neither see nor hear and ask: “How shall we get words or thoughts through that abyss of darkness and silence?” and what would be the answer?

I confess that when I first heard about Helen Keller: how, though she

was a blind, deaf mute, she had been taught to read and write and speak; how she had learnt English and French and Latin and German; how she had lectured and had written books; I could not conceive of any method of approach, of any possible beginning. In the solving of such a problem it is the first step that counts. All that follows is due to her own abnormal intelligence, courage, and perseverance and to the marvellous devotion and patience of her teacher. Miss Sullivan.

What a ma.rvel; yet how simple. First the child was made conscious of certain delicate flickerings of fingers in her hand. Slowly she realised that these quivering touches had a sequence, a pattern; that they repeated. Then she was given a doll and taught that certain finger touches meant doll? No. Meant the thing, the figure, she held in her arms. Yet still, she had no conception of letters, of a word, of a name. I will go back here from her new book, “Midstream” to “The Story of My Life.” Helen Keller says that when she had played a little while with the doll her teacher slowly spelled into her hand the word d-o-1-1. She continues: I was at once interested in this fingerplay and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to ray mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word, or even that words existed. I waa simply making my fingers go in monkey-like Imitation. * * * It took weeks of patient work to make the child understand that things

have names and the mistakes were very baffling. Helen could not separate and distinguish the words mug and water. Miss Sullivan persevered, and then light came: suddenly, in a flash. Pupil and child had walked to the pump, where someone was drawing water:— My teacher put my hand under the

spout. As the cool stream gushed over my hand she spelled into the other the word “water,” first slowly then rapldiv I stood still, _ my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of «omeH! ins forgotten—;a thrill of returning thought: and somehow the mystery of

Was fevealed to me. I knew ©SSSgfSSSfS

Yes; the barriers were swept away. But though I have read of the method and success I am still left wondering. Miss Keller says in “Midstream” that critics of her books would ask queer questions, as, for example: “What light has she to write about landscapes she cannot see?” And that is a poser. She reads poetry and quotes it. isow what can she make of: “The c?2 P v° f teaves and ripple of rain”? She has never heard lisp or ripple. But she obviously feels sounds as she feels colour. Here is her quick picture of a flower field:—

~ Th® fragrance was heavenly, and when < o^on-cri'rf omen and children in brighttbe e. ... re ® se s and shawls came to pick wtth fl tm>l£ S Ln?ieb? e market and waked us beme in an U VJf^ ter a T ,d Eon S. it was like oeing in an Italian village What an busy* cHv 11 ® 14 was in Se the heart of Un a Sf carSath^l 1 ? 6 ? Wlth their arras fuU women winf~tm, Pictures; but live and °coiS‘ e o r f C bf 6 k S< V d ° la^’e ° da es cSat?SFng^kt%^d bri^ae?aniuC “ s!daaS and exu-eplive ha p py volces bo % \b would imagine that passage to if,.*;} I ,® tv ° rk of someone deaf and She d i's S, U m Helen Keller is like that, wonder ’ as many others, a wonder, an inscrutable mystery. late her K « e " er .f lUßt ’ 1 suppose, translaneuaire Se <3b atlon M. aild ideas into our Sh „ wUI kno *’ the shape better than 6 and Scent of a geranium is “IcaWe?. t® Can: but w hat exactly acain ebe * „° ber? With sounds, again, she tells how one evening she

was standing by a wistaria bush when the vine began to vibrate, and the rail to vibrate under her hands: “Th* pulsations were rhythmical and repeated over and over, exactly as I haTt felt a note repeated when I have placed my fingers on a singer's throat . . . I guessed that a breere or a bird was rocking the vine.” And Miss Sullivan told her it was the song of » whip-poor-will. So when Miss Keller writes of the children’s happy laughter or the song of the lark, she evidently does not mean what the wordi mean to us.

• * * "Midstream” is a fascinating booh, as Helen Keller is a fascinating ml 5 " tery. She is very gentle, sweet; a> honest as the north light, and all *“ c know her love her. But her story, fair as a spring garden, sad as the robin’s song in the fall, reads like tM words of a visitor from another star, a star of silence and darkness where the neighbours talk with their fingers and the lovers, I suppose, with kisses. Down upon our common earth, this voiceless lady has dropped, like t*® flying woman on Peter Wilkins, to ten us secrets of another life and char® us with her courage and spiritual grace. If she does not enable us t realise to the full what it means to be deaf and blind, she does give n some insight into those dark region* And this brave Miss Keller *** blind as well as deaf, and could fill see her teacher’s lips; she hadt feel them. And she learned toreaa and to think, and mastered ftwein languages, and kept her smile* and*®* warm affections, and has written boo as wonderful as herself. * * * Of her sad little love-story, ***** in this volume, I say nothing, a broken melody. But it did not Helen Keller. She is brave.