HELEN KELLER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 131, 21 October 1912, Page 8

HELEN KELLER.

So man)' apparently miraculous things has Miss Helen Keller, the uxtrnordinarily talented Mind, (leaf and dumb author, learned, that one is hardly to bo .surprised by anything she might attempt and conquer. It may be remembered .that the writer, in reviewing, some time ago, "Helen Keller's "Llife" of hersolf, told how she used to climb trees, play games and swim—even ride ;l bicycle. Now sh& is actually able., by her own almost endless patience and that of her .teachers, to sing, and in tunc. She speak.) .three languages —English, French and German—quite fluently, and has given a demonstration before a congress of scientists of the Harvard Medical School, and even they have pronounced her feats as wonderful. There is little doubt that her victories will imbue deaf and dumb teachers and students with a hope that . ptherwise could not have existed. Miss Keller demonstrated her wonderful successs in overcoming her infirmities by addressing a congress at Otologists (ear specialists) at Harvard Medical

I School in English, French and German I recently. Dr. M. A. Goldstein, of St. Louis, used Mias Keller to illustrate a ' paper which he read dealing with the t progress of the education of the deaf land dumb. The demonstration was of international importance. Some of the most noted specialists in America ;;.!<! ■in Europe were present to hear Mk> Keller talk. They realised that she is the most wonderful type of young woman of her kind in all the world. Miss Keller's is the most extraordinary case ever known in the education of. blind deaf mutes. When barely two years old she was deprived of sight, smell and hearing by an attack of scarlet fever. At the age of seven she was taught words by means of touch with an instrument invented by Dr. S. G. Howe. Her teacher, Miss Anne .Mousfield Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins Institute at Boston, has described how one of the difficulties was solved. "Wo went out to the pump-house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled 'w-a-t-e-r' in Helen's free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came into her face. 'She spelled 'water' several times," Afterwards Miss Keller's education proceeded at an astonishing speed. Slie studied foreign languages, mathematics, literature. She has even taken a degree in mathematics, and she has writi ten several books dealing with her own life.