Chapter I.
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It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that gs about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fad fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The aints the childs experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest." Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have<mark>99lib?</mark> lost their poignancy; and many is of vital importan my early education have been fotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most iing and important.I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama.
The family on my fathers side is desded from Caspar Keller, a native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss a<q>九九藏书</q>ors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurid wrote a book on the subject of their education--rather a singular ce; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his aors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
My grandfather, Caspar Kellers son, "entered" large tracts of land in Alabama and fin<tt></tt>ally settled there. I have been told that once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the letters to his family, which give charming and vivid ats of these trips.
My Grandmother Keller was a daughter of one of Lafayettes aides, Alexander Moore, an<s>藏书网</s>d granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early ial Governor of Virginia. She was also sed cousin to Robert E. Lee.
My father, Arthur H. Keller, tain in the federate Army, and my mother, Kate Adams, was his sed wife and many years younger. Her grandfather, Benjamin Adams, married Susanna E. Goodhue, and lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, for many years. Their son, Charles Adams, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When the Civil War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became a brigadier-general. He married Lucy Hele, who beloo the same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
I lived, up to the time of the illhat deprived me of my sight and hearing, in a tiny house sisting of a large square room and a small one, in which the servant slept. It is a in the South to build a small house he homestead as an ao be used on occasion. Such a house my father built after the Civil War, and when he married my mother they went to live in it. It was pletely covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckles. From the garden it looked like an arbour. The little porch was hidden from view by a s of yellow roses and Southern smilax. It was the favourite haunt of humming-birds and bees.
The Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our little rose-bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood.
Even in the days before my teacher came, I used to feel along the square stiff boxwood hedges, and, guided by the sense of smell would find the first violets and lilies. There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to find fort and to hide my hot fa the cool leaves and grass. What joy it was to lose myself in that garden of flowers, to wander happily from spot to spot, until, ing suddenly upon a beautiful vine, I reized it by its leaves and blossoms, and k was the vine which covered the tumble-down summer-house at the farther end of the garden! Here, also, were trailing clematis, drooping jessamine, and some rare sweet flowers called
butterfly lilies, because their fragile petals resemble butterflies wings. But the roses--they were loveliest of all. Never have I found in the greenhouses of the North such heart-satisfying roses as the climbing roses of my southern home. They used to hang in looons from our porch, filling the whole air with their fragrance, untainted by ahy smell; and in the early m, washed in the dew, they felt so soft, so pure, I could not help w if they did not resemble the asphodels of Gods garden.
The beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life. I came, I saw, I quered, as the first baby in the family always does. There was the usual amount of discussion as to a name for me. The first baby in the family was not to be lightly named, every one was emphatic about that. My father suggested the name of Mildred Campbell, an aor whom he highly esteemed, and he deed to take any further part in the discussion. My mother solved the problem by giving it as her wish that I should be called after her mother, whose maiden name was Hele. But in the excitement of carryio church my father lost the name on the way, very naturally, si was one in which he had deed to have a part. When the minister asked him for it, he just remembered that it had been decided to call me after my grandmother, and he gave her name as Helen Adams.
I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition.
Everything that I saw other people do I insisted upon imitating. At six months I could pipe out "How dye,”
and one day I attracted every otention by saying "Tea, tea, tea" quite plainly. Even after my illness I remembered one of the words I had learned in these early months. It was the word "water," and I tio make some sound for that word after all other speech was lost. I ceased making the sound "wah-wah" only when I learo spell the word.
They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just take of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mothers lap and almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.
These happy days did not last long. One brief spring, musical with the song of robin and mog-bird, one summer ri fruit and roses, oumn of gold and crimson sped by aheir gifts at the feet of an eager, delighted child. Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unsciousness of a new-born baby. They called it acute gestion of the stomad brain. The doctor thought I could not live. Early one m, however, the fever left me as suddenly and mysteriously as it had e. There was great rejoi<big>９９lib?</big>g in the family that m, but no one, not even the doctor, khat I should never see or hear again.
I fancy I still have fused recolles of that illness. I especially remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in my waling hours of fret and pain, and the agony and bewilderment with which I awoke after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so dry and hot, to the wall away from the once-loved light, which came to me dim a more dim each day. But, except for these fleeting memories, if, ihey be memories, it all seems very unreal, like a nightmare. Gradually I got used to the silend darkhat surrounded me and fot that it had ever been different, until she came--my teacher--who was to set my spirit free. But during the first een months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkhat followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, "the day is ours, and what the day has shown.”
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