Chapter XIII
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It was in the spring of 1890 that I learo speak. The impulse to utter audible sounds had always been strong within me. I used to make noises, keeping one hand on my throat while the other hahe movements of my lips. I leased with anything that made a noise and liked to feel the cat purr and the dog bark. I also liked to keep my hand on a sihroat, or on a piano when it was being played. Before I lost my sight and hearing, I was fast learning to talk, but after my illness it was found that I had ceased to speak because I could not hear. I used to sit in my mothers lap all day long and keep my hands on her face because it amused me to feel the motions of her lips; and I moved my lips, too, although I had fotten what talking was. My friends say that I laughed and cried naturally, and for awhile I made many sounds and word-elements, not because they were a means of unication, but because the need of exerg my vocal ans was imperative. There was, however, one word the meaning of which I still remembered, WATER. I pronou "wa-wa." Even this became less and less intelligible until the time when Miss Sullivan began to teach me. I stopped using it only after I had lea<samp></samp>ro spell the word on my fingers.I had known for a long time that the people about me used a method of unication different from mine; and even before I khat a deaf child could be taught to speak, I was scious of dissatisfa with the means of unication I already possessed. One who is entirely depe upon the manual alphabet has always a sense of restraint, of narrowness. This feeling began to agitate me with a vexing, forward-reag sense of a lack that should be filled. My thoughts would often rise a up like birds against the wind, and I persisted in using my lips and voice. Friends tried to disce this tendency, feari it would lead to disappoi. But I persisted, an<samp>.</samp>d an act soon occurred which resulted in the breaking down of this great barrier--I heard the story nhild Kaata.
In 1890 Mrs. Lamson, who had been one of Laura Bridgmans teachers, and who had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden, came to see me, and told me nhild Kaata, a deaf and blind girl in Norway who had actually been taught to speak. Mrs. Lamson had scarcely fielling me about this girls success before I was on fire with eagerness. I resolved that I, too, would learn to speak. I would not rest satisfied until my teacher took me, for advid assistao Miss Sarah Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School.
This lovely, sweet-natured lady offered to teach me herself, and we begawenty-sixth of March, 1890.
Miss Fullers method was this: she passed my hand lightly over her face, a me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a sound. I was eager to imitate every motion and in an hour had learned six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. Miss Fuller <s>.</s>gave me eleven lessons in all. I shall never fet the surprise and delight I felt when I uttered my first ected sentence, "It is warm." True, they were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My soul, scious of rength, came out of bondage, and was reag through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith.
No deaf child who has early tried to speak the words which he has never heard--to e out of the prison of silence, where no tone of love, no song of bird, no strain of music ever pierces the stillness-- fet the thrill of surprise, the joy of discovery which came over him wheered his first word. Only such a one appreciate the eagerness with which I talked to my toys, to storees, birds and dumb animals, or the delight I felt when at my call Mildred ran to me or my dogs obeyed my ands. It is an unspeakable boon to me to be able to speak in winged words that need no interpretation. As I talked, happy thoughts fluttered up out of my words that might perhaps have struggled in vain to escape my fingers.
But it must not be supposed that I could really talk in this short time. I had learned only the elements of speech. Miss Fuller and Miss Sullivan could uand me, but most people would not have uood one word in a hundred. Nor is it true that, after I had learhese elements, I did the rest of the work myself. But for Miss Sullivans genius, untiring perseverand devotion, I could not have progressed as far as I have toward natural speech. In the first place, I laboured night and day before I could be uood even by my most intimate friends; in the sed place, I needed Miss Sullivans assistance stantly in my efforts to
articulate each sound clearly and to bine all sounds in a thousand ways. Even now she calls my attention every day to mispronounced words.
All teachers of the deaf know what this means, and only they at all appreciate the peculiar difficulties with which I had to tend. In reading my teachers lips I was wholly depe on my fingers: I had to use the sense of tou catg the vibrations of the throat, the movements of the mouth and the expression of the face; and often this sense was at fault. In such cases I was forced to repeat the words or sentences, sometimes for hours, until I felt the proper ring in my own voice. My work ractice, practice, practice.
Discement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the moment the thought that I should soo home and show my loved ones what I had aplished, spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
"My little sister will uand me now," was a thought strohan all obstacles. I used to repeat ecstatically, "I am not dumb now." I could not be despo while I anticipated the delight of talking to my mother and reading her responses from her lips. It astonished me to find how much easier it is to talk than to spell with the fingers, and I discarded the manual alphabet as a medium of unication on my part; but Miss Sullivan and a few friends still use it in speaking to me, <dfn></dfn>for it is more ve and more rapid than lip-reading.
Just here, perhaps, I had better explain our use of the manual alphabet, which <s></s>seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The position of the hand is as easy to feel as it is to see. I do not feel each letter any more than you see each letter separately when you read. stant practice makes the fingers very flexible, and some of my friends spell rapidly--about as fast as an expert writes on a typewriter. The mere spelling is, of course, no more a scious act than it is in writing.
When I had made speech my own, I could not wait to go home. At last the happiest of happy moments arrived. I had made my homeward jouralking stantly to Miss Sullivan, not for the sake of talking, but determio improve to the last minute. Almost before I k, the train stopped at the Tuscumbia station, and there on the platform stood the whole family. My eyes fill with tears now as I think how my mother pressed me close to her, speechless and trembling with delight, taking in every syllable that I spoke, while little Mildred seized my free hand and kissed it and danced, and my father expressed his pride and affe in a big sile was as if Isaiahs prophecy had been fulfilled in me, "The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands!”
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