Chapter XIV
百度搜索 The Story of My Life 天涯 或 The Story of My Life 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
The winter of 1892 was darkened by the one cloud in my childhoods bright sky. Joy deserted my heart, and for a long, long time I lived in doubt, ay and fear. Books lost their charm for me, and even now the thought of those dreadful days chills my heart. A little story called "The Frost King," which I wrote ao Mr. Anagnos, of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, was at the root of the trouble. In order to make the matter clear, I must set forth the facts ected with this episode, whi<u></u>ch justiy teacher and to myself pels me to relate.I wrote the story when I was at home, the autumn after I had learo speak. We had stayed up at Fern Quarry later than usual. While we were there, Miss Sullivan had described to me the beauties of the late foliage, and it seems that her descriptions revived the memory of a story, which must have beeo me, and which I must have unsciously retained. I thought then that I was "making up a story," as children say, and I eagerly sat down to write it before the ideas should slip from me. My thoughts flowed easily; I felt a sense of joy in the position. Words and images came tripping to my finger ends, and as I thought out senteer sentence, I wrote them on my braille slate. Now, if words and images e to me without effort, it is a pretty sure sign that they are not the offspring of my own mind, but stray waifs that I regretfully dismiss. At that time I eagerly absorbed everything I read without a thought of authorship, and even now I ot be quite sure of the boundary liween my ideas and those I find in books. I suppose that is because so many of my impressions e to me through the medium of others eyes and ears.
Wheory was finished, I read it to my teacher, and I recall now vividly the pleasure I felt in the more beautiful passages, and my annoya being interrupted to have the pronunciation of a word corrected. At di was read to the assembled family, who were surprised that I could write so well. Some one asked me if I had read it in a book.
This question surprised me very much; for I had not the fai recolle of having had it read to me. I spoke up and said, "Oh, no, it is my story, and I have written it for Mr. Anagnos.”
Accly I copied the story a it to him for his birthday. It was suggested that I should ge the title from "Autumn Leaves" to "The Frost King," which I did. I carried the little story to the post-office myself, feeling as if I were walking on air. I little dreamed how cruelly I should pay for that birthday gift.
Mr. Anagnos was delighted with "The Frost King," and published it in one of the Perkins Institutios.
This was the pinnay happiness, from which I was in a little while dashed to earth. I had been in Boston only a short time when it was discovered that a story similar to "The Frost King," called "The Frost Fairies" by Miss Margaret T. by, had appeared before I was born in a book called "Birdie and His Friends." The two stories were so much alike in thought and language that it was evident Miss bys story had beeo me, and that mine was--a plagiarism. It was difficult to make me uand this; but when I did uand I was astonished and grieved. No child ever drank deeper of the cup of bitterhan I did. I had disgraced myself; I had brought suspi upon those I loved best. A how could it possibly have h<var>９９lib?</var>appened? I racked my brain until I was weary to recall anything about the frost that I had read before I wrote "The Frost King"; but I could remember nothing, except the on refereo Jack Frost, and a poem for children, "The Freaks of the Frost," and I knew I had not used that in my position.
At first Mr. Anagnos, though deeply troubled, seemed to believe me. He was unusually tender and kind to me, and for a brief space the shadow lifted. To please him I tried not to be unhappy, and to make myself as pretty as possible for the celebration of Washingtons birthday, which took place very soon after I received the sad news.
I was to be Ceres in a kind of masque given by the blind girls. How well I remember the graceful draperies that enfolded me, the bright autumn leaves that wreathed my head, and the fruit and grain at my feet and in my hands, ah all the piety of the masque the oppressive sense of ing ill that made my heart heavy.
The night before the celebration, one of the teachers of the Institution had asked me a question ected with "The Frost King," and I was tellihat Miss Sullivan had talked to me about Jack Frost and his wonderful works. Something I said made her think she detected in my words a fession that I did remember Miss bys story of "The Frost Fairies," and she laid her clusions before Mr. Anagnos, although I had told her most emphatically that she was mistaken.
Mr. Anagnos, who loved me tenderly, thinking that he had been deceived, turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of love and innoce. He believed, or at least suspected, that Miss Sullivan and I had deliberately stolen the bright thoughts of another and imposed them on him to win his admiration. I was brought before a court of iigation posed of the teachers and officers of the Institution, and Miss Sullivan was asked to leave me. Then I was questioned and cross-questioned with what seemed to me a determination on the part of my judges to force me to aowledge that I remembered having had "The Frost Fairies" read to me. I felt in every question the doubt and suspi that was in their minds, and I felt, too, that a loved friend was looking at me reproachfully, although I could not have put all this into words. The blood pressed about my thumpi, and I could scarcely speak, except in monosyllables. Even the scioushat it was only a dreadful mistake did not lessen my suffering, and when at last I was allowed to leave the room, I was dazed and did not notice my teachers caresses, or the tender words of >藏书网</a>my friends, who said I was a brave little girl and they were proud of me.
As I lay in my bed that night, I wept as I hope few children have wept. I felt so cold, I imagined I should die before m, and the thought forted me. I think if this sorrow had e to me when I was older, it would have broken my spirit beyond repairing. But the angel of fetfulness has gathered up and carried away much of the misery and all the bitterness of those sad days.
Miss Sullivan had never heard of "The Frost Fairies" or of the book in which it ublished. With the assistance of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, she iigated the matter carefully, and at last it came out that Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins had a copy of Miss bys "Birdie and His Friends" in 1888, the year that we spent the summer with her at Brewster. Mrs. Hopkins was uo find her copy; but she has told me that at that time, while Miss Sullivan was away on a vacation, she tried to amuse me by reading from various books, and although she could not remember reading "The Frost Fairies" any more than I, yet she felt sure that "Birdie and His Friends" was one of them. She explaihe disappearance of the book by the fact that she had a short time before sold her house and disposed of many juvenile books, such as old schoolbooks and fairy tales, and that "Birdie and His Friends" robably among them.
The stories had little or no meaning for me then; but the mere spelling of the strange words was suffit to amuse a little child who could do almost nothing to amuse herself; and although I do not recall a single circumstance ected with the reading of the stories, yet I ot help thinking that I made a great effort to remember the words, with the iion of having my teacher explain them wheurned. Ohing is certain, the language was ineffaceably stamped upon my brain, though for a long time no one k, least of all myself.
When Miss Sullivan came back, I did not speak to her about "The Frost Fairies," probably because she began at oo read "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which filled my mind to the exclusion of everything else. But the fact remains that Miss bys story was read to me once, and that long after I had fotten it, it came bae so naturally that I never suspected that it was the child of another mind.
In my trouble I received many messages of love and sympathy. All the friends I loved best, except one, have remained my own to the present time.
Miss by herself wrote kindly, "Some day you will write bbr></abbr>a great story out of your own head, that will be a fort ao many." But this kind prophecy has never been fulfilled. I have never played with words again for the mere pleasure of the game. Indeed, I have ever since been tortured by the fear that what I write is not my own. For a long time, when I wrote a letter, even to my mother, I was seized with a sudden feeling of terror, and I would spell the sentences over and over, to make sure that I had not read them in a book. Had it not been for the persistent encement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given up trying to write altogether.
I have read "The Frost Fairies" since, also the letters I wrote in which I used other ideas of Miss bys. I find in one of them, a letter to Mr. Anagnos, dated September 29, 1891, words aimely like those of the book. At the time I was writing "The Frost King," and this letter, like many others, tains phrases which show that my mind was saturated with the story. I represent my teacher as saying to me of the golden autumn leaves, "Yes, they are beautiful enough to fort us for the flight of summer"--an idea direct from Miss bys story.
This habit of assimilating leased me and giving it out again as my oears in muy early correspondend my first attempts at writing. In a position which I wrote about the old cities of Greed Italy, I borrowed my glowing descriptions, with variations, from sources I have fotten. I knew Mr.
Anagnoss great love of antiquity and his enthusiastic appreciation of all beautiful ses about Italy and Greece. I therefathered from all the books I read every bit of poetry or of history that I thought would give him pleasure. Mr. Anagnos, in speaking of my position oies, has said, "These ideas are poeti their essence." But I do not uand how he ever thought a blind and deaf child of eleven could have ied them. Yet I ot think that because I did nihe ideas, my little position is therefore quite devoid of i. It shows me that I could express my appreciation of beautiful and poetic ideas in clear and animated language.
Those early positions were mental gymnastics. I was learning, as all young and inexperienced persons learn, by assimilation and imitation, to put ideas into words. Everything I found in books that pleased me I retained in my memory, sciously or unsciously, and adapted it. The young writer, as Stevenson has said, instinctively tries to copy whatever seems most admirable, and he shifts his admiration with astonishiility. It is only after years of this sort of practice that eve men have learo marshal the legion of words whie thronging through every byway of the mind.
I am afraid I have not yet pleted this process. It is certain that I ot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read bees the very substand texture of my mind.
sequently, in nearly all that I write, I produething which very much resembles the crazy patchwork I used to make when I first learo sew. This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends--pretty bits of silk a; but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to touch alredominated. Likewise my positions are made up of crude notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions of the authors I have read. It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our fused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tenderying to write is very much like trying to put a ese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to aowledge defeat.
"There is no way to bee inal, except to be born so," says Stevenson, and although I may not be inal, I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial, periwigged positions. Then, perhaps, my own thoughts and experiences will e to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of "The Frost King" trammel my efforts.
So this sad experience may have done me good a me thinking on some of the problems of position.
My only regret is that it resulted in the loss of one of my dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos.
Sihe publication of "The Story of My Life" in the Ladies Home Journal, Mr. Anagnos has made a statement, in a letter to Mr. Macy, that at the time of the "Frost King" matter, he believed I was i. He says, the court of iigation before which I was brought sisted of eight people: four blind, four seeing persons. Four of them, he says, thought I khat Miss bys story had beeo me, and the others did not hold this view. Mr. Anagnos states that he cast his vote with those who were favourable to me.
But, however the case may have been, with whichever side he may have cast his vote, when I went into the room where Mr. Anagnos had so often held me on his knee and, fetting his many cares, had shared in my frolics, and found there persons who seemed to doubt me, I felt that there was something hostile and menag in the very atmosphere, and subseques have bor this impression. For two years he seems to have held the belief that Miss Sullivan and I were i. Then he evidently retracted his favourable judgment, why I do not know. Nor did I know the details of the iigation. I never knew even the names of the members of the "court" who did not speak to me. I was too excited to notiything, thteo ask questions. Indeed, I could scarcely think what I was saying, or what was being said to me.
I have given this at of the "Frost King" affair because it was important in my life and education; and, in order that there might be no misuanding, I have set forth all the facts as they appear to me, without a thought of defending myself or of laying blame on any one.
百度搜索 The Story of My Life 天涯 或 The Story of My Life 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.