the towel doll to
have eyes. I think it was because although she herself was blind, she
liked to fancy her doll had eyes that could see the beauties of the
world. To be blind and speechless seems hard indeed, but besides
lacking these two great gifts, this little girl was deaf. Think of it!
She could not hear, she could not see, and she could not talk.

Yet this same little girl learned to talk. She learned to read, with
her fingers, books printed for the blind in raised letters. She
studied the same lessons that other children had in school, and she
worked so hard that she was able to go to college.

Should you not like to hear Helen Keller, for that is the name of the
little girl, tell about herself?

She says: "I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of
Northern Alabama. I am told that while I was still in long dresses I
showed many signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition. They say I
walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out 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 mother's lap and
almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down, and cried for
her to take me in her arms.

"These happy days did not last long, for an illness came which closed
my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new born
baby. The doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however,
the fever left me, but I was never to see or hear again."

From the time of her recovery until the journey of which we have been
reading, Helen Keller lived in silence and darkness. This journey was
undertaken in order to consult a famous physician who had cured many
cases of blindness. Mr. and Mrs. Keller hoped this gentleman could
help their child, and you can imagine how sad they were when he said
he could do nothing. However, he sent them to consult Dr. Alexander
Graham Bell, who had taught many deaf children to speak. Dr. Bell
played with Helen and she sat on his knee and fingered curiously his
heavy gold watch. He not only advised her parents to get a special
teacher for her, but told them of a school in Boston in which he
thought they could find some one able to unlock the doors of knowledge
for the little girl. This was in the summer, and the next March Miss
Sullivan went to Alabama to be Helen Keller's friend and teacher.

Let us read ho