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Helen Keller's Journal, 1936-1937

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> (4 AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND 15 WES I lb in S i KsiiiT NEW YORK, NY 10011 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/helenkellersjourOOhele HELEN KELLER'S JOURNAL Books by HELEN KELLER helen keller's journal optimism (an essay) out of the dark midstream: my later life my religion the song of the stone wall the story of my life the world i live in HELEN KELLER'S JOURNAL MCMXXXVIII DOUBLEDAY, DoRAN & COMPANY, INC. Garden City, New York printed at the Country Life Press, garden city, n. y., u. s. a. COPYRIGHT, I938 BY HELEN KELLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FIRST EDITION FOREWORD On march 3, 1887, a young Miss Annie Sullivan, but lately graduated from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, arrived in Tuscumbia, Ala., to begin the edu- cation of a deaf and blind child, not quite seven years old, whose name was Helen Keller. " Teacher," the little girl called her on that miraculous day about a month later when she first discovered that things and people had names; " Teacher" she remained for nearly half a century. In Midstream, published when they had been together forty-two years, Miss Keller wrote: "I have been frequently asked what I should do without her. I smile and answer cheerfully, 'God sent her, and if He takes her, His love will 9 fill the void, but it terrifies me to face the thought that this question brings to my mind. I peer with a heavy heart into the years to come. Hope's face is veiled, troubling fears awake and bruise me as they wing through the dark. I lift a tremulous prayer to God, for I should be blind and deaf in very truth if she were gone away." Anne Sullivan Macy died on October 20, 1936, leaving Miss Keller alone to answer the dread question. Yet not alone. She had Miss Polly Thomson, of Glasgow, Scot- land, who for twenty-two years had been a devoted com- panion to her and her teacher. Miss Thomson immediately applied for American citizenship, and a few days later the two women sailed for Scotland to find a quiet time in which to readjust their lives. Miss Keller began this Journal [V] Foreword on the ship. It is a record of her awakening from a great spiritual numbness into a renewed determination to make her life of service to others—to live so that on each third of March to come she can look back upon some achievement that has justified her teacher s faith in her. Miss Keller s whole philosophy is in these pages. Nella Braddy Aboard the SS Deutschland, en route for England, Midnight of November 4, 1936. The deepest sorrow knows no time—it seems an eternal night. Truly did Emerson say that when we travel we do not escape from ourselves, we carry with us the sadness which blurs all places and all days. This is the first voyage Polly and I have had without Teacher, who was the life and the center of our journey- ings by land and sea. Not until now have I realized that I shall not see her on earth. Our friends who came to bid us good-by brought flowers and fruits for only Polly and me. We have just one room with two beds and coffee served mornings for only two. Dear, brave Polly, who used to read aloud to Teacher constantly, now reads to me with her fingers when I can pay any atten- tion. The anguish which makes me feel cut in two prevents me from writing another word about these life-wrecking changes. Most of the time I appear to myself to be a somnam- bulist, impelled only by an intense faith. It is sweet because it helps me to cross halfway with Teacher into her new and infinitely richer life. It is terrible because it drives me relentlessly to think of others' sorrow before my own, to hold up the torch of hope for the blind when [/] Helen Keller s Journal tears blot out all the stars for me, to perform one task after another when the joy of work is fled. SS Deutschland. November 5th. A day dreadful beyond words. I am beginning to come out of the stupor of grief, and every nerve is aquiver. It does not seem possible that the pain flooding through my heart can ever be stilled, but I know it is a sign of returning spiritual health. Sometimes as Polly and I walk up and down the deck she describes to me the gulls dipping and circling about the ship and the tiny white sea swallows that fly in- credible distances—from three to four thousand miles. Are those sea swallows wise or foolish to go so far out to sea, defenseless, small, beyond rescue? At first I was inclined to think it was contrary to the laws of nature for them to risk such long flights, especially as great numbers perish from cold or fall prey to large fish as they sleep on the water. On the other hand, many reach safely "lands that keep the sun", and return triumphantly North with the spring! SS Deutschland. November 6th. Even more amazing than the wonders of nature are the powers of the spirit. Instead of having dumb thoughts or conventional phrases about another world, why can we not take unto ourselves wings of imagina- tion and traverse unafraid vast immensities of the un- known into the joyous, human yet divine warmth that is heaven? [2] Helen Keller s Journal SS Dentschland. November yth. To my surprise I find that the sea swallows have waked in me fresh courage-thoughts. I am still weary, and every physical exertion is an effort, but gradually I am regaining my habit of "looking around." With emotion I feel the courtesy and good will of the Ger- mans ministering to our comfort and their endeavors to divert our minds with pleasant talk. The atmosphere of the Deutschland is so homelike I have no sense of being a stranger. Everywhere the German love of beauty greets my fingers—chrysanthemums large and small, compact, curly petaled, round and slender like daisies, arranged in every corner and at each landing as we climb up and down the stairs, cozy rooms with every modern advantage crowded into the least compass possible. SS Deutschland. November 8th. What earthly consolation is there for one like me, whom fate has denied a husband and the joy of mother- hood ? At the moment my loneliness seems a void that will always be immense. Fortunately I have much work to do—more than ever before, in fact—and while doing it I shall have confidence as always that my unfulfilled longings will be gloriously satisfied in a world where eyes never grow dim nor ears dull. This evening, after a brilliant day, Polly kept telling me how marvelous the sunset was. She said sky and sea were suffused with a rose tinge defying the power of — Helen Keller s Journal the brush or the pen to capture. Often I had felt petals showered upon me by a passing breeze; so I could im- agine the sunset as a vast rose garden from which the petals had been shaken and were drifting through the sky before sinking into the gray November night. SS Deutschland. November gth. Today I had a lunch of frankfurters and sauerkraut the first meal I have eaten with any relish for many weeks. (This happened to be the special German dish on the lunch menu, and a favorite one of mine.) Little by little my delight in philosophy, poetry and travel is reviving. This morning I am in a mood to wander forever over the face of the waters. E. V. Lucas quotes from Chinese Biographies an anecdote which chimes in with this state of mind. A Chinese philosopher of the eighth century, Chang Chi Ho, spent his time angling but used no bait. His object was not to catch fish. When a friend asked him why he roamed about so purposelessly Chang's answer was swift: "With the empyrean my home, the bright main my constant companion and the four seas my inseparable ?" friends—what mean you by roaming SS Deutschland. November ioth. My first consciousness of time. Captain Friedel invited me up to his cabin at noon. He entertained me pleasantly with anecdotes about the — Helen Keller s Journal celebrated Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg. He told how one evening at another zoo in Nuremberg the door of the monkey house was left unlocked—a lapse of memory —and a hundred monkeys ran loose, spreading terror through the streets. The next morning a housewife, turning from the stove, saw a monkey standing in the doorway and rammed a saucepan down on his head, and the blacksmith had to be called in to remove it. He said he had been at sea forty-two years and a captain thirty-two years, and he regretted the departed glory of the sailing ships. I was glad to meet such an able seaman, such a jovial personality and a captain so beloved by the crew that they call him "Papa Friedel." Tonight I attended the farewell dinner of the Deutsch- land. The dining room had been transformed so as to represent the bottom of the ocean. I touched the fish supposed to be swimming about. The caviar was brought on a lump of ice shaped like a fish. Before dessert, in came the Loch Ness monster—a huge creature about thirty feet long, with one eye red and the other white and lumbered around until he was killed by a waiter dressed up as a sailor.
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