A beautiful and glorious world
The young woman turned her
sightless eyes upon the crowded Ashland Armory. In a voice she was never able
to hear, she told her audience about her life and gave praise to those who had
guided her “out of the darkness — to you who now sit here in the light.”
 |
| Helen Keller |
Helen Keller, renowned as the
woman who miraculously overcame the loss of senses taken from her when she was
but 19 months old, stood beside her beloved teacher, Ann Sullivan Macy. It was
a chilly March evening in 1914.
“I am not dumb!” 33-year-old
Helen shouted. Attacking the word that others called her deafness — a word she
had learned over 25 years before, while touching fingers with Mrs. Macy to read
and spell words.
“My world,” Helen said, “is
full of touch and sensations, devoid of physical color and sound; yet, without
color and sound it breathes and throbs with life.”
Never had more people been in
the armory. More than 400 men, women and children sat in admiring silence.
Admission cost 50 cents for
adults and 25 cents for children. “We could have filled the house at a dollar a
ticket,” said Ida Gard, president of the Sunshine Committee that had arranged
Keller’s visit. “But people cannot afford to bring their children at that
price, and it is important that every school child see Helen Keller. Her
achievements will be an inspiration to them.”
The once in a lifetime event
had opened with songs sung by the local high school’s male and female quartets,
and was followed by Mrs. Macy, who told of training Helen in her infancy, and
how later, she had helped Helen receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from
Radcliffe College — the first deaf and blind person to do so.
Helen’s audience wasn’t
prepared for the sound of her voice — what one reporter called “the mechanical
enunciation, the utter absence of expression.” “Her voice,” he said, “is low
and lacks tone, due to the fact that she learned to speak by feeling the lips
of others, and naturally employs only the muscles of cheeks, lips and tongue in
shaping and pronouncing her words.”
But soon her audience was
charmed and spellbound by her perpetual smile and how she answered all their
questions — each conveyed to her by the touch of moving fingers and sometimes
lips.
“I am happy and contented
almost all the time,” Helen said. “My only unhappiness is in knowing that
others are less fortunate than myself.”
 |
| Helen Keller |
As she talked, she one-by-one
picked the flowers off the pansy plant presented to her as a gift. “What dainty
flowers,” she said, prompting a reporter to write, “one could almost see with
her sightless eyes the beauty she saw.”
“How grand your Oregon
mountains must be,” she said with that radiant smile. “The fir trees were
covered with snow as we came over the pass. What a beautiful place Oregon must
be. How bright the sun shines.”
Perhaps the Ashland Tidings
editor summed up Helen Keller’s appearance best.
“Deaf and sightless, yet with
a mind stored with knowledge and a soul radiant with the touch of divine glory,
she has been chosen to teach us how little we value our blessing and how little
effort we make to develop them for the world’s good. Miss Keller says the world
is beautiful and life glorious. What a lesson!”
 |
| Helen Keller |
