Music Welcome to snoozecast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is dedicated to our dear listener, Shelly, and brought to you by The Beautiful Truth. Tonight we'll read an excerpt from The Story of My Life written by Helen Keller and published in 1903. The book details her early life and especially her education. Helen Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist, and lecturer. Born in Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was still a baby. She had limited communicative capability as a little girl. Her mother became inspired after reading a travelogue from Charles Dickens that described a similar girl being educated. This led the family on a quest to find such education for their daughter. Finally, at the age of seven, Helen met her first teacher and lifelong companion and Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language including reading and writing. Keller later became the first deaf-blind person in the United States to earn a bachelor's of arts degree. In 1920, Helen Keller helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union. She traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan

and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every US president of her time and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bill, Charlie Chaplin, and Mark Twain. Let's get cozy. and work between.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher and Mansfield Sullivan came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the 3 of March, 1887. Three months before I was seven years old. On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the hurrying to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch and fell on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the familiar leaves and blossoms which had just come forth to greet the sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of marvel or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for weeks, and a deep langer had succeeded this passionate struggle. Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in. In the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen. I was like that ship before my education began. Only I was without compass or sounding line and had no way of knowing how near the harbor was. Light, give me light, was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shown on me in that very hour. I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand as I supposed to my mother. Someone took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and more than all things else to love me. The morning after my teacher came, she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins institution had sent it, and Laura Bridgeman had dressed it, but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan spelled slowly into my hand the word D-O-L-L. I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly, I was flushed with childish, pleasure, and pride. Running downstairs to my mother, I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed. I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed, I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words. Among them, pin, hat, cup, and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name. One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also,

spelled D-O-L-L, and tried to make me understand that D-O-L-L applied to both. Earlier in the day, we had had a tussle over the words M-U-G and W-A-T-E-R. Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that M-U-G is mug, and that W-A-T-E-R is water. But I persisted in confounding the two. In despair, she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived, there was no strong sentiment or tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew it was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure. We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water, and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water. First slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought. And somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul. Gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house, every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange new sight that had come to me. On entering the door, I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears, for I realized what I had done. And for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow. I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were, but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them. Words that were to make the world blossom for me, like errands rod with flowers. It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me. And for the first time, longed for a new day to come. I recall many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's sudden awakening. I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched. And the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world. When the time of daisies and buttercups came, Miss Sullivan took me by the hand across the fields, where men were preparing the earth for the seed seed to the banks of the Tennessee River and there, sitting on the warm grass, I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature. I learned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, how birds build their nests and live and thrive from land to land, how the squirrel, the deer, the lion, and every other creature finds food and shelter.

As my knowledge of things grew, I felt more and more the delight of the world I was in.

Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth,

Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand. She linked my earliest thoughts with nature and made me feel that birds and flowers and dye were happy pears. But about this time I had an experience which taught me that nature is not always so kind. One day my teacher and I were returning from a long ramble. The morning had been fine, But it was growing warm and sultry when at last we turned our faces homeward. Two or three times we stopped to rest under a tree by the wayside. Our last halt was under a wild cherry tree, a short distance from the house. The shade was grateful, and the tree was so easy to climb that with my teacher's assistance, I was able to scramble to a seat in the branches. It was so cool up in the tree that Miss Sullivan proposed that we have our lunch in there. I promised to keep still while she went to the house to fetch it. Suddenly, a change passed over the tree. All the sun's warmth left the air. I knew the sky was black because all the heat which meant light to me had died out of the atmosphere. A strange odor came up from the earth. I knew it. It was the odor that always precedes a thunderstorm. I felt absolutely alone. Cut off from my friends and the firm earth. The immense, the unknown enfolded me. I remained still and expectant. There was a moment of silence, then a multitudinous stirring of the leaves. The tree swayed and strained. I crouched down in the fork of the tree. Just as I was thinking the tree and I should fall together, my teacher seized my hand and helped me down. I clung to her, trembling with joy to feel the earth under my feet once more. After this experience, it was a long time before I climbed another tree. It was the sweet alertment of the mimosaree and full bloom that finally overcame me. One beautiful spring morning when I was alone in the summer house, reading, I became aware of a wonderful, subtle fragrance in the air. I started up and instinctively stretched out my hands. It seemed as if the spirit of spring had passed through the summer house. What is it, I asked? In the next minute I recognized the odor of the mimosa blossoms. I felt my way to the end of the garden, knowing that the mimosa tree was near the fence at the turn of the path. Yes, there it was, all quivering in the warm sunshine. Its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long grass. Was there ever anything so exquisitely beautiful in the world before? Its delicate blossoms shrank from the slightest earthly touch. It seemed as if a tree of paradise had been transplanted to earth. I made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk, and for one minute stood irresolute. Then, putting my foot in the broad space between the forked branches, I pulled myself up into the tree. I had some difficulty in holding on for the branches were very large and the bark hurt my hands But I had a delicious sense that I was doing something unusual and wonderful, so I kept on climbing higher and higher. Until I reached a little seat, which somebody had built there so long ago that it had grown part of the tree itself. I sat there for a long, long time, feeling like a fairy on a rosy cloud. After that I spent many happy hours in my tree of paradise, thinking fair thoughts, and dreaming bright dreams. I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear a choir language without any particular effort, the words that fall from others lips, they catch on the wing as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process.

But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually, from naming an object, we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare. At first, when my teacher told me about a new thing, I asked very few questions. My ideas were vague, and my vocabulary was inadequate. But as my knowledge of things grew, and I learned more and more words, my field of inquiry broadened, and I would return again and again to the same subject, eager for further information. Sometimes, a new word revived an image that some earlier experience had engraved on my brain. I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word love. This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me, but at that time I did not like to have anyone kiss me except my mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spilled into my hand. I love Helen. What is love, I asked? She drew me closer to her and said, it is here pointing to my heart, Whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it. I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, is love the sweetness of flowers? No, said my teacher. Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us. Is this not love? I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came. Is this not love? It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it's strange that my teacher could not show me love. A day or two afterward, I was stringing beads of different sizes in symmetrical groups, two large beads, three small ones, and so on. I had made many mistakes, and Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and again with gentle patience. Finally, I noticed a very obvious error in the sequence, And for an instant, I concentrated my attention on the lesson and tried to think how I should

have... error in the sequence, and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the lesson, and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads. Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis. Think. In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea. For a long time I was still. I was not thinking of the beads in my lap, but trying to find a meaning for love in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers. suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendor. Again, I asked my teacher, is this not love? Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out, she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained. You cannot touch the clouds, you know. But you feel the rain, and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either, but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love, you would not be happy or want to play.

The beautiful truth burst upon my mind.

I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.

From the beginning of my education, Miss Sullivan made it a practice to speak to me as she would speak to any hearing child. The only difference was that she spelled the sentences into my hand instead of speaking them. If I did not know the words and idioms necessary to express my thoughts, She supplied them. Even suggesting conversation when I was unable to keep up my end of the dialogue. This process was continued for several years. For the deaf child does not learn in a month, or even in two or three years. The numberless idioms and expressions used in the simplest daily intercourse. The little hearing child learns these from constant repetition and imitation. The conversation he hears in his home stimulates his mind and suggests topics and calls forth the spontaneous expression of his own thoughts. This natural exchange of ideas is denied to the deaf child. My teacher, realizing this, determined to supply the kinds of stimulus I lacked. This she did by repeating to me as far as possible for Baidum what she heard, and by showing me how I could take part in the conversation. But it was a long time before I ventured to take the initiative, and still longer before I could find something appropriate to say at the right time. The depth and the blind find it very difficult to acquire the amenities of conversation. How much more this difficulty must be augmented in the case of those who are both deaf and blind. They cannot distinguish the tone of the voice or, without assistance, go up and down the gamut of tones that give significance to words. Nor can they watch the expression of the speaker's face. And a look is often the very soul of what one says. As soon as I could spell a few words, my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words with raised letters.

I quickly learned that each printed word

stood for an object, an act, or a quality.