It was really ‘a slow and often painful process’ through which the deaf and blind child Helen Keller acquired the key to ‘all language’. Children who can hear can acquire language without any special effort. The first word that her teacher, Miss Sullivan spelled into her hand was ‘‘d-o-l-l’’. In the days that followed she learned to spell many words like ‘‘pin’’, ‘‘hat’’, ‘‘cup’’ and a few verbs like ‘‘sit’’, ‘‘stand’’ and ‘‘walk’’. At that time she even didn’t know that everything has a name. Then she realised that a wordless sensation was called a ‘thought’. She understood that everything had a name and each name gave birth to a new thought. Miss Sullivan had taught her to find beauty in the fragrant woods and in every blade of grass. She linked Helen’s earliest thought with nature. She made her feel that ‘birds and flowers’ and she herself were ‘happy peers’.
Helen Keller’s ideas were vague and her vocabulary was inadequate. But as she learned more and more words her field of inquiry broadened. One morning she asked Miss Sullivan the meaning of the word ‘‘love’’. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round her and spelled into her hand, ‘‘I love Helen’. ‘‘What is love?’’ she asked. Miss Sullivan drew her closer and pointing to her heart said, ‘‘It is here’’. Once Helen was finding difficulty in stringing beads of different sizes. She was puzzled. Miss Sullivan touched her forehead and spelled the word with decided emphasis, ‘‘Think’’. In a flash Helen knew that the word was the name of the process that was going in her head. Miss Sullivan had a wonderful faculty for description. Helen was not interested in the science of numbers. But Helen learnt from life itself. When Miss Sullivan came, everything about her breathed of love and joy and full of meaning.
