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-Written wholly without help of any sort by a deaf and blind girl, twelve years old, and printed without change.-

Mind, mind alone
Is light and hope and life and power!

I was born twelve years ago, one bright June morning, in Tuscumbia, a pleasant little own in the northern part of Alabama. The beginning of my life was very simple, and very much like the beginning of every other little life; for I could see and hear when I first came to live in this beautiful world. But I did not notice anything in my new home for several days. Content in my mother's tender arms I lay, and smiled as if my little heart were filled with sweetest memories of the world I just had left.

I like to think I lived with God in the beautiful Somewhere before I. came here, and that is why I always knew God loved me, even when I had forgotten His name.

But when I did begin to notice things, my blue eyes were filled with wondering joy. I gazed long at the lovely, deep blue sky, and stretched out my tiny hands for the golden sunbeams that came to play hide-and-seek with me. So my happy baby hours went. I grew and cried and laughed, as all infants do.

In the meantime I had a name given to me; I was called Helen, because Helen means light, and my mother liked to think that my life would be full of the brightness of day.

Of course my recollections of my early childhood are very indistinct. I have confused memories of long summer days filled with light, and the voices of birds singing in the clear sunshine. I seem to remember, as if it were yesterday, being lost in a great green place, where there were beautiful flowers and fragrant trees. I stood under one tall plant, and let its blossoms rest upon my curly head. I saw little flakes of light flitting among the flowers; I suppose they were birds, or perhaps butterflies. I heard a well-known voice calling me, but feeling roguish, I did not answer. I was glad, however, when my mother found me, and carried me away in her arms.

I discovered the true way to walk the day I was a year old, and during the radiant summer days that followed I was never still a minute. My mother watched me coming, going, laughing, playing, prattling with proud, happy eyes. I was her only child, and she thought there never had keen another baby quite so beautiful as her little Helen.

Then when my father came in the evening, I would run to the gate to meet him, and he would take me up in his strong arms, and put back the tangled curls from my face and kiss me many times, saying, "What has my Little Woman been doing to-day?"

But the brightest summer has winter behind it. In the cold, dreary month of February, when I was nineteen months old, I had a serious illness. I still have confused memories of that illness. My mother sat beside my little bed and tried to soothe my feverish moans, while in her troubled heart she prayed: "Father in Heaven, spare my baby's life!" But the fever grew and flamed in my eyes, and for several days my kind physician thought I would die.

But early one morning the fever left me as mysteriously and unexpectedly as it had come, and I fell into a quiet sleep. Then my parents knew I would live, and they were very happy. They did not know for some time after my recovery that the cruel fever had taken my sight and hearing; taken all the light and music and gladness out of my little life.

By and by the sad truth dawned upon them, and the thought that their little daughter would never more see the beautiful light or hear the voices she loved filled their hearts with anguish.

But I was too young to realize what had happened. When I awoke and found that all was dark and still, I suppose I thought it was night, and I must have wondered why day was so long coming. Gradually, however, I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me, and forgot that it had ever been day.

I forgot everything that had been, except my mother's tender love. Soon even my childish voice was stilled, because I had ceased to hear any sound.

But all was not lost! After all, sight and hearing are but two of the beautiful blessings which God had given me. The most precious, the most wonderful of His gifts was still mine. My mind remained clear and active, "though fled fore'er the light."

As soon as my strength returned, I began to take an interest in what the people around me were doing. I would cling to my mother's dress as she went about her household duties, and my little hands felt every object and observed every motion, and in this way I learned a great many things.

When I was a little older I felt the need of some means of communication with those around me, and I began to make simple signs which my parents and friends readily understood; but it often happened that I was unable to express my thoughts intelligibly, and at such times I would give way to my angry feelings utterly.

Of course my parents were very anxious about me when I behaved so ill, and they tried to think of some way of having me educated. Finally they decided that I must have a teacher. My father wrote to Mr. Anagnos, the director of the institution where Laura Bridgman had been taught, and asked him if he could send his little daughter a kind teacher. Dear Mr. Anagnos replied that he could. That was in the summer of 1886. I was then six years old.