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Helen Keller At Radcliffe

Creator: n/a
Date: October 8, 1900
Publication: The New York Times
Source: Available at selected libraries


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The Blind Deaf-Mute Passes the Examination and is Admitted -- She Takes Up Languages.

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Special to The New York Times.

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BOSTON, Oct. 7. -- The many friends of Helen Keller, the phenomenal blind deaf-mute, will be gratified to learn that she has passed the entrance examination to Radcliffe College with flying colors, and is now reveling in the delights of the higher education. When it is remembered that she was seven years old before she was taught anything, her accomplishment is all the more remarkable. All languages are a joy to her, and since she learned to speak English by placing her fingers upon the lips of her instructor, she could of course learn the oral part of any other language in precisely the same way. For the rest -- grammar, composition, and so on -- the raised letter books and her wonderful memory supplied everything needed.

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She has, therefore, chosen French, English, and German courses, and in addition a course in history. At the lectures Helen is invariably accompanied by Miss Sullivan, who sits close beside her and gives her in the manual language whatever the instructor may be saying.

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The examination papers were in the raised-point system, and the answers she wrote upon a typewriter, in the use of which she is an expert. Her teachers say that, while at "snap" questions she has no more aptitude than the majority of her fellow-students, when she has time enough she outdoes them in the quality of her work.

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