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HELEN KELLER'S teacher, Miss Sullivan, called upon me in June last at the Cambridge School, and asked me if I would admit Miss Keller to the classes with hearing and seeing girls, and fit her for the Harvard examinations. This proposition startled me, and I replied that I thought it impracticable. However, Miss Sullivan was, as usual, deeply in earnest, and urged me not to decide at once. She afterward gave me the opportunity to discover Miss Keller's mental power, and also to learn somewhat of her educational progress. I decided that it was possible to fit Helen for the examinations, and determined to make the trial.

During the summer Miss Keller was kept free from mental effort. She was already in good health, but she gained more strength by her summer pleasures; and she appeared at her new Cambridge home in season to present herself with the other pupils at the school on the morning of the first day. She has lost no time since.

In the school we are dealing with Miss Keller as we do with normal girls of sixteen. She has the new experience of leaving her home in the morning, and of spending the usual hours in the school building, where she has her class exercises with the other members of the school. She returns to her home at the same time that the other pupils do, and mainly occupies her afternoons and evenings as they do, though naturally she takes a longer time to prepare her lessons than they do, who see.

It is our endeavor to keep her from the distractions which would arise if she were to accept social invitations; but she receives her friends, as do the other ladies of the household in which she lives, on Friday afternoons and evenings. She associates freely with her schoolmates at all times, sharing their walks and social pleasures, much to their delight. Many of them have learned to talk rapidly with her, using the manual alphabet.

I could do little for Miss Keller were it not that Miss Sullivan continues her loving superintendence, and follows her with the ministrations that she has so willingly rendered all these years. Thus, while the direction of Helen's intellectual work has been committed to me, I find it necessary to depend upon Miss Sullivan for certain assistance which no acquaintance less thorough and familiar with the past would be sufficient to suggest. I am day by day impressed by the magnitude of the work that we are called upon to perform for this marvelous girl, and I can only trust that I may be in some degree equal to the demand.

Miss Sullivan and I have always before us a sense of the novelty of the work, and we feel that we cannot lay it out far in advance. We are obliged to be constantly on the alert, watching developments, and prepared to do whatever is best at the time. While, therefore, we have the Harvard examinations before us as a goal, we are not willing to say to-day that Helen will take those examinations at any given time in the future, or that we shall not at another stage find that her nature demands a cultivation different from that which is planned for the average woman. We simply desire to feel free to take one step at a time.

In accordance with these plans, the first step was taken in October, when Miss Keller came to school with the other "new" pupils, and a rough classification of them all was made. It was at that time thought best for Helen to take up the subjects of arithmetic, English, English history, Latin, and advanced German. This work is progressing well. It was desirable, however, to get a more exact estimate of Helen's progress, and for this purpose I gave her at once four Harvard examination-papers that had been used at the college in June last by the candidates, for admission. The subjects were those in which I supposed that Miss Keller was most advanced; but as she had never tried such an examination, and had had no preparation for an examination of any kind, the test would have been esteemed severe by a boy or girl in possession of all the faculties. Usually these papers are not tried until the candidate has been under special training of a technical character for a series of years. The conditions that I established were made the same as in the college, though the questions were of necessity read to Miss Keller, and the strain upon memory was greater.

The result was informally submitted to the members of the Harvard faculty who had read the admission examination-books, and in every case I was assured that the grade was sufficient -- in some respects more than sufficient -- to pass the candidate. In reading these papers myself, I was struck by the literary style, which was original, and by the leisurely way in which the thoughts were brought out. Miss Keller seemed to me more willing to put a living interest into her papers than the average candidate is; and while she showed the most accurate acquaintance with the particular matter under discussion, she also showed a general cultivation which was as grateful to me as it was unusual. It was evident that the mind that was displaying itself had not been cramped by the technical training which is too often put in the place of a broader and more important instruction.