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HOW HELEN KELLER, WITHOUT SIGHT OR HEARING, LEARNED TO SPEAK.

The Volta Bureau of Washington has prepared a souvenir of the first Summer meeting of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. The book deals wholly with the case of Helen Adams Keller, the wonderful child who at the age of eleven years has learned to speak and to write, although she is blind and deaf.

This child's progress was the subject of an essay at the last meeting of the association by Sarah Fuller, Principal of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf of Boston. The child was possessed of all the faculties and senses of healthy child, so far as was known, until upon recovery from a serious illness at the age of eighteen months she was found to have lost her hearing and sight. In 1887 she was placed under the instruction of Miss A.M. Sullivan, who had been educated at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. Under this instruction Helen developed with astonishing rapidity the genius which has always commanded the admiration of those interested in instructing the deaf.

In 1888 Helen paid a visit to the Horace Mann School. The interest that she manifested in the children and in the course of instruction suggested to Miss Fuller that she could be taught to speak. It was nearly two years later, however, before any effort was made in this direction. Learning at that time that a deaf and blind child had acquired speech, Helen became anxious to learn to speak, and Miss Fuller was quite ready to undertake to teach her.

Miss Fuller's essay describes how she gave the child her first lesson. It was evidently a task requiring much patience, for Helen was obliged to learn to use her organs of speech by feeling her teacher's mouth and throat, and determining by the same means the position of the tongue and teeth. She proved an apt pupil, and in a little while she able to pronounce the vowels and to give utterance also to some of the consonants.

Having gone through this preliminary drill, the teacher shaped her lips for the vowel "a," and with the child's fingers as guides she slowly closed her lips and pronounced the word "arm." Without hesitation the child arranged her tongue, repeated the sound, and was delighted to know that she had pronounced a word.

Her next attempt at pronunciation was with the words "mamma" and "papa," which she had tried to speak before going to the teacher. The best she could do with these words was "mum-mum" and "pup-pup." The teacher commended her efforts, and in order to illustrate to her how the words should be correctly pronounced, she drew her finger along the back of the child's hand to show the relative length of the two syllables, the child's other hand in the meanwhile resting on the teachers lips. After a few repetitions the words "mamma" and "papa" came with almost musical sweetness from her lips.

There were nine lessons after this in which the child proved an ideal pupil, following every direction with the utmost care, and seeming never to forget anything told her. At the close of her lessons she used speech fluently. She received her first lesson March 26,1890, and on April 19 of the same year, while at the house of a friend, she related an account of a visit she had made to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which her pronunciation was so good that there were only four words out of more than a hundred that the teacher failed to understand.

As part of the souvenir there are two letters wonderfully well written by the child, the first at South Boston, April 3, 1890, and the second at her home at Tuscumbia, Ala., Oct. 20, 1890. A photograph of the child is also published in the souvenir.

Helen Adams Keller is the daughter of Major Arthur Henry and Kate Adams Keller. She was born at Tuscumbia, June 27,1880. Her father was a Paymaster in the Confederate Army and United States Marshall under President Cleveland. He is an editor at Tuscumbia. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Fairfax Moore, was the daughter of Col. Alexander Moore of Rockbridge County, Va. who was aide-de-camp to Gen. Lafayette. She was also second cousin to Major Gen. Robert E. Lee. Her maternal grandfather was Gen. Charles William Adams, a lawyer and Judge of Memphis, Tenn. who was Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. Her maternal grandmother, Helen Everett, was a cousin of Edward Everett and of the Rev. Edward Everett Hale of Boston.