The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-11-22
HELEN KELLER a.a. HAS HOLIDAY
ATTENDS MOUNTAINEERING OF
 HER OLD FRIEND.
She Gets [. Hearty Welcome From Her Old Teachers and Compan- io..s and Talks With Anima- tion About Her Graduation
 Essay and Her Book,
 Optimism"

New York sun. .s... Helen Keller, the marvellous girl who,
 handicapped in childhood with blindness, deafness and inability to speak a com prehensible word, has picked up with her fingers an education in three or four lan- guages and who will be graduated from Radcliffe College, Harvard, this coming June, was the centre yesterday afternoon of a laughing. happy group of teachers. classmates and old friends in the parlors of the Wright Oral School, One Hun dred and Twentieth Street and Mount Morris Park West. It was the house. warming of the school in its new quar- ters to which it has been removed from 42 West Seventy-sixth Street, where 1t was conducted when Miss Keller attended | 1t prior to going to Cambridge.
 With Miss Sullivan by her side. the same Miss Sullivan who for sixteen years has been her constant companion and in- structor, Miss Keller. her face animated | and beaming with pleasure shook hands with her old companions and teachers l and had 0 cheery word to say to each of l them. It was through Miss Sullivan. of course, that she received the friendly. cordial words that were said to her in return. With her fingers ffuttering in feathery | touches over Miss Suliivan's throat and lips as that lady repeated the words to her. Miss Keller instantly grasped the | meaning of all that was said '. Some of the time Miss Sullivan inter preted by the deaf and dumb alphabet in a swift tattoo in Miss Keller's hand. By either means of communication Miss Kcl- Ter instantly understood all that was said
 to her. Those who are merely deaf and dumb are taught to understand with mar vellous accuracy all that is said to them rHA hxrx otnh he nf speakers lips. But to Miss Keller. in her total blindness, even this doorway to communication with her fellow creatures is closed.
 It was through the sensitive touch of her finger ends alone that she has gath cred up all the great stores of informa- ton that she has, By the same touch she also acquired the gift of speech itself, her fingers applied to the throat of the speak
 CT and then to her own telling her when she was uttering the sounds her instruc- tor was uttering. To all who were in- | trodouced to her yesterday she spoke clearely and with all the distinctness nec- essary to complete comprehension. "I am going to graduate next year" she said. "If yon hear my essay then there will be a lot of copy for you If you wish
 to have it. I have just finished writing
 another book, Optimism is it's title" Among the fifteen or twenty, students
 of the Wright School who greeted Miss
 Keller yesterday were Miss Katharine | Woodward, Miss Mabel Johns, Lydia
 Haywood, Ruth Moar. Wallace Cockchutt,
 Daphne Cohn. William Niles. Emmett
 Smith and Dorothy Hudnut. All are deaf
 and all were dumb when they entered the school, yet they and others talked and
 laughed with Miss Keller as they gath
 cred about her.
 | It was almost beyond belief-the thought | that not one could hear a word the others were saying: could not hear the sound of
 their own voices, but were living in a | world of silence and pantomime.
 One of the most remarkable of the
 Wright School students is Miss Katharine l Woodward of Kentucky She was born l deaf and dumb, is IS years old and has studied in the school eight years. She Is an uncommonly handsome girl. with a | frank, kindly face and keen, laughing
 black eyes, growing strangely swift and
 alert from her years of training in the watching and interpreting every faint
 tremor of the lips of those with whom she
 Is face to face. Her speech is natural
 and easy and her intonation almost as | people as that of people who can hear. | "I went to see "A Midsummer Nights l Dream again the other evening"" she 1 said "I had read the play, and the first 1 time saw 1t I understood nearly all that
 was said When the actors faces were
 toward me could understand all they | said, and when I could see their lips | only in profile understood almost every
 ahing The rest was pantomime to me.
 but understood 1t all from knowing the
 play have just begun to study French
 and like it very much"
 Hear this young girl tell all this and l
 a deaf girl who is talking, girl who, up to the time she was years old never
 uttered a word and who even as she is
 speaking but falnly hears the sound of her own voice! It seems beyond belief,
 but there is the bright. animated face
 before you and the swiftly flowing all but Faultless. speech in your ears.
 Miss Keller came down from Cambridge
 on Friday on purpose to be present at
 the housewarming of her old school in It's new home. She returned to her l studies on Monday