CHAPTER I.
The Writing of the Book It is fitting that Miss Kellers "Story of My Life" should appear at this time. What is remarkable in her career is already aplished, and whatever she may do iure will be but a relatively slight addition to the success which distinguishes her now. That success has just been assured, for it is her work at Radcliffe during the last two years which has shown that she carry her education as far as if she were studying under normal ditions. Whatever doubts Miss Keller herself may have had are now at rest.
Several passages of her autobiography, as it appeared in serial form, have been made the subject of a grave editorial in a Boston neer, in which the writer regretted Miss Kellers apparent disillusio in regard to the value of her college life. He quoted the passages in which she explains that college is not the "universal Athens" she had hoped to find, and cited the cases of other remarkable persons whose college life had proved disappointing. But it is to be remembered that Miss Keller has written many things in her autobiography for the fun of writing them, and the disillusion, which the writer of the editorial took seriously, is i part humorous. Miss Keller does not suppose her views to be of great importance, and wheers her opinions on important matters she takes it frahat her reader will receive them as the opinions of a junior in college, not of one who writes with the wisdom of maturity. For insta surprised her that some people were a what she said about the Bible, and she was amused that they did not see, what lain enough, that she had been obliged to read the whole Bible in a course in English literature, not as a religious duty put upon her by her teacher or her parents.
I ought to apologize to the reader and to Miss Keller for presuming to say what her subject matter is worth, but one more explanation is necessary. In her at of her early eduiss Keller is not giving a stifically accurate record of her life, nor even of the importas. She ot know iail how she was taught, and her memory of her childhood is in some cases an idealized memory of what she has learned later from her teacher and others. She is less able to recall events of fifteen years ago than most of us are to recollect our childhood. That is why her teachers records may be found to differ in some particulars from Miss Kellers at.
The way in which Miss Keller wrote her story shows, as nothing else show, the difficulties she had to overe. When we write, we go back over our work, shuffle the pages, interline, rearrange, see how the paragraphs look in proof, and so struct the whole work before the eye, as an architect structs his plans.
When Miss Keller puts her work in typewritten form, she ot refer to it again unless some one reads it to her by means of the manual alphabet.
This difficulty is in part obviated by the use of her braille mae, which makes a manuscript that she read; but as her work must be put ultimately in typewritten form, and as a braille mae is somewhat cumbersome, she has got into the habit of writing directly oypewriter. She depends so little on her braille manuscript, that, when she began to write her story more than a year ago and had put in braille a hundred pages of material and notes, she made the mistake of destroying these notes before she had finished her manuscript. Thus she posed much of her story oypewriter, and in strug it as a whole depended on her memory to guide