Old Missoula

Helen Keller speaks in Missoula – 1914 – Message is Hope

Of Great Miracle Missoula Is Beholder

Helen Keller Appears Before Large Audience With Message of Hope.

To have witnessed any miracle is to have enjoyed a wonderful experience; to have seen and heard the miracle, which is Helen Keller, is to have received an inspiration which might well change the whole current of a lifetime. The breaking down of the barriers between that wonderful soul and the world has been described as the greatest single achievement in the history of education. The triumph of Helen Keller over her immeasurable handicaps seems after one has grasped at the understanding of it, one of the greatest achievements in the history of the world, for what other life in the history of human progress shows so noble a victory over such overwhelming odds?

Understanding of this woman’s struggle is beyond us whom Providence has endowed with the power to hear and see and speak. We cannot picture the horrible, voiceless, unresponsive dark from which this most wonderful of women began her upward climb. We can only guess at and, shuddering, draw away from the horror of that prison, ghastly not so much for the absence of light and sound as for the absolute restraint upon the divine gifts of communion with others and expression of self. It must have been a terrible world, that in which the small child dwelt and from which she literally raised herself by her finger-tips – those magic finger-tips which served her as eyes and ears and tongue. We cannot hope to understand it fully. We can read Helen Keller’s books, we can hear her teacher’s story, but not until we see and hear Helen Keller herself can we picture in the slightest degree the horror of her beginning and the glory of her victory.

Several hundred of us – it is a pity that there were not more – saw Helen Keller last night and heard the modern miracle of her speech. There was about it all the wonder of a resurrection. Had the voice come from one dead it could scarcely have signified a more marvelous triumph of the human mind over natural obstacles. After learning of the great struggle from Miss Keller’s teacher, to hear from the pupil’s lips the message of a soul great enough to win such a fight was to gain a poignant glimpse of the wonder of it all.

As was to be expected, Miss Keller does not speak as one who can hear her own voice and the voices of others. She articulates with difficulty and speaks without the accents to which we are accustomed. But the voice is vibrant with life, for all that, and is easily understood, if the face is watched as it shapes the words learned by sense of touch.

“We live by each other and for each other,” was the keynote of Miss Keller’s brief message. She whose development has been so directly dependent upon the loving service of others and who is now living her life in common service, founds her philosophy upon that broad foundation, the cornerstone of all enduring creeds.

The conversation which she carried on with the audience at the conclusion of her short talk was a more vivid revelation of the real Helen Keller. She is an ardent socialist, and, in response to a question, explained her adoption of socialism by saying that “study of social conditions has convinced me that it is the only solution. I believe that there should be equality of opportunity among all workers.”

“If you were given your choice which of the senses would you rather have returned to you, sight or hearing?” Miss Keller was asked.

“Oh, hearing,” she said with a sudden smile. “The divine gift of hearing, for it throws open doors to new knowledge.”

Another questioner asked if she could remember the time when she could see and hear (she did not lose sight and hearing until she was 19 months old).

“I think,” she said wistfully, and the answer showed a little bit of the dreariness of that long imprisonment, “that I can remember the sunlight I loved so well.”

Miss Keller’s talk was preceded by a lecture from her teacher, Mrs. Macy, in which the story of that long struggle, common property now of the world, was told. The woman whose patient care made possible this final miracle told of the little girl to whom she was sent, shut off from the world, yet curious in the darkness and possessor already of certain crude signs of her rapid progress through childhood; of the struggle through college; of the acquisition at last of the power of speech. It was a fitting preface to the appearance of Miss Keller herself, to that wonderful revelation which must have been to all beholders an inspiration and a help. – G. P. S.

The above article appeared in The Missoulian on April 21, 1914.

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