Unit 5: Selection Vocabulary 4

She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul's own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen?

Some one took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me.

The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward.

Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water, but I persisted in confounding the two.

In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.

She stands a moment, then sniffs in one deep grateful breath, and her hands go out vigorously to familiar things, over the door panels, and to the chairs around the table, and over the silverware on the table, until she meets VINEY...

[ANNIE has lifted her eyes suspiciously at JAMES, who winks expressionlessly and inclines his head to HELEN.]

[When ANNIE reaches for the pitcher, HELEN removes her napkin and drops it to the floor. ANNIE is filling HELEN’S glass when she notices it; she considers HELEN’S bland expression a moment, then bends, retrieves it, and tucks it around HELEN’S neck again.]

[She interrupts herself, seeing HELEN deliberately lift off her napkin and drop it again to the floor. She bends to retrieve it, but ANNIE stops her arm.]

HELEN, feeling it gone, slides down and commences to kick up under the table; the dishes jump. ANNIE contemplates this for a moment, then coming back takes HELEN’S wrists firmly and swings her off the chair.

Mrs. Keller, teaching her is bound to be painful, to everyone.