the important step in my education was learning to read.
as soon as i could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on which were printed words in raised letters. i quickly learhat each printed word stood for an object, an act, or a quality. i had a frame in which i could arrahe words in little sentences; but before i ever put sentences in the frame i used to make them in objects. i found the slips of paper which represented, for example, "doll," "is," "on," "bed" and placed eaame on its object; then i put my doll on the bed with the words is, on, bed arranged beside the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and at the same time carrying out the idea of the senteh the things themselves.
one day, miss sullivan tells me, i pihe wirl on my pinafore and stood in the wardrobe. on the shelf i arrahe words, is, in, wardrobe. nothing delighted me so much as this game. my teacher and i played it for hours at a time. oftehing in the room was arranged in object sentences.
from the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. i took my "reader finners" and hunted for the words i knew; when i found them my joy was like that of a game of hide-and-seek. thus i began to read.
of the time when i began to read ected stories i shall speak later.
for a long time i had nular lessons. even when i studied most early it seemed more like play than work. everything miss sullivan taught me she illustrated by a beautiful story or a poem. whenever anything delighted or ied me she talked it over with me just as if she were a little girl herself. what many children think of with dread, as a painful plodding through grammar, hard sums and harder definitions, is to-day one of my most preemories.
i ot explain the peculiar sympathy miss sullivan had with my pleasures and desires. perhaps it was the result of long association with the blind. added to this she had a wonderful faculty for description. she went quickly over uiails, and never nagged me with questions to see if i remembered the day-before-yesterdays lesson. she introduced dry teicalities of sce little by little, making every subject so real that i could not help remembering what she taught.
we read and studied out of doors, preferring the sunlit woods to the house. all my early lessons have ihe breath of the woods--the fine, resinous odour of pine needles, blended with the perfume of wild grapes.
seated in the gracious shade of a wild tulip tree, i l
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