The Story of My Life - Ieterna.org

captain showed me Columbus's cabin and the desk with an hour-glass on it. This small instrumentimpressed me most because it made me think how weary the heroic navigator must have felt as he sawthe sand dropping grain by grain while desperate men were plotting against his life.Mr. Higinbotham, President of the World's Fair, kindly gave me permission to touch the exhibits, andwith an eagerness as insatiable as that with which Pizarro seized the treasures of Peru, I took in theglories of the Fair with my fingers. It was a sort of tangible kaleidoscope, this white city of the West.Everything fascinated me, especially the French bronzes. They were so lifelike, I thought they wereangel visions which the artist had caught and bound in earthly forms.At the Cape of Good Hope exhibit, I learned much about the processes of mining diamonds. Wheneverit was possible, I touched the machinery while it was in motion, so as to get a clearer idea how thestones were weighed, cut, and polished. I searched in the washings for a diamond and found it myself--the only true diamond, they said, that was ever found in the United States.Dr. Bell went everywhere with us and in his own delightful way described to me the objects of greatestinterest. In the electrical building we examined the telephones, autophones, phonographs, and otherinventions, and he made me understand how it is possible to send a message on wires that mock spaceand outrun time, and, like Prometheus, to draw fire from the sky. We also visited the anthropologicaldepartment, and I was much interested in the relics of ancient Mexico, in the rude stone implementsthat are so often the only record of an age--the simple monuments of nature's unlettered children (so Ithought as I fingered them) that seem bound to last while the memorials of kings and sages crumble indust away--and in the Egyptian mummies, which I shrank from touching. From these relics I learnedmore about the progress of man than I have heard or read since.All these experiences added a great many new terms to my vocabulary, and in the three weeks I spent atthe Fair I took a long leap from the little child's interest in fairy tales and toys to the appreciation of thereal and the earnest in the workaday world.Chapter XVIBefore October, 1893, I had studied various subjects by myself in a more or less desultory manner. Iread the histories of Greece, Rome and the United States. I had a French grammar in raised print, andas I already knew some French, I often amused myself by composing in my head short exercises, usingthe new words as I came across them, and ignoring rules and other technicalities as much as possible. Ieven tried, without aid, to master the French pronunciation, as I found all the letters and soundsdescribed in the book. Of course this was tasking slender powers for great ends; but it gave mesomething to do on a rainy day, and I acquired a sufficient knowledge of French to read with pleasureLa Fontaine's "Fables," "Le Medecin Malgre Lui" and passages from "Athalie."I also gave considerable time to the improvement of my speech. I read aloud to Miss Sullivan andrecited passages from my favourite poets, which I had committed to memory; she corrected mypronunciation and helped me to phrase and inflect. It was not, however, until October, 1893, after I hadrecovered from the fatigue and excitement of my visit to the World's Fair, that I began to have lessonsin special subjects at fixed hours.Miss Sullivan and I were at that time in Hulton, Pennsylvania, visiting the family of Mr. William Wade.Mr. Irons, a neighbour of theirs, was a good Latin scholar; it was arranged that I should study underhim. I remember him as a man of rare, sweet nature and of wide experience. He taught me Latingrammar principally; but he often helped me in arithmetic, which I found as troublesome as it wasuninteresting. Mr. Irons also read with me Tennyson's "In Memoriam." I had read many books before,