The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.
On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb, 1. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the hurrying to and from in the house that something unusual was about to happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch, and fell on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost 2 on the familiar leaves and blossoms which had just 3 to greet the sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of 4 or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for weeks and a deep languor(倦怠)had 5 this passionate struggle.
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(铅锤) and sounding—line(测深索), and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that 6 before my education began, only I was without 7 or sounding—line, and had no way of knowing how near the 8 was. "Light! Give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.
I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand as I would to my mother. Someone 9 it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to 10 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 11. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d—o—l—l. " I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to 12 it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I 13 with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey—like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this 14 way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a 15.
