我的生活海伦凯勒摘抄 海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第19期

海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第19期  

Chapter IX
The next important event in my life was my visit to Boston
in May
1888. As if it were yesterday I remember the preparations
the departure with my teacher and my mother
the journey
and finally the arrival in Boston. How different this journey was from the one I had made to Baltimore o years before! I was no longer a restless
excitable little creature
requiring the attention of everybody on the train to keep me amused. I sat quietly beside Miss Sullivan
taking in with eager interest all that she told me about what she saw out of the car window: the beautiful Tennessee River
the great cotton-fields
the hills and woods
and the crowds of laughing negroes at the stations
who waved to the people on the train and brought delicious candy and popcorn balls through the car. On the seat opposite me sat my big rag doll
Nancy
in a new gingham dress and a beruffled sunbon
looking at me out of o bead eyes. Sometimes
when I was not absorbed in Miss Sullivan's descriptions
I remembered Nancy's existence and took her up in my arms
but I generally calmed my conscience by making myself believe that she was asleep.
As I shall not have occasion to refer to Nancy again
I wish to tell here a sad experience she had soon after our arrival in Boston. She was covered with dirt--the remains of mud pies I had pelled her to eat
although she had never shown any special liking for them. The laundress at the Perkins Institution secretly carried her off to give her a bath. This was too much for poor Nancy. When I next saw her she was a formless heap of cotton
which I should not have recognized at all except for the o bead eyes which looked out at me reproachfully.
可是我再也没有机会提到南希了，在此，我愿意讲述她随我到波士顿后的不幸经历。她满身污渍——大多是被我强迫喂食的“泥巴馅饼”的剩余物，尽管她从未显露出喜欢吃这种食品的丝毫热情。帕金斯盲人学院的洗衣女工瞒着我给她洗了一个澡，这对可怜的南希来说简直是灭顶之灾。当我再见到她时，她已经变成了一个走了形的棉花团。除了那两只怒目而视的玻璃眼珠，我一点儿都认不出她了。
When the train at last pulled into the station at Boston it was as if a beautiful fairy tale had e true. The "once upon a time" was now; the "far-away country" was here.
We had scarcely arrived at the Perkins Institution for the Blind when I began to make friends with the little blind children. It delighted me inexpressibly to find that they knew the manual alphabet. What joy to talk with other children in my own language! Until then I had been like a foreigner speaking through an interpreter. In the school where Laura Bridgman was taught I was in my own country. It took me some time to appreciate the fact that my new friends were blind. I knew I could not see; but it did not seem possible that all the eager
loving children who gathered round me and joined heartily in my frolics were also blind. I remember the surprise and the pain I felt as I noticed that they placed their hands over mine when I talked to them and that they read books with their fingers. Although I had been told this before
and although I understood my own deprivations
yet I had thought vaguely that since they could hear
they must have a sort of "second sight
" and I was not prepared to find one child and another and yet another deprived of the same precious gift. But they were so happy and contented that I lost all sense of pain in the pleasure of their panionship.