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Updated: May 18, 2025
January 30. This morning I took a bath, and when teacher came upstairs to comb my hair she told me some very sad news which made me unhappy all day. Some one wrote to Mr. Anagnos that the story which I sent him as a birthday gift, and which I wrote myself, was not my story at all, but that a lady had written it a long time ago. The person said her story was called "Frost Fairies."
A little story called "The Frost King," which I wrote and sent to Mr. Anagnos, of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, was at the root of the trouble. In order to make the matter clear, I must set forth the facts connected with this episode, which justice to my teacher and to myself compels me to relate. I wrote the story when I was at home, the autumn after I had learned to speak.
I watched her for some time as she moved about, trying to take long strides in order to carry out the idea I had given her of a camel's gait. When I asked her what she was doing, she replied, "I am a very funny camel." During the next two years neither Mr. Anagnos, who was in Europe for a year, nor Miss Sullivan wrote anything about Helen Keller for publication.
I racked my brain until I was weary to recall anything about the frost that I had read before I wrote "The Frost King"; but I could remember nothing, except the common reference to Jack Frost, and a poem for children, "The Freaks of the Frost," and I knew I had not used that in my composition. At first Mr. Anagnos, though deeply troubled, seemed to believe me.
Teachers of the deaf proved a priori that what Miss Sullivan had done could not be, and some discredit was reflected on her statements, because they were surrounded by the vague eloquence of Mr. Anagnos.
They are going to give me a lovely present, but I cannot guess what it will be. Sammy has a dear new brother. He is very soft and delicate yet. Mr. Anagnos is in Athens now. He is delighted because I am here. Now I must say, good-bye. I hope I have written my letter nicely, but it is very difficult to write on this paper and teacher is not here to give me better.
This with the extracts from her letters, scattered through the report, is the first valid source of information about Helen Keller. Of this report Miss Sullivan wrote in a letter dated October 30, 1887: "Have you seen the paper I wrote for the 'report'? Mr. Anagnos was delighted with it.
I therefore gathered from all the books I read every bit of poetry or of history that I thought would give him pleasure. Mr. Anagnos, in speaking of my composition on the cities, has said, "These ideas are poetic in their essence." But I do not understand how he ever thought a blind and deaf child of eleven could have invented them.
Anagnos issued the last Perkins Institution report containing anything about Helen Keller. For this report Miss Sullivan wrote the fullest and largest account she has ever written; and in this report appeared the "Frost King," which is discussed fully in a later chapter. Then the controversy waxed fiercer than ever.
She was seven years old when her teacher, Miss Sullivan, under the direction of Mr. Anagnos, at the Blind Asylum at South Boston, began her education. A child fuller of life and happiness it would be hard to find. It seems as if her soul was flooded with light and filled with music that had found entrance to it through avenues closed to other mortals.
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