Madeleine de Verchères was born on April 17th, 1678. Her father was François de Verchères, captain in the renowned regiment of Carignan Salières. To him was assigned the command of the fort which bore his name. Madeleine married M. Pierre Thomas Tarieu de la Naudière in 1706 and in 1722 she married M. de la Perrade.
One day, in 1722, she had another adventure with the Indians when she showed herself to be as brave and resourceful as during the days at Fort Verchères.
Two redskins, Abenaquis, tall and strongly-built, came to the house and began quarrelling with M. de la Perrade. He ordered them to depart and they went out but returned almost immediately with their weapons, a tomahawk and a hatchet. They smashed open the door and one of them, indicating M. de la Perrade, cried:
“You’re a dead man!”
These words would have proved true had not Madeleine come to the rescue. She seized the tomahawk from the Indian and dealt him so hard a blow that he fell to the floor. Then she was attacked by four squaws. One held her by the arms, another the legs, a third grasped her hair and a fourth her throat. They were going to throw her into the fire.
Just then her young son, Tarieu, twelve years of age, saw the danger she was in. He picked up a weapon and whacked the Indian women over their heads and bodies until they let his mother go. The squaws rushed on M. de la Perrade, attempting to get the hatchet away from him and Madeleine, as soon as she was on her feet, ran to aid him. Fortunately other settlers had come to their help and the Indians were driven away.
During her lifetime Madeleine received a pension and many years afterwards the Canadian Government erected a memorial in commemoration of her bravery.
CHAPTER VIII. FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT: HELEN KELLER
A little deaf and blind child not quite seven years old stood in the doorway of her home in Tuscambia, northern Alabama. She was well-built and large for her age, with rosy colouring. She realized from the stir about the place that something unusual was happening but she did not know that her mother and brother had gone to the railway station, a mile away, to meet the train that was bringing her a teacher.
When her mother returned Helen hurried out and, in her impetuous rush down the steps, almost upset the young lady with her. Miss Sullivan had a bag in her hand and after Helen had felt the stranger’s face and dress she took hold of the bag. As it would not open she pointed to the keyhole and made the motions of turning a key in the lock. Mrs. Keller explained, by signs, that she ought not to have the bag and tried to take it away from her. This made the little girl very angry and she flew into a rage.
Helen was neither docile nor obedient. Her parents and friends had habitually given in to her slightest whim and, up until now, she had found that, if she got into a tantrum and made things generally uncomfortable, she always obtained whatever she desired. But she soon learned that Miss Sullivan would brook none of this nonsense. The two main objectives the young teacher had in her work were to teach her small pupil obedience and love. Without these she felt there could be nothing gained; education in reading and writing would be of little value alone.
The baby sister, Mildred, was to Helen’s unawakened heart, only a usurper who occupied the place on her mother’s lap hitherto reserved for her. So far she had experienced neither affection nor love in the sense that normal children do, though her doll, Nancy, was regarded highly.
One day, she discovered that the new baby was sleeping in the cradle where she was accustomed to rock Nancy. Immediately she burst into a fit of temper, ran to the cradle and upset it. Fortunately, Mrs. Keller chanced to be in the room at the time and she caught wee Mildred before she fell.
Using the utmost kindness and patience, yet being extremely firm, Miss Sullivan worked with her new pupil. She saw that there would be little done as long as the child remained in the family circle, so requested that she and Helen be allowed to live in a small cottage on the estate. At first Captain Keller and his wife would not consent to this but, as it seemed to be the only way, agreed to the plan.
“Helen’s table manners,” Miss Sullivan wrote at the time, “are appalling. She puts her hands in our plates and helps herself, and when the dishes are passed, she grabs them and takes out whatever she wants. This morning I would not let her put her hand in my plate. She persisted and a contest of will followed. Naturally the family was much disturbed and left the room. I locked the dining-room door and proceeded to eat my breakfast, though the food almost choked me.”
The little girl went through all the stunts of a spoiled child; she lay on the floor, kicking and screaming. Then, finding no one paid any heed to her she got up and pinched Miss Sullivan.
It was no easy task to discipline her. When she was naughty she could not see the expression of pain or distress on the faces of those who loved her; nor witness their delight when she was good. Words had no meaning; the only communication between her and others was by the use of a few signs.
Isolation with her teacher in the cottage proved the proper treatment. After the first day or so Helen began to show an improvement and, two weeks later, Miss Sullivan wrote:
“My heart is singing for joy this morning. A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil’s mind, and behold, all things are changed. The wild little creature of two weeks ago has been transformed into a gentle child,”
From this on progress was rapid. Helen had a particularly active brain and learned very quickly. She was soon able to communicate with her teacher through the manual alphabet. Miss Sullivan spelt into her hand the conversation of her friends and acquaintances; she described the scenes through which they passed when, as often pupil and teacher did, they travelled from place to place.
Helen was endowed with a firm, decisive character. The very traits that, in her early childhood, sometimes caused outbursts of temper, when controlled and disciplined, proved beneficial. She had undaunted courage and endurance and these enabled her to carry through to a successful ending many an undertaking that would have disheartened one of lesser calibre.
She had a great desire to speak. Although she was not dumb, yet she had never used spoken language, except for the first few words she had said when a baby and these gradually had been forgotten. “Water” or “wa-wa,” as she expressed it, was the only word she was using when Miss Sullivan came to teach her and that was dropped after she had been taught the manual spelling for it.
It was very difficult for her to achieve the proper pronunciation. A normal person learns in early childhood by listening to his parents, friends and relatives talking and by trying to imitate them. But Helen, debarred from sound from her nineteenth month in this world, could not hear what others were saying; she could not even listen to her own voice and the words she attempted to utter. It was a herculean task but she resolutely refused to be downhearted. Speech, such as her more fortunate fellow-creatures employed, was her goal and she would not be content with anything but success.
Just what learning to speak entailed in labour none but those similarly constituted can understand. Three years after Helen had been taught the manual alphabet, Miss Sarah Fuller, Principal of the Horace Mann School, gave her the first lesson in oral language. The girl, by placing her hand lightly over her teacher’s face felt the position of tongue and lips when a vowel or consonant was spoken. In this way she discovered M, P, A, S, T, I.
By degrees words and even sentences were pieced together. Failing the senses of hearing and sight (the latter would have shown her the movement of mouth and lips), she had to depend entirely on the sense of touch. She sometimes had to repeat sentences and words for hours.
“My work was practice, practice, practice,” she tells us. “Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I would soon be home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished, spurred me on and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
“‘My little sister will understand me now,’ was a thought stronger than all obstac
les. I used to repeat ecstatically, ‘I am not dumb now.’”
Helen’s desire to speak was accentuated by meeting certain deaf people in Boston who could make themselves understood by word of mouth. She also had heard the story of the blind and deaf girl in Norway who had learned to talk.
Having only the three senses, touch, taste and smell, to depend upon, Helen exercised them more than does the ordinary individual. With her fingers she saw the world, the faces of her friends, the material things about her. Her sense of touch was very keen. She judged character, not by the expression on the face or in the eyes of the person she was meeting, but by the hand.
“Not only is the hand as easy to recognize as the face but it reveals its secrets more openly and unconsciously. People control their countenances, but the hand is under no such restraint. It relaxes and becomes listless when the spirit is low and dejected; the muscles tighten when the mind is excited or the heart glad; and permanent qualities stand written on it all the time.”
She was extremely receptive of vibrations in the air around her. A jar or a jolt reached her supersensitive nerves more readily than it would the seeing and hearing individual. By these waves of sound she distinguished between the step of a child and an adult. Jerks or interruptions in footsteps indicated to her such acts as kneeling, rising, kicking or stumbling. On the street there is a confusion of vibrations but in the quiet of her own home she could tell when a book or pencil fell to the floor.
When dinner was ready the announcement was made, not by ringing a bell, but by rapping on the wooden balustrade; the vibration reached her as she worked in her study.
An amazing thing is that she could understand the wordless sounds of animals—”the cat’s purr, its mew, its angry, jerky spit; the dog’s bow-wow of warning or of joyous welcome, its yelp of despair, and its contented snore; the cow’s moo; a monkey’s chatter; the snort of a horse; the lion’s roar and the terrible snarl of a tiger.”
With her own hands she has felt all these sounds, having visited menageries, circuses, zoological gardens, where she says all the animals, with the exception of the tiger, have talked into her hand.
“I have,” she writes in The Story of My Life, “touched several lions in the flesh and felt them roar royally, like a cataract over rocks.”
There are vibrations that are felt by touch and certain ones that affect the nerves and bones. To all these she was actively awake. The sense of smell she found to be the most useful but, although strongly developed, it remained deficient in comparison with that possessed by the lower animals, who appear to be more gifted in this respect than any human being.
Helen Keller made up her mind to go to college.
Other young people were taking a university training and she longed to do the same. She passed the required entrance examinations but was persuaded by her friends not to enter immediately. However, at the close of a year, after mature deliberation, she decided to go ahead. To the surprise and pleasure of those interested in her she was able to complete the college course.
The struggle to acquire an education would have discouraged anyone with less perseverance. She was obliged to study among students endowed with all their faculties, for the lectures were not given for the deaf and blind. If it had not been for the kind assistance of her unwearying teacher she could never have managed.
Miss Sullivan attended the classes with her and spelled into her hand the lectures of the professors. Algebra and Geometry were the hardest subjects for her to understand clearly but even these, in time, were mastered. She learned to read in French and German and absorbed the best in these languages.
During her school life she states she learned four things: “to think clearly without hurry or confusion, to love everybody sincerely, to act in everything with the highest motives and to trust in dear God unhesitatingly.”
After Helen Keller graduated from college she was interested in education for the blind; she wished all so afflicted to become self-supporting. She served on various Advisory Boards for the deaf and blind.
Her struggle against overwhelming odds resulted in richness of character and peace of mind. To be sure, she was not always happy; she often keenly felt her position, barred by lack of sight and hearing from participating in the activities of those around her.
“Sometimes,” she wrote, “a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music and sweet companionship; but I may not enter.... Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘There is joy in self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”
CHAPTER IX. A FRIEND OF THE SCHOOL: ADA MAY COURTICE
A little, fair-haired child sat demurely beside her mother on the hard bench in the Quaker meeting-house. She gazed at the women and girls in their sober grey, then across the aisle at the men and boys. Her eyes strayed to the front where, on a raised platform, some three feet above the main part of the building, the older men and women, the tried and trusted members of the church, were sitting.
The little girl soon wearied of looking at the familiar faces. She listened to the birds singing gaily outside in the trees and watched the bees and butterflies flitting to and fro beyond the open window.
When the quiet hour of meditation was over and they were returning home she said to her mother:
“Why do we not sing the way the birds do? I heard them during the meeting and they sounded so nice.”
The question put by her small daughter was one that had already been formed in Mrs. Brown’s mind. To lift one’s voice in song surely was a fitting way to give praise. Why should music be debarred from their lives?
As the days passed by her thoughts dwelt on the subject and finally took definite form. Although she was a devout Quaker she was not in accord with the sentiment that placed a taboo on musical instruments. Ada, her young daughter, ought to have a chance to express herself in music. But how was this to be done? There was no use referring to Mr. Brown — he would certainly be opposed to her plan.
However, after much deliberation and after having had recourse to her own savings, she carried out the idea that had occurred to her and an organ was delivered to the home in Pickering. Its arrival was entirely unforeseen by the other members of the family. Mr. Brown, at first, was displeased but he knew his wife’s judgment was sound and was well aware that she must have had a strong conviction she was doing what was right or she would never have purchased the instrument. Quaker men and women are accustomed to assume equal responsibilities so, in this case, he decided to stand aside and wait to see what influence this new element exerted before making more objections.
“Thee must have music lessons,” Mrs. Brown said to Ada. “Thee shalt have a teacher.”
Ada liked the music. She did not find it a hardship to spend her time practising and before long she was able to bring forth sweet strains from the organ to delight the young people who were frequent visitors at her parents’ home.
Her father, with watchful eye, saw that this was a factor for good. Young men and women, Ada’s school friends in the co-educational Quaker college at Pickering, Ontario, flocked to the house, attracted by the music and the wholesome companionship of those who assembled there. They were content to spend their evenings in pleasant, innocent recreation.
In addition, he found that the music itself appealed to him and he began to like it for its own sake.
One day, on Ada’s birthday, Mr. Brown had a splendid surprise. He had kept his secret well and none knew what it was.
“A birthday present for thee,” he said to his daughter, leading the way into the large living-room.
There, across one end of the room, stood a piano!
Mr and Mrs. Brown little knew that the music they had introduced into their home was to be the means of bringing their daughter into a sphere that would enable her to use her talents for the good of the women
and children of her country. If Ada Brown had remained in the Quaker meeting she would have lived an upright, useful life but the Home and School Club movement would not have had her as its founder.
After pursuing her musical studies in Ontario Ladies’ College, Whitby, she took a position as soloist in a Methodist church, Toronto, Ontario. Soon, in addition to this work, she was teaching pupils in various nearby towns and villages.
There were no motor-cars in those days and she went back and forth from the city to her classes by train. One day, to her surprise, Dr. Courtice, the minister of the church where she sang, asked permission to drive out and bring her home when her day’s work was done. After that, the spanking team of horses made many trips into the country and the young soloist realized that it was not friendship alone which caused the busy pastor to spend his leisure hours in this way. The courtship culminated in marriage and Ada Brown became the wife of Rev. Andrew C. Courtice, D.D.
Mrs. Courtice was keenly interested in all branches of social service work, especially in those that dealt with the welfare of children. The school and the education of the young called forth her warmest sympathy. She was an early advocate of closer relationship and co-operation between parents and teachers. The kindergarten was very dear to her heart and she used often to go to the school to help entertain, by her musical talents, the little tots who began their education in this grade. The kindergarten teachers were invited to her home and encouraged to talk over their problems.
There were no idle moments in her life. Busy as she was with the duties involved by her husband’s position, as minister and afterwards as editor of the Christian Guardian, she neglected no opportunity to broaden her outlook or add to her knowledge. She attended classes in child psychology to give her a deeper insight into this study.
When Dr. Courtice died Mrs. Courtice found that it was necessary to add to her income. A minister’s widow was not blessed with much of this world’s goods and she had a young family to bring up and educate so she started a private school at the Beach in Toronto.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 778
