Miss Keller's reading of the manual alphabet by her sense of
touch seems to cause some perplexity. Even people who know her
fairly well have written in the magazines about Miss Sullivan's
"mysterious telegraphic communications" with her pupil. The
manual alphabet is that in use among all educated deaf people.
Most dictionaries contain an engraving of the manual letters. The
deaf person with sight looks at the fingers of his companion, but
it is also possible to feel them. Miss Keller puts her fingers
lightly over the hand of one who is talking to her and gets the
words as rapidly as they can be spelled. As she explains, she is
not conscious of the single letters or of separate words. Miss
Sullivan and others who live constantly with the deaf can spell
very rapidly--fast enough to get a slow lecture, not fast enough
to get every word of a rapid speaker.

Anybody can learn the manual letters in a few minutes, use them
slowly in a day, and in thirty days of constant use talk to Miss
Keller or any other deaf person without realizing what his
fingers are doing. If more people knew this, and the friends and
relatives of deaf children learned the manual alphabet at once
the deaf all over the world would be happier and better educated.

Miss Keller reads by means of embossed print or the various kinds
of braille. The ordinary embossed book is made with roman
letters, both small letters and capitals. These letters are of
simple, square, angular design. The small letters are about
three-sixteenths of an inch high, and are raised from the page
the thickness of the thumbnail. The books are large, about the
size of a volume of an encyclopedia. Green's "Short History of
the English People" is in six large volumes. The books are not