things to learn in my school life here, and indeed, in life--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."



CHAPTER III. EDUCATION

It is now sixty-five years since Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe knew
that he had made his way through Laura Bridgman's fingers to her
intelligence. The names of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller will
always be linked together, and it is necessary to understand what
Dr. Howe did for his pupil before one comes to an account of Miss
Sullivan's work. For Dr. Howe is the great pioneer on whose work
that of Miss Sullivan and other teachers of the deaf-blind
immediately depends.

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe was born in Boston, November 10, 1801,
and died in Boston, January 9, 1876. He was a great
philanthropist, interested especially in the education of all
defectives, the feeble-minded, the blind, and the deaf. Far in
advance of his time he advocated many public measures for the
relief of the poor and the diseased, for which he was laughed at
then, but which have since been put into practice. As head of the
Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, he heard of Laura
Bridgman and had her brought to the Institution on October 4,
1837.

Laura Bridgman was born at Hanover, New Hampshire, December 21,