room, or the book that she's reading. She sees nothing. She does not hear the rustle

of the curtains behind her. She hears nothing. She's deaf. Deaf and blind.

(background music playing)

But if you enter a room she will know it. Your lightest footfall will tell her you're

coming. It will even tell her who you are - if she knows you, as she knows her old friend

Polly Thompson.

Molly has been with Helen Keller 40 years, for nearly half of these, she has been Helen's

only companion - Helen's eyes and ears on the world.

She talks with Helen by a finger system in which each letter has a sign. Like this. In

reaching out beyond her dark and soundless nights, Helen depends most on touch. Two other

senses remain. There is taste and there is smell.

Scents - the scent of objects and places and people tell Helen much that we learn with

eyes and ears.

But her hand is her chief link with the outer world. With Polly, with Ann, the part time

helper and everyone she encounters.

With her hand, she reads Ann's lips. She alters her voice. It is an unnatural voice, and it

is her great sorrow. In all her years of effort, Helen has never learned to speak clearly.

This isn't strange, because since she was a baby, she has not heard a word spoken nor

seen lips forming one.

But let Helen,with Polly's help, tell you.

It is not blindnes or deafness that bring me my darkest hour.

It is acute disappointment in not being able to speak normally. Longingly, I feel how much

more good I could have done if I had acquired normal speech.

But out of this sorrowful experience, I understand more fully all human striving and wanted ambitions and the infinite capacity

of home.