第1期

The Story Of My Life By Helen Keller

Chapter I. It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist.

The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one.

When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present.

The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy.

A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest.

Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries.

In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important.

I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northern Alabama.