"A Smile of the Mind Is a Gesture from the Soul" - Helen Keller after Reading the Lips of Mark Twain

Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan

Helen Keller (b. 1880 - d. 1968) became very ill when only nineteen months old with either Scarlet Fever or Meningitis, two diseases now treatable in 2020, but often fatal in 1882. Helen survived, but a few days after Helen’s fever broke, her mother noticed that Helen wasn’t responding when the bell was rung for dinner, or when a hand was waved in front of her face. Helen had gone deaf and blind.

The family consulted with Alexandar Graham Bell (1847-1922), the inventor of the telephone and a pioneer in communicating with the deaf. Bell arranged for Anne Sullivan (1866-1936), a teacher from Perkin's School of the Blind, to travel to Helen's home to become the little girl's teacher. 

Helen called the day Anne Sullivan arrived in her life "the most important day I remember in all my life." Anne met Helen in March 1887, when Helen was not quite seven years old. Only fourteen years older than Helen, Anne herself was visually impaired and had just recently graduated from the school of the bind.

Before long, Anne Sullivan had taught Helen ‘finger spelling’, which allowed her to finally communicate with those around her. To do this, Anne gave Helen an object such as a doll and traced the word ‘d-o-l-l’ onto her palm.

In the beginning, Helen did not make the connection between the letters on her palm and the objects. But the famous moment came when Anne took Helen to the water pump outside and while spelling “w-a-t-e-r” into Helen’s palm, allowing the water to run over Helen's other hand. Comprehension dawned in Helen's mind. The little blind and deaf girl quickly knelt and touched the earth and held out her hand, demanding her new teacher to spell the earth's name in the form of letters. By nightfall, Helen had learned 30 new words.

Mark Twain in his octagonal study

Anne Sullivan became Helen Keller's life-long teacher.  Anne was present when Helen Keller would visit her life-long friend, writer Mark Twain, in both his Connecticut home and his octagonal study in Elmira, New York, where he would write some of his classic works, including Tom Saywer. 

Keller later wrote a vivid description of her interactions with Mark Twain:

"To one hampered and circumscribed as I am it was a wonderful experience to have a friend like Mr. Clemens. I recall many talks with him about human affairs. He never made me feel that my opinions were worthless. . . . He knew that we do not think with eyes and ears and that our capacity for thought is not measured by five senses. He kept me always in mind while he talked, and he treated me like a competent human being. That is why I loved him. . . . There was about him the air of one who had suffered greatly."

Of course, being deaf and blind, Helen Keller could only understand what Mark Twain said by feeling his lips and throat with one hand and having her teacher, Anne Sullivan, translate what Twain said by writing it in the palm of Helen's other hand. Listen to Helen Keller's vivid description of Mark Twain speaking:

"Whenever I touched his face his expression was sad, even when he was telling a funny story. He smiled, not with the mouth but with his mind—a gesture of the soul rather than of the face. His voice was truly wonderful. To my touch, it was deep, resonant. He had the power of modulating it so as to suggest the most delicate shades of meaning and he spoke so deliberately that I could get almost every word with my fingers on his lips. Ah, how sweet and poignant the memory of his soft slow speech playing over my listening fingers."

Keller feeling Twain's "smile of the mind"

I love Helen Keller's description of Mark Twain:

"He smiled, not with the mouth but with his mind--a gesture of the soul rather than of the face." 

I always want to be a person who smiles at others with my mind. I work to accept others where they are, for who they are, as they are. 

My personal motto is "Sometimes offends, never offended." That describes a principle by which I live. Nobody can live as long as I, be involved with as many people as I, and not sometimes offend other people.  I pay little attention to whether I offend others, but I pay great attention to ensure that others' words, actions, and attitudes never offend me, regardless of what they say, do, or feel.

This week, I encourage you to concentrate on smiling with your mind even more than smiling with your lips.

The smile of the mind is the token of God's grace in the soul.