The Story of My Life: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Helen spent the summer and winter after the “Frost King” incident with her family in Alabama. There, she began writing down the story of her life. She was still nervous and “excessively scrupulous” about everything she wrote, and she often confessed to Miss Sullivan that she was second-guessing herself and worried that the things she was writing were not her own ideas. Miss Sullivan consoled her, and the twelve-year-old Helen “timidly, fearfully, but resolutely” persevered in writing a brief account of her life for the Youth’s Companion. Helen was no longer living the “unconscious life of a little child;” she was now self-aware, cautious, and clear-minded.

In 1893 Helen attended the inauguration of President Cleveland, and also visited Niagara Falls and the World’s Fair. Helen was deeply emotional at the falls, and notes that many people have asked her how she could have had such a strong emotional reaction to the wonder and natural beauty of Niagara when she cannot see or hear the falls or the waves. Helen, however, cannot define what the Falls meant to her any more than she can “love or religion or goodness.”

In the summer of 1893 Helen and Miss Sullivan attended the World’s Fair with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. Helen’s imagination was enlivened by all she experienced there, and delighted as “marvels of invention [and] treasures of industry” passed beneath her hands. Helen took in all the glory of the fair with her fingertips as she touched and learned about French bronzes, diamond mining, electrical inventions, Egyptian mummies, ancient South American relics. Helen credits this trip to the fair with allowing her to make a leap from childish interests in fairy tales and toys to “the appreciation of the real.”