[KELLER, Helen Adams (1880-1968)]. THOMAS, Edith (ca 1878 -1910). Manuscript poems "Apple" 7-lines and "Dog," 6-lines. N.p., n.d.

One page, 8vo, in pencil in her square hand, some tiny pin-holes in the margins, a few short marginal tears neatly repaired verso, slight creasing and soiling.

AN EARLY HELEN KELLER LETTER. Edith Thomas was a fellow deafblind student at Perkins Institution for the Blind with Keller. Thomas became deafblind after a childhood case of scarlet fever and diphtheria and began her studies at Perkins in 1887 at 9 years old (Coit). Thomas was at the Perkins Institute for over 16 years before her health declined and she had to leave the school. In these poems, Thomas described the physical characteristics of apples and dogs, respectively. Keller recounts the importance of meeting other blind and deafblind children: “We had scarcely arrived at the Perkins Institution for the Blind when I began to make friends with the little blind children. It delighted me inexpressibly to find that they knew the manual alphabet. What joy to talk with other children in my own language! Until then I had been like a foreigner speaking through an interpreter. In the school where Laura Bridgman was taught I was in my own country!” (The Story of My Life, p.37). Susanna Coit, “Speaking with ‘flying fingers,’” Perkins Archives Blog).
From Hadley, formerly known as Hadley School for the Blind