A NOBLE WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 20

A NOBLE WOMAN

Mrs. Macy, the good companion of deaf and dumb Helen Keller, has passed away. It does not seem four years since she told the story of her wonderful life to a huge London audience as she stood with Helen Keller on the platform :it the Queen's Hall. It then seemed thai if Helen Keller was a hero, Anne Macy was another. Such unselfishness and patience as hers have rarely been seen on this earth, and one can only think of Blake's words: Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too. It was in 1887 that Mrs. Macy, then Anne Sullivan, first met Helen Keller, then a child of seven. "She was a wild, destructive little creature," Mrs. Macy told us, "and nobody could control her bursts of temper." But her new friend soon cured her unhappiness. The first thing she did was to put a new doll into the child's arms, and she caught Helen's interest by making the deaf and dumb letters D O L L on her small hand over and over again until she could spell the word. In a month Helen had learned 30 words by the fingering alphabet. Through her skill and never-failing patience the little deaf-mute was given as good an education as any girl of her period.

Towards the end of this unique friendship it became Helen Keller's turn to help, for Mrs. Macy's old trouble returned and she became blind for the last few years of her life, which has just ended.

PIXIE PEOPLE; Somewhere else in the Ring tonight yon may read the best, story Avritten around last week's picture, '"'I hose Impish Gnomes." The best of several good entries was sent by "Deina Ness," IS, Northland, who explains cxactly why we have been waking to see grey skies so often these holidays. Today is the second sunny day lor this week, so perhaps summer is here at last. It seemed lhal she might have been hiding in any garden along the way to the l»ing this morning, with hydrangeas making rainbows of colour in tho green shade, and sweet peas fluttering little mauve and rose Hags. On the first Saturday in February we shall have our Summer Page. Some storymakers and artists have sent in their work already, but there is still room for dainty black and white drawings, sunshine tales, and verses. It must be a specially sunny page to make up for all the showers, so thinking caps on and pencils out! ("But that sounds too much like school," says Letterbox Elf.) A big welcome to the very large band of new pixies in the Ringtonight!

FAIRIEL.