AUSTRALIA’S HELEN KELLER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3864, 3 April 1928, Page 53

AUSTRALIA’S HELEN KELLER.

BLIND, DEAF, AND DUMB. HANDICAPS OVERCOME. SYDNEY, March 16. . Australia has its Helen Keller in the sweet, gracious, sunny personality of a young woman, Alice Betteridge, at the Deaf and Dumb and Blind Institution in Sydney. Her life story, which has just been revealed, is a lesson for those who go througi life with a grouch and a mental squint. As an infant, sickness left this young woman, with a smile and a happy, serene jutlook to-day which irradiate cheerfulness' blind and deaf, and, as a natural corollary, dumb, : and in a world of grim darkness and silence. The amazing skill of Alice Betteridge to-day, in the face of these terr rible handicaps, is a monument to th£ work and influence of the institution where she has spent all her life since she was seven years of age. Her reading, iin Braille, ranges from Carlyle to light modern fiction. She has read every one of Dickens’s books. The most wonderful thiug is her knitting, of which thousands of women with their sense of sight would be envious. Last winter, a knitting competition conducted by one of tne Sydney newspapers attracted entrants from all over Australia and New Zealand. Asking no favours, and keeping her afflicticns a deep secret, this young woman was represented in the competition by some delightful beby’s garments. She won second prize. She was among those who knitted socks and other articles for the soldiers during the war. The skill and speed with which she can use an ordinary typewriter is another example of the way in which she has turned trials into triumphs, and obliterated the shadows for the sunshine of a bright, happy, useful life.