Helen had scarcely arrived at the Perkins Institution for the Blind when she began to make friends with the little blind children. It delighted her inexpressibly to find that they knew the manual alphabet because it gave her immense joy to talk to other children in her own language. Until then she had been like a foreigner speaking through an interpreter. In the school where Laura Bridgman was taught, she seemed to feel that she was in her own country. It took her some time to appreciate the fact that her new friends were blind because she knew she could not see but it did not seem possible that all the eager loving children who gathered around her and frolicked with her were also blind. She remembered the twin sensations of surprise and pain that she had felt as she noticed that the placed their hands over hers when she talked to them and that they read books with their fingers. Although she had been informed of this before and she understood her own deprivations, she had yet vaguely thought that since they could hear, they must have a sort of 'second sight'. Helen was not prepared to find one child after another also deprived of the same precious gift. But they seemed to be happy and contented so she lost all sense of pain in the pleasure of their company. One day spent with the blind children made her thoroughly feel at home in her new environment and she eagerly anticipated more pleasant experiences to follow as her days flew by swiftly.  2) Sight and hearing were just two of the beautiful blessings that God had given her so it could not be considered to be an insurmountable loss. The most precious and wonderful gift was still hers. Her mind remained clear and active although it had fled forever from light. The disadvantages of being deaf and blind were overcome and the advantages remained. She excelled other deaf people because she was taught as if she was normal. On the other hand, the peculiar value to her of language which ordinary people took for granted as a necessary part, made her think about language and love it. Language to her was a liberator and from the first she cherished it