memory, the first principal of the first normal
school in the country. In 1857 she entered the
service of the Boston schools. For nearly ten
years she taught in nearly every grade in the
Boylston Grannnar School, under the mastership successively of Charles Kimball, William T. Adams (Oliver Optic), Alfred Hewins, John Jameson, and Lucius Wheelock. She was teaching in the Bowditch School, to which she had been transferred from the Boylston, when,
after due preparation, she was ajjpointed (1869) the principal of the school in Boston now known as the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, the first successful public day-school ever opened
for deaf children. She is still the head of this school, after over thirty years of service, in which there has been n« break or friction.
Miss Fuller is a director of the American Association to promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, and of the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, a vice-president of the Sarah Fuller Home for Little Children who cannot hear (named in her honor), a member of the Massachusetts Teachers' and National Edu- cational Associations, the National Geographic Society, the New England Association of Teachers of English, and the New England Educational League. She is the author of an illustrated primer and a set of phonic charts that are found useful in the schools. She has written articles for educational publications, and has delivered suggestive addresses before conventions.
With Harriet B. Rogers, of the Clarke Insti- tution at Northam]:)ton, and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, with whom she has ever worked in hearty sympathy. Miss Fuller called the first convention for teachers of articulation. In 1890 she taught Helen Keller to speak, and, with Dr. Bell, was instrumental in having Phillips Brooks open for her a way to spiritual truths.
That through organized effort parents might be even more helpful than they had been, Miss Fuller founded in 1895 a society (the first of its kind ever formed) known now as the Boston Parents' Education Association for Deaf Chil- dren. This organization, of which she is one of the directors, has proved a most useful ally. Its latest effort, the preparation of a booklet giving the history of the Horace Mann School and its relation to speech and speech-reading, testifies to her efficient, loving work and that of her co-workers.
Miss Fuller's labors in private as well as in public cannot be fully estimated. As one of n)any incidents that could be told of her indi- vidual action in behalf of the adult deaf, it may be mentioned that prominent residents of a New Hampshire town (Dublin) so appreciated what she and her special teacher of speech had done for an adult member of their comnmnity that they did what they knew would most please her — gave a valuable present to the school under her charge.
All of Miss Fuller's labor is imbued with the faithful, heroic spirit of her New England an- cestry. And with it all there is a gracious per- sonality which the home life at Newton Lower Falls, where she has lived in one house for more than half a century, as well as the school life, constantly reveals. As a member for over fifty years of St. Mary 's Protestant Episcopal Church in Newton Lower Falls, she has been active in the Sunday-School and in other work of that society.
The following is copied from Miss Fuller's statement relative to Helen Keller, addressed to the superintendent of public schools: —
The first intimation to me of Helen Keller's desire to speak was on the 26th of March, 1890, when her teacher. Miss Sullivan, called upon me with her, and asked me to help her to teach Helen to speak ; for, said she, " Helen has spelled upon her fingers, 'I must speak.'" She was then within three months of being ten years old. Some two years before, accompanied by her mother, Mr. Anagnos, and Miss Sullivan, she had visited the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, when her ready use of English and her interest in the children had suggested to me that she could be taught to speak. But it was not then thought wise to allow her to use her vocal organs. Now, however, that the attempt was to be made, I gladly undertook the work. I began by familiarizing her with the position and condition of the various mouth parts and with the trachea. This I did by passing her hand lightly over the lower part of my face and
