Kansas Women in Literature | Page 6

lines. In 1862, she was
married to A. B. Allerton of Wisconsin, coming to Kansas in 1865. She
was best appreciated for her social qualities and her interest in
charity--that broader charity that praises the beauty and ignores the
blemishes. Her last poem, ``When Days Grow Dark'' is a beautiful pen
picture of her sweetness and resignation in her growing blindness and
her love and trust in him who had been her companion down the years.
``You take the book and pour into my ear In accent sweet, the words I
cannot see; I listen charmed, forget my haunting fear, And think with
you as with your eyes I see. In the world's thought, so your dear voice
be left, I still have part, I am not all bereft.
And if this darkness deepens, when for me The new moon bends no
more her silver rim, When stars go out, and over land and sea Black
midnight falls, where now is twilight dim, O, then may I be patient,
sweet and mild, While your hands lead me like a little child!''
She died in 1893, at Padonia, and was buried in a bed of her favorite
white flowers, donated by loving friends. In the little graveyard at
Hamlin, one reads ``Beautiful Things'' on a modest stone at the head of
her little bed.

EMMA TANNER WOOD.
Mrs. Emma Tanner Wood (Caroline Cunningham), a Topeka woman,
began newspaper work in 1872. The result of those early years' work
was ``Spring Showers,'' a volume of prose. After thirty years of study
and experience among the defectives, she wrote ``Too Fit For The

Unfit,'' advocating surgery for the feeble- minded. The story of Mrs.
Benton, one of the characters, led Mrs. Wood to introduce a law
preventing children being sent to the poor house. This was the first law
purely in the interest of children ever passed in Kansas. Later, a law
preventing traveling hypnotists from using school children as subjects
in public exhibitions was drawn up by Mrs. Wood and passed.
Several years ago, a book on hypnotism, far in advance of the public
thought, was written and is to be published this year.
Mrs. Wood is seventy years young and as she says: ``finds age the very
sweetest part of life. It is no small satisfaction to laugh at the follies of
others and know that you are past committing them. It is equally
delightful to be responsible only to one's self and order one's life as one
chooses. Every day is a holy day to me now and the sweetness of
common things, grass, flowers, neighborly love, grand- children, and
home comforts fill me with satis- faction. To think kindly of all things
under the sun (but sin); to speak kindly to all; to do little kindly acts is a
greater good to the world at large than we think while we are in the heat
of battle.''

CORNELIA M. STOCKTON.
A cheerful little room in the East wing of St. Margaret's Hospital,
Kansas City, Kansas; an invalid chair wheeled up to a window over
looking the street; and the eager, expectant face and the warm hand
clasp of the occupant, Mrs. Cornelia M. Stockton, assures the visitor of
a hearty welcome.
Greatly enfeebled by long illness and with impaired sight, this bright,
little woman's keen interest in current events and the latest ``best seller''
puts to shame the half-hearted zeal of the average woman.
For four years, Mrs. Stockton has lived at St. Margaret's, depending
upon the visits of friends and the memory of an eventful life to pass the
days. Prominence in club work in her earlier years has brought reward.

The History Club of Kansas City, Kansas, of which she was once a
member, each week sends a member to read to her and these are red
letter days to this brave, patient, little woman.
Mrs. Stockton began writing very young. When a little girl, back in the
village of Walden, New York, she stole up to the pulpit of the church
and wrote in her pastor's Bible:
``I have not seen the minister's eyes, And cannot describe his glance
divine, For when he prays he shuts them up And when he preaches he
shuts mine.''
She was born in 1833 in Shawangunk, New York, and came to Kansas
City in 1859, living in Missouri some years but most of the time in
Kansas City, Kansas.
In 1892, she published a limited edition of poems, ``The Shanar
Dancing Girl and Other Poems.'' dedicated to Mrs. Bertha M. Honore
Palmer, her ideal of the perfect type of gracious and lovely womanhood.
``The Shanar Dancing Girl'' was first written for the Friends in Council,
a literary club of Kansas City, Mo. It has received the encomiums of
Thomas Bailey