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 Aldrich, John J. Ingalls and others for
its beauty of expression and dramatic qualities.
``Invocation,'' an April idyl; ``The Sea-shell;''
and ``Mountain Born'' sing of the love of nature.
``In the Conservatory;'' ``My Summer Heart;''
and ``Tired of the Storm'' hint of sorrow and
unrest and longing.  Then in 1886, ``Compensation''
was written.  ``Irma's Love For The
King'' is a favorite; also, `` `Sold'--A Picture,''
written for her daughter, ``yes, but she never
came.

``The Sorrowful Stone'' Mrs. Stockton
considers her best.

``The story without a suspicion of rhyme,
   And dim with the mists of the morning of Time,
Is told of a goddess, who, wandering alone,
   Did go and sit down on the Sorrowful Stone.

We find our Gethsemane somewhere,
   though late;
The Angel of Shadows
   throws open the gate.
We creep with our burden of pain,
   to atone,
For all of life's ills,
   to the Sorrowful Stone.

Above is the vault of the pitiless stars;
     The trees stretch their arms all blackened
          with scars;
     The gales of lost Paradise are faintly
          blown
     To where we sit down on the Sorrowful
          Stone.''

``From a Poem `Vagaries' '' warns of * * *
     --the product of the age and clime,
     We do too much! grow old before our
          time,

     Yet--would we stray to Morning Hills
          again?
     Unlearn sad prophecies, and dream as
          then!

     Ah, no! with sense of peace the shadows
          creep,
     There droppeth on tired eyes the spell of
          sleep--

     We left the dawn long leagues behind, and
          stand,
     Waiting and wistful in the Evening Land!

     The patient Nurse of Destiny, at best,
     Leads us like children to the needed rest!
 

A ghostly wind puts out our little light,
     And we have bid the busy world ``Good Night!''

Mrs. Stockton was married twice.  Her
first husband was the father of her two sons,
one of whom, Dr. Henry M. Downs, in his
practice, came often to St. Margaret's.  The
second marriage, as the wife of the late Judge
John S. Stockton, was a very happy one.  Last
year, a brother the only surviving member of
her family, died, leaving Mrs. Stockton the
last of a family of five children.  The two
sons have also passed into the Great Beyond.

In her younger days, she contributed many
poems and some prose to newspapers and
magazines over the name of Cora M. Downs.

Ex-Gov. St. John appointed her one of the
regents of the University of Kansas.