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 satisfaction. 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."