Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/420

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THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS.

satisfaction, she was, later on, appointed permanently as instructor in Greek, During all this time her studies were kept up in the college department, of which she considered herself a member. In 1888 she received her degree of A. B. Since the organization of the B. W. E. C. of Kentucky, she has held important offices therein, and is now a member of the board of that body.

At first, Miss Wood was an occasional contributor to newspapers and magazines. From the start, her publications have gained popularity. As a writer, she is clear, terse and vigorous. Her subject is always well understood and well managed. Her language is free from catchy phrases and by-words, and is smooth, agreeable and earnest. It is free and natural, devoid of all jerkiness and splash. Her sentences drop like the oar of the sturdy sailor. With a turn of mind little imaginative and poetical, there is not much use for tropes and figures; yet she has attained such remarkable clearness of expression as to resemble the crystal lake. From the first, one can see the point at which the writer aims. She pursues it with unerring approach, swerving to neither side, and has learned the happy faculty to leave a point when made. The many excellencies of this writer are clearness, force, simplicity, perspicacity, smoothness and agreeableness.

Miss Wood is now a stock-holder of Our Women and Children, as well as a regular contributor to it. The work assigned her is the promotion of temperance. As its advocate, she lacks much of the ardor and aggression common to those who are engaged in furthering this cause; but her deep-seated earnestness and a consciousness of the correctness of her position leads her to give frank and emphatic expression to her views.

There is danger in the utterance of unwholesome thought. In an age rankly luxuriant with pomp and pride, a thirst for