Kansas Women in Literature

SALLIE F. TOLER.

Mrs. Sallie F. Toler, Wichita, has written on every subject from pigs and pole cats to patriotism. She is the author of several plays and three vaudeville sketches. A comedy, a racing romance, "Handicapped;" "Thekla," a play in three acts; "On Bird's Island," a four-act play; and "Waking Him Up," a farce, are played in stock now.

Mrs. Toler contributes to many papers and lectures on "The Short Story" and "The Modern Drama."

MARGARET PERKINS.

As a 1914 Christmas offering, Margaret Perkins, a Hutchinson High School teacher, gave us her volume of beautiful poems. "The Love Letters of a Norman Princess" is the love story, in verse, of Hersilie, a ward and relative of William, The Conqueror, and Eric, a kinsman of the unfortunate King Harold.

     "I thought once, in a dream, that Love
          came near
        With silken flutter of empurpled wings
     That wafted faint, strange fragrance from
          the things
        Abloom where age and season never
          sear.
     The joy of mating birds was in my ear,
        And flamed my path with dancing daffodils
     Whose splendor melted into greening hills
        Upseeking, like my spirit, to revere."

     "Before you came, this heart of mine
        A fairy garden seemed
     With lavender and eglantine;
        And lovely lilies gleamed
     Above the purple-pansy sod
        Where ruthless passion never trod."

     "If Heaven had been pleased to let you be
        A keeper of the sheep, a peasant me,
     Within a shepherd's cottage thatched with
          vine
        Now might we know the bliss of days
          divine."
     —"We are part of Heaven's scheme,
        You and I:
     Child of sunshine and the dew
        I was earthly—born as you.

     "Yet my little hour I go,
        Troubled maid,
     Even where the storm blasts blow,
        Unafraid;
     Confident that from the sod
        All things upward wend to God."

        "Dear heart, the homing hour is here,
          The task is done.
        Toilers, and they who course the deer
          Turn, one by one,
          At day's demise,
        Where dwells a deathless glow
          In loving eyes.
        I hear them hearthward go
     To castle, or to cottage on the lea;
     But him I love comes never home to me."

        The peaks that rift the saffron sheen
          Of sunset skies
        In purple loveliness, when seen
          By nearer eyes,
          Are bleakly bare.
        To brave those boulders gray
          No climbers dare.
        O, in some future may
     This mountain mass of unfulfilled desires
     Be unto me as yonder haloed spires!"

Miss Perkins is the compiler of "Echoes of Pawnee Rock," and writes short stories and poems for the magazines. Some of her verse is published in Woolard's "Father."