The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-12-12
BY MARIE sANkHEAp OWEN.

Twenty years ago. when woman's Intellectual emancipation was begin. ming to be generally acknowledged fact our State dailies carried syndi- cste letter from that very gifted East Arn woman whose nom de plume was Bah The cub reporter of the local press did the society work. which con gisted chiefly of personal paragraphs In which every feminine visitor and home girl was recorded as the beauti- , ful and accomplished Miss - So stereotyped did this form become that the phrase was taken for granted 10 the extent that on one occasion Ia nous Birmingham belle's absence from the Magic City was noted with the first aetters of the adJectives. to wit: The ID. and a. Miss - is visiting friends in Tennessee.s Of course 1t may have been the fault of that convenient scape goat. the printer. but so 1t was
 Modelled somewhat on the general plan of Bah's broad-minded journalism ahe late lamented Margaret E. OBrien Davis led the way as a woman society editor. Later she assumed the real editorship of The Birmingham Herald and finally concluded her pen work with sustained narrative in the novel form. Her short fiction and poems ap- speared in current magazines and the general press until the day of hef death, about ten years ago. With the advancement of womans social con ;Aciousness the woman society editor sbeeame a social necessity.
 Who in Alabama does not know the able work of Mrs. George c. Ball, that brilliant woman of the master nina! Alabama has loaned her to Georgia and in our sister State she has also made a notable place for herself by her Journalistic accomplishments. Al Sehe present, however, she Is a member iof a beeksreyiewing syndicate at whose head is her talented son, sumter Mays Baff. or Atlanta.
 Following these path finders as "So- ciety Editors" the most conspicuous leader Is Annie Kendrick Walker. who succeeded Mrs. Ball upon The Birming- ham Age Herald. which position she held for nine years. Her more recent newspaper affiliation was with The Btr- mingham Ledger.
 The late Mrs. E. P. Morrisette, of Montgomery, herself brilliant woman. manifested a very warm interest In Hiss Walker and her work. So im- pressed was she with her abilities that she frequently alluded to her work in articles that came from her own gifted pen.
 Miss Walker" she wrote on one oc- casion, has developed her social de- partment in The Age Herald from q lew hundred words about the charm ing conventional functions in that city into department which does not neg lect these and includes also columns of sociological value and historical and literary interest. She is at once a model and an inspiration. and by the high character of her work has given denial to the charge that the woman's column cultivates false ideals and dls- turns the proportions of things worth while. As in all professions the indi- vidual counts In each department oi newspaper. Any man or woman who is not himself or herself a mere reflection or echo of things that reach him through the physical senses, will in work that brings contact with hu- manity and therefore resulting respon' sibility reveal widening sympathie, whose exercise does not lessen but in tensifv interest in things near and lo cal"
 Modern Women says of her: ''Mis!