The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-06-05
Gou. Allen s Wife Dislikes
Politics, LoUes Her Home
Charming Kansas Woman Most Excited Person at Debate
Between Husband and MIR. Gompers-Does Not
Believe in Co-educaton.
New York Tribune.)


Last night when the two-fisted gov
ernor of the Sunflower state was con-
vincing Samuel Gompers, president of
the American Federation of Labor,
and the overpacked audience at Car
negie hall that the union label is not
going to take the place of the great
seal of the United States, and that
the right to work is more sacred than
! the right to strike, there sat in the
audience a beautiful woman with deep
blue eyes, who followed every word
of the debate with more intense in
terest than any man or any other wo-
man in the hall.
The woman was Mrs. Henry Justin
Allen. And the reason she followed
the debate with such interest was be-
cause she was afraid that her hus-
band, Governor Allen. was going to
forget his piece
Mrs. Aliens fear was not because
she did not have every confidence in
the solid, sane man on the platform
who stood there preaching the con-
ception of liberty and justice of the
kind the fathers had, and the kind
that Lincoln and Roosevelt preached.
Her fear, which was entirely ground
less, as she admits, is simply rem
nant of the one which chung to her
in the first days of her married life,
when she used to hold her husbands
manuscripts to be able to find the
place should he forget, SO that she
might prompt him.
Can't Help Getting Excited.
81 just can't help getting all worked
up whenever my husband is going to
speak" laughed Mrs. Allen, when
seen at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel,
where she has been stopping since
the graduation of her daughter, Hen
rietta from school a week ago.
Sometimes I get so enthusiastic that
1 almost have TO go to bed / m
inspiring wife"
Let it be said right here and now
that whoever becomes the first lady
of the land" after the first of March,
1920, she will have to be a very
charming woman to surpass Elsie j.
HUMAN Allen. wife Of the Kansas
governor Charming" is much
abused adjective. but it is one that
well applies to her. Mrs Alien Is
slender and graceful, with dark brown
hair and eyes that recall those OF tnal
poet ukened to the shade of the falry
flax" Her manner is gracious, ana
vet marked with a certain simplicity
that is at once disarming and refresh
ing.
Standing on Mrs. Aliens desk was
picture OF neT elshlSetl-S eAA
daughter, Henrietta. who is the only
child. Mrs. Allen picked it up with
look of pride in her eyes
Henrietta has just been graduated
from Miss Spence's school, F1tth
avenue and Fifty-fifth street, she
I said. They all say that she looks
much like me, except that her hair IS
darker"
Oppose Co-cducation.
Mrs. Allen fell to talking of schools
and her views on a girls education
whether or not Governor Allen is a
presidential possibility is not her real
| concern. 1t is Henry Justin Allen. her
husband, and Henrietta. her daughter.
and her home out in Kansas that lie
nearest to her heart.
81 don't believe that it is safe to
allow any eighteen-year-o girl to go
20 a co-educational school," she said
/ thoughtfully "A girls early years
should be shielded"
/ Then Mrs. Allen laughed. She has
a sense of humor, and she saw the
irony of the situation.
II went to a co-educational school
myself she continued. That was
where I met my husband. We both
attended Baker university. at Baldwin,
Kan. It is a Methodist school. But
/ nevertheless cannot help feeling as /
do about Henrietta"
/ Mrs. Allen says that altho il has not
yet been determined what line of work
her daughter shall take up, she be-
lieves that every girl should prepare
herself to earn her own living. Hen