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Show 213 degrees of literacy seem to have a common problem in poor spelling. Ellis' displays no weakness in that area. While it is possible that daughter Ellis Musser's editorial activities some punctuation cleanups (her mother's manuscript letters lack some commas and periods), it is doubtful that the spelling itself needed much attention. Where there is beautiful syntax and extensive vocabulary such as Ellis employed, there is usually an innate sense of how to spell. The topics Ellis selected for her diary are lofty, as compared to those of some women diarists of her day. She avoids the female tendency toward chit-chat, and she so very seldom delineates the mundane daily rituals that when she does so, the reader, with a feeling of relief, can regard it as a special window opened onto her life. Poetry Ellis wrote poems throughout her life-tributes to family members and friends on birthdays and special occasions, reminiscences, moral/ethical treatises, poems of religious praise and worship. One example reaching publication was a fairly lengthy piece, 10 stanzas of 8 lines each, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the founding 5 of the Retrenchment Society. She wrote of children and babies and nature, and of interests common to women. Her style was of her own era: flowery descriptions, rhymed lines, and words contracted to accommodate meter. Through the kind offices and encouragement of her good friend, Emmeline B. Wells, Ellis, in her sixties, published a volume of |
