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Show 248 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER This book by any yet unread, I leave for you when I am dead, That being gone, here you may find What was your living mother's mind. Make use of what I leave in love, And God shall bless you from above. Madelyn must have felt a certain kinship with Emily Dickinson, when she prepared that particular lesson. Emily wrote in secret, guarded her poems even from her family, and, despite an output of nearly one thousand lyrical poems, pub lished only six during her lifetime and even those were published without her consent. Emily expressed her feelings of deep poignancy with a certain jocularity, just as Madelyn had done. Very much like Emily, Madelyn dedicated her life and talent to God and His Kingdom; like Emily she was also influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Eliot, each of whom emphasized the right of women to speak and act in public as well as in private affairs. In 1960 Madelyn wrote "Women of the New World: A Prologue to the Study of American Literature"-a reading to be used by her own and other Relief Societies. The instructions called for readers to be selected who would enliven the charac ters by vivid facial expression, delicate pantomime, careful inflection, and modulation to show meaning and feeling. speech Each reader, representing a historic woman, was to appear in costume suitable for the person for whom she was proxy, and suggested the kind of dress suitable for each. Nine Madelyn of the colonial period were presented through the "great and marching words" of their own writings and those of the mirror the men they loved. These selections were intended to fears, hopes, and beliefs of this brave new world, and express women their hunger for adventure, for land and wealth, and for religious freedom." The nine women were: Pocahontas, who saved the life of John Smith; Margaret Winthrop, wife of John, leader Captain of the Massachusetts Bay colony; Anne Bradstreet, mentioned earlier in the Mary Rowlandson, who told the story of chapter; her captivity and ransom in King Philip's War; Sarah Kemble |
