Woman of the Century/Helen Watterson Moody

MOODY, Mrs. Helen Watterson, journalist, was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Her maiden name was Watterson. She was one of the four young women who competed with men in the University of Wooster, where she was graduated with high honors in 1883. HELEN WATTERSON MOODY. Her newspaper work was begun as soon as she left college, in the offices of the Cleveland "Leader" and "Sun." At the end of two years she was invited to return to her alma mater as assistant professor of rhetoric and English, and she accepted the position, remaining until she was called, in 1889, to the staff of the New York "Evening Sun." From that time until she left the "Sun," on the occasion of her marriage, in 1891, her identity was merged in that of the "Woman About Town," a title created for her, under which she wrote, in a semi-editorial manner, a column every day. The subjects of her paragraphs were usually taken from current happenings. She always touched the higher chords of human feeling without setting herself up to be a moralist, and among all her paragraphs there was never a sentence to be regretted. Her style was original, and the significance of her title was often brought into question, most readers believing that only a masculine intellect could have invented the sayings of the "Woman About Town." Her husband, Winfield S. Moody, jr., is also a journalist There is little to mark Mrs. Moody as distinctly belonging to any type, but she possesses the energy and is not lacking in the ambition that are prominent qualities of the western character. With a vigor of intellect that men are wont to call masculine she unites the sympathetic qualities that even the most radical woman reformer likes to admit are feminine. Mrs. Moody has not given up journalistic work. Her pen-name will always be "Helen Watterson."