The Wheeler family were enthusiastic advocates of total abstinence, and Ella used her pen to advance this cause. Her first collection of poems into book form was entitled "Drops of Water." A poem with temperance as its theme is given as the first illustration of her efforts in the collection published here. Ella Wheeler's training tended to make her the lyric rather than the narrative poetess. She wrote largely of the emotion that played through her passing experiences. "Everything in life," she says, "was material for my own emotions, the remarks or experiences of my comrades and associates, sentences from books I read, and some phases of Nature." In general three things may be said to characterize these short poems and her own life as revealed by them, for her life itself is a poem. First, she is convinced that the supreme thing in life is love. In one poem she asserts that love is the need of the world. In another, "The Kingdom of Love," which is given later, she truthfully proclaims that love is the very essence of the home. The second characteristic is her spirit of buoyancy which has enabled her to surmount the many crushing deprivations and disappointments in her life. She was born with an unquenchable hope and an unfaltering trust in God and guardian spirits. "I often wept myself to sleep after a day of disappointment and worries," she says, "but woke in the morning singing aloud with the joy of life." It was such experiences as these that enabled her to say: "Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone." Her faith in the better things to be is well expressed in the little poem, "The Tendril's Fate." Trials to her are frequently the means by which the soul's true worth is tested. This thought is expressed in the poem, "Three Friends." She bears trials not merely for her own sake, but for the sake of those about her. We are illustrating this quality with the poem "Ambition's Trail." Her faith that life has still much that is better than the present may be illustrated by her Morning Prayer. The third characteristic manifest in her poetry is that of the spirit of helpfulness that manifests itself in every new phase of life that she assumes. This attitude is illustrated with respect to mankind in general and also with respect to her own sex. The poems used are "I Am" and "Which Are You?"