The Mother of Clubs; Caroline M. Seymour Severance. an Estimate and an Appreciation (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n. FROM BOSTON TO LOS ANGELES. Born of the oldest East, I seek only rest, In the fair city of the youngest west. ? Charles Warren Stoddard. The history of the New England Woman's Club was written by its own official historian, Julia A. Sprague, and published by Lee and Shepard, Boston, in 1894. She wrote: "We gave a farewell luncheon to our first president, Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, when, in 1875 she left us for what was then far away California; and in 1881 we greeted with joy her return visit." Among the incidents of this reception is mentioned a reminiscence in verse; from the amusing stanzas may be culled four lines: There Severance, Howe and Cheney sat; Peabody, Woolson, Brown, While Kendall, May and Sewell led The converse up and down. Since those days other women, not so famous, but undoubtedly quite as sparkling in a social sense, have been the shining constellations revolving around the central spirit, as the founder and first president of the Friday Morning Club, of Los Angeles, in 1891. It is the successor to an earlier Woman's Club, which Mrs. Severance had founded and which lapsed during her two absences in the east. Those occasions in Boston when Mrs. Severance and Mrs. Rebecca Spring, of Los Angeles, were present, have been vividly recalled more than once for the edifying pleasure of large circles of men and women who enjoy hearing of the poets, philosophers and philanthropists of early American history fromeye-witnesses and ear-listeners. Those were times of delight and of trial,?days of "wisdom, wit and indignation, that are unforgettable,"?terms used by Emerson in quite another channel, but which may be appropriate in connection with Mrs. Severance's knowledge of literary, philosophical, and emancipation beginnings in New Engl...