Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/450

Rh remarkable conversational powers, and is a most effective and eloquent speaker from the platform. In years gone by she has given "soul-service" in many directions, standing as corresponding secretary for the Boston Anti-slavery Society, as one of the Board of Managers of the Boston Woman's Hospital, and delivering a course of lectures on practical ethics before Dio Lewis' school for girls, at Lexington, Mass. These lectures cover the relation of the young woman to the school, the state, the home and to her own development.

After long and prayerful thought as to how to best utilize "the truth, the goodness, the intelligence of the literary and philanthropic women of New England, and the vast benefits which she foresaw would flow from such a union," in 1868, Mrs. Severance called the sympathetic women together in parlor meetings to talk over her ideas. Their meetings resulted in "the introduction to the world of a new form of social and mental architecture." Mrs. Severance, as founder, "was elected president of the first woman's club in our country—the New England Woman's Club of Boston," and thereby became the "Mother of Clubs" and was the primal force in a movement that has become a stupendous factor in our civilization.

May 30, 1868, in Chickering Hall, the New England Woman's Club was introduced to the world. The noble women who had perfected this beneficent organization were ably assisted and encouraged on that occasion by the addresses of Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, Jacob Manning, John Weiss, O. B. Frothingham, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Bronson Alcott. The speakers for the club were: Julia Ward Howe and Mrs. E. D. Cheney, who set forth the purposes of the New England Woman's Club so eloquently and comprehensively as to win the endorsement and confidence of the whole assemblage: First, "to organize the social forces of the women of New England"; to establish "a larger home for