The editor has had the good fortune to know Mrs. Severance and to visit her in Los Angeles, California, in her lovely home, El Nido, which is full of priceless literary treasures and souvenirs of great occasions and honors paid to her as "The Mother of Clubs." She has also been christened the "Ethical Magnet of Southern California." Many contemporary authors have contributed valuable copies of their books suitably inscribed. Arranged in a cabinet are the autographed photographs of her distinguished friends and co-workers, whom she calls her "immortals," including Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Childs, Lucy Stone, Frances Dana Gage, Caroline H. Dall, Louisa Alcott, Celia Burleigh, Ednah D. Cheney, and Lucretia Mott. In a corresponding case, are pictures of Junipero Serra, Wendell Phillips, Longfellow, Whittier, James Freeman Clarke, William H. Channing, Lowell, Samuel Johnson, and Charles Sumner. Another rare picture is one of five generations of the Severance family in a group.
Among the most valued are the souvenirs of the celebration of the silver wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Severance, which occurred in 1865. When her literary friends and admirers journeyed from the Middle West and every part of the country to Boston, Mass., to participate in the festivities of the felicitous occasion, they brought tributes of affection in poetry and prose. Of the number, such illustrious names appear, as Isabella Beecher Hooker, Dr. and Mrs. Dio Lewis, Mattie Griffith, Albert G. Browne, Mrs. Satterlee, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ivinson (sister of Mrs. Severance), the Burrage family of Boston and a host of others. While the letters of regret bore the signatures of such immortals as George Bradburn, Harriet Minot Pitman, James Freeman Clarke and Mrs. Clarke, William Lloyd and Frank Garrison, Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, Rev. Zachos, William H. Avery, Salmon P. Chase,
