Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 17

"Helen seems to think as you do, at any rate."

"I'm going to stand up for Helen," declared Roger. "I'll be out of college a couple of years before she is and if she wants to study anything special or do anything special I'll surely help her to it."

"Your father's not likely to object to anything that she will want to do."

"Probably not, only," returned Roger hesitating, "perhaps dear old Dad will need a little education himself after being in Mexico and suchlike foreign parts for so long."

The path which they were following ran along the top of a bank that rose abruptly from the water. On the other side of the roadway were pretty cottages rather larger than most of those at Chautauqua.

"In this house we're pa.s.sing," said Roger, "there lives the grandest sight in Chautauqua. I see him almost every time I go by. Look, there he is now."

_He_ was a bull dog of enormous head and fiercest visage, his nose pushed back, his teeth protruding, his legs bowed. Belying his war-like aspect he was harnessed to a child's express wagon which was loaded with milk cans and baskets.

"Isn't that a great old outfit!" exclaimed Roger. "He goes to market every morning as solemn as a judge. His name is Cupid."

"Ha, ha! Cupid!" laughed Mr. Emerson.

The dog's master held a leash fastened to his harness and the strong creature tugged him along so fast that he almost had to run to keep up.

"You see 'everybody works' at Chautauqua, even the dogs."

"And I must say they all seem to like it, even Cupid," added Mr.

Emerson.

Turning away from the lake they walked up the hill to a grove behind which rose the walls of a hall and of several school buildings.

"Over to the right is the Hall of Pedagogy where your affectionate grandson wields the broom and smears the dustrag, and the building beyond is the College. They aren't especially handsome either inside or out but they are as busy as beehives. Listen to that hum? I tell you they just naturally hustle for culture up at this end of the grounds!"

"What's this we're coming out on?"

"The Arts and Crafts Studios. Not bad, are they? Sort of California Mission effect with those low white pillars. This place beats the others in the busy bee business. They hum in the mornings but the Arts and Crafts people are at it all day long. Come along and look in; they keep the windows open on purpose."

Nothing loath, Mr. Emerson went up the ascending path and on to the brick walk behind the pillars. First they peered into a room devoted to the making of lace, but neither of them felt drawn to this essentially feminine occupation. Then they pa.s.sed drawing and painting studios where teachers of drawing and painting were taught how to teach better. In a hall in the centre they found a blackboard drawing that was as well done as many a painting, but Mr. Emerson's interest began really to grow when they came to the next departments. Here they found looms, some of them old-fashioned and some of them new, but all worked by hand and foot power. Several young women and two men were threading them or weaving new patterns. It looked difficult yet fascinating. Beyond there was a detachment learning how to put rush bottoms into chairs, twisting wet cat-tail leaves and wrapping them about the edges of frames.

"Look, they're just like the chairs in your dining-room," whispered Roger. "I've half a mind to learn how to do it so that I can mend them for Grandmother."

A near-by squad was making baskets, using a variety of materials. In another room the leather workers were stretching and cutting and wetting and dyeing and tooling bits of leather which were to be converted into purses and card cases and mats, and at another table the bookbinders were exercising the most scrupulous care in the use of their tools upon the delicate designs which they had transferred to their valuable material.

Around the bend in the wall were the noisy crafts, put by themselves so that they might not interfere with the comfort of the quieter toilers.

Here the metal workers pounded their sheets of bra.s.s and copper, building up handsome patterns upon future trays and waste baskets and lanterns. Here, too, the jewelry makers ran their little furnaces and thumped and welded until silver cups and chains grew under their fingers and settings of unique design held semi-precious stones of alluring colors.

Every student in the whole place seemed alive with eagerness to do his work well and swiftly; they bent over it, smiling, the teachers were calm and helpful; gayety and happiness were in the air.

"I'd really like to spend my mornings up here," murmured Mr. Emerson, "if I only knew what I could do."

"We didn't see the wood-carving room; perhaps you'd like that."

They turned into a door they had pa.s.sed. A man of Grandfather's age was drawing his design on a board which was destined to become a book rack.

Another man was chipping out his background, making the flowers of his pattern stand forth in bold relief. A young woman had a fireboard nearly finished.

"I believe I will come up here," exclaimed Mr. Emerson.

And so it happened that Grandfather's mornings were taken up as much as those of the rest of the family, and it was not long before he was so interested in his work and so eager to get on with his appointed tasks that he spent not only the mornings but almost all day drawing and carving and oiling in the midst of sweet-smelling shavings.

On the way back they stopped for a minute to see Roger's cell in the Hall of Pedagogy, and the boy showed his grandfather with pride his neat array of brooms and rags. As they pa.s.sed through Higgins Grove and out on to the green in front of the Post Office a great clattering attracted their attention. Men ran, boys shouted, and over and above all rose a fierce and persistent barking.

"It's Cupid! As sure as you're born, it's Cupid!" cried Roger.

Sure enough it was Cupid. He had been trotting gently down one of the side streets, his wagon laden with full milk cans and with sundry bundles. A dog pa.s.sing across the square at the end of the street attracted his attention, and he started off at full gallop. The cans rolled out of the cart and spurted their milky contents on the ground. A bag of eggs smashed disastrously as it struck the pavement. Tins--of corned beef, lentils, sardines--bounced on the floor of the wagon until they jounced over the side into the road. On, on ran Cupid, his harness holding strongly and the front wheels banging his hind paws at every jump. The uproar that he created drew the attention of the dog which had caused all the commotion by his mere presence on the plaza. Casting a startled glance at Cupid, he clapped his tail between his legs and fled--fled with great bounds, his ears flapping in a breeze of his own creation. Unenc.u.mbered as he was he had the advantage of Cupid, who was unable to rid himself of the equipment that marked him as man's slave.

Seeing his quarry disappear in the distance the bull dog came to a standstill just as Roger seized the strap that dangled from his harness.

"Yours, I believe," he laughed as he handed the leash to the young man who came running up.

"Mine. Thank you. My name is Watkins and I'd be glad to know you better.

I've noticed you pa.s.sing the house every day."

"Thank you. My name is Morton," and the two young fellows shook hands over Cupid's head, while he sat down between the shafts and let slip a careless tongue from out his heated mouth.

CHAPTER X

A CHAUTAUQUA SUNDAY

ON the last Sunday in July the sun rose on a Chautauqua made serious by the portentous event of war actually declared in Europe. The Mortons felt a vital interest in it. With their father and uncle in the Navy and Army war in theory was a thing not new to them. Both Lieutenant and Captain Morton had served in the Spanish-American War, but Roger was a baby at the time and the other children had been born later. The nearest approach to active service that the children had actually known about was the present situation in Vera Cruz. They had been thrilled when Lieutenant Morton had been ordered there in the spring and Captain Morton had followed later with General Funston's army of occupation.

But the United States troops were not in Mexico to make war but to prevent it, while the impending trouble in Europe was so filled with possibilities that it promised already to be the greatest struggle that the world ever had known.

The horror of it was increased by the fact that for a week all Chautauqua had been giving itself over to the peaceful joys of music.

For six days Victor Herbert's Orchestra had provided a feast of melody and harmony and rhythm and everybody on the grounds had partic.i.p.ated, either as auditor or as performer, in some of the vocal numbers. Mrs.

Morton and Mr. Emerson and Roger had sung in the choir and Dorothy had raised her sweet pipe in the Children's Choir. And at the end of the week had come this crashing discord of war.

Yet the routine of a Chautauqua Sunday went on unbroken. The elders went at nine o'clock to the Bible Study cla.s.s in the Amphitheatre, and at half past nine the younger members of the family dispersed to the various places where the divisions of the graded Sunday School met.

Roger and Helen found the high school boys and girls in the Hall of Christ; the Ethels met the children of the seventh grade at the model of Palestine by the lakeside, and d.i.c.ky went to the kindergarten just as he had done on weekday mornings, though what he did after he entered the building was far different.

At ten o'clock Sunday School was over and the older children and the grown-ups scattered to the devotional services at the various denominational houses which Helen and the Ethels had noticed on their first day's walk. At eleven all Chautauqua gathered in the Amphitheatre in a union service that recognized no one creed but laid stress on the beauty and harmony common to all beliefs.

The coming week was that of the special celebration of the founding of Chautauqua Inst.i.tution forty years before, so it was fitting that Bishop Vincent should preach from the platform which owed its existence to the G.o.d-given idea of service which he had brought into being. The ideal church and the ideal Christian were his themes.

"Personality is always enlarged and enn.o.bled by having to do with and becoming responsible for some great inst.i.tution," he said and even the children understood that the Church suggests a pattern for good thoughts and for service to others which uplifts the people who try to shape their own lives by it.

"Isn't he a beautiful old man," whispered Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown. "Do you suppose we'll ever have a chance to speak to him?"

It seemed to Ethel Brown almost an impossibility; yet it happened that very afternoon.

At three o'clock the Junior Congregation met in the Amphitheatre and the Ethels went, although they had sat through the morning service. It was a glad sight--several hundred girls and boys smiling happily and singing joyously and often grown people sat in the upper seats of the auditorium where they would not intrude upon the gathering below but would be able to see and hear the fresh young faces and voices.