The Story of Chautauqua Part 4

Haven, and C. H. Fowler.

The two Sundays, August 9th and 16th, were golden days in the calendar.

An atmosphere of quiet and peace reigned throughout the grounds. No steamboats made the air discordant around the pier; the gates were closed and the steamers sailed by to more welcome stations; no excursion trains brought curious and noisy throngs of sightseers. Tents and cottages lay open while their dwellers worshiped under the trees of the Auditorium, for no one was required to watch against thieves in the crowd. The world was shut out, and a voice seemed to be saying, "Come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile."

The day began with a Sunday School graded to embrace both young and old.

The riches of officers and teachers formed an embarra.s.sment. For once, nay twice (for there were two Sundays), a Superintendent had at call more instructors than he could supply with cla.s.ses. On each Sunday the attendance at the school was fifteen hundred.

At the sunset hour each evening an "Eventide Conference" was held on the lake side. The dying day, the peaceful surroundings, the calm sheet of water, the mild air, combined to impart a tone of thoughtful, uplifting meditation. I have heard old Chautauquans speak many times of the inspiring spiritual atmosphere breathed in the very air of the first Chautauqua.

Never before had been brought together for conference and for study so many leaders in the Sunday School army, representing so large a variety of branches in the church catholic. And it was not for a day or two days as in conventions and inst.i.tutes, but for a solid fortnight of steady work. The Chautauqua of to-day is a widely reaching educational system, embracing almost every department of knowledge. But it must not be forgotten that all this wide realm has grown out of a school to awaken, instruct, and inspire Sunday School workers. In their conception, however, the two famous founders realized that all truth, even that looked upon as secular, is subsidiary, even necessary for successful teaching of the word of G.o.d. Hence with the courses of study and conferences upon practical details, we find on the program, some literature and science, with the spice of entertainment and amus.e.m.e.nt.

The conception of Dr. Vincent was not to locate the a.s.sembly in one place, but from time to time to hold similar meetings on many camp grounds, wherever the opportunity arose. There is a suspicion that Lewis Miller held his own secret purpose to make it so successful on Chautauqua Lake as to insure its permanent location at Fair Point. That was a wise plan, for with settlement in one place, buildings could be erected, and features like Palestine Park could be increased and improved. Whether it was by a suggestion or a common impulse, on the last day of the a.s.sembly a meeting was held and a unanimous appeal was presented to make Fair Point the home of the a.s.sembly. The trustees of the camp meeting shared in the sentiment and offered to receive new members representing the a.s.sembly const.i.tuency. As a result, the officiary was reorganized, no longer as a camp meeting but as an a.s.sembly Board. For two years Fair Point was continued as the name of the Post Office, although the t.i.tle "Chautauqua Sunday School a.s.sembly"

was adopted. But soon Fair Point became "Chautauqua" on the list of the Post Office Department, and the old name lingers only in the memory of old Chautauquans.

Before we leave that pioneer Chautauqua, we must recall some of its aspects, which might be forgotten in these later days, at once amusing, perplexing, and sometimes trying. More steamers, great and small, were plying Chautauqua's waters than at the present under the steamboat corporation system. Old Chautauquans will remember that ancient three-decker, _The Jamestown_, with its pair of stern wheels, labeled respectively "Vincent" and "Miller." Each steamer was captained by its owner; and there was often a congestion of boats at the pier, especially after the arrival of an excursion train. Those were not the days of standard time, eastern and central, with watches set an hour fast or slow at certain well-known points. Each boat followed its own standard of time, which might be New York time, Buffalo or Pittsburgh time, forty minutes slower, or even Columbus or Cincinnati time, slower still.

Railroads crossing Ohio were required to run on Columbus time. When you were selecting a steamer from the thirty placards on the bulletin board at the Fair Point Post office, in order to meet an Erie train at Lakewood, unless you noticed the time-standard, you might find at the pier that your steamer had gone forty minutes before, or on arriving at Lakewood learn that your boat was running on Cincinnati time, and you were three quarters of an hour late for the train, for even on the Erie of those days, trains were not _always_ an hour behind time.

Nor was this variety of "time, times, and half-time" all the drawbacks.

When news came that an excursion train was due from Buffalo, every steamboat on the lake would ignore its time-table and the needs of the travelers; and all would be bunched at the Mayville dock and around it to catch the pa.s.sengers. Or it might be a similar but more tangled crowd of boats in the Outlet at Jamestown to meet a special train from Pittsburgh. Haven't I seen a bishop on the Fair Point pier, who _must_ get the train at Lakewood to meet his conference in Colorado, scanning the landscape with not a boat in sight, all piled up three miles away?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Palestine Park, Looking North

Dead Sea in foreground: Mount Hermon in distance]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tent-Life in 1875

J. L. Hurlbut, J. A. Worden, Frank Beard, J. L. Hughes]

Nor were the arrangements for freight and baggage in those early years any more systematic than those for transportation. Although Chautauqua Lake is on the direct line of travel east and west, between New York and Chicago, and north and south between Buffalo and Pittsburgh, Fair Point, the seat of the a.s.sembly, was not a railroad station. Luggage could be checked only to Jamestown, Lakewood, or Mayville, and thence must be sent by boat. Its destination might be indicated by a tag or a chalk mark, or it might remain unmarked. Imagine a steamer deck piled high with trunks, valises, bundles of blankets, furniture, tent equipment, and things miscellaneous, stopping at a dozen points along the lake to have its cargo a.s.sorted and put ash.o.r.e--is it strange that some baggage was left at the wrong place, and its owner wandered around looking vainly for his property? One man remarked that the only way to be sure of your trunk was to sit on it; but what if your trunk was on the top or at the bottom of a pile ten feet high? Considering all the difficulties and discomforts of those early days--travel, baggage, no hotels nor boarding houses, a crowded dining hall with a hungry procession outside perhaps in the rain waiting for seats at the tables, the food itself none of the best--it is surprising that some thousands of people not only found the a.s.sembly, but stayed to its conclusion, were happy in it, lived in an enchanted land for a fortnight, and resolved to return the very next year! More than this, they carried its enthusiasm and its ideals home with them and in hundreds of places far apart, the Sunday Schools began to a.s.sume a new and higher life. Some time after this, but still early in Chautauqua's history, a prominent Sunday School man expressed to the writer his opinion that "people who came home from Chautauqua became either a mighty help or a mighty nuisance. They brought with them more new ideas than could be put into operation in ten years; and if they couldn't get them, one and all, adopted at once they kicked and growled incessantly."

Before we leave the a.s.sembly of 1874, we must not forget to name one of its most powerful and far-reaching results--the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This a.s.sembly was held soon after the great crusade of 1874 in Ohio, when mult.i.tudes of women, holding prayer meetings on the sidewalk in front of liquor saloons literally prayed thousands of them out of existence. While the fire of the crusade was still burning, a number of women held meetings at Chautauqua during the a.s.sembly, and took counsel together concerning the best measures to promote the temperance reform. They united in a call signed by Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown, Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller, and others, for a convention of women to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, November 17, 1874. At this convention, sixteen States were represented, and the national Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized, an inst.i.tution which did more than any other to form public sentiment, to make State after State "dry," and finally to establish nation-wide const.i.tutional prohibition. It may not be generally known that this mighty movement began at the first Chautauqua a.s.sembly.

CHAPTER V

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT

CHAUTAUQUA was a l.u.s.ty infant when it entered upon life in 1874, and it began with a penetrating voice, heard afar. Like all normal babies (normal seems to be the right word just here) it began to grow, and its progress in the forty-seven years of its life thus far (1920) has been the growth of a giant. Territorially, on Chautauqua Lake, it has enlarged at successive stages from twenty acres to more than three hundred and thirty acres, impelled partly by a demand of its increasing family for house-room, educational facilities, and playgrounds, partly from the necessity of controlling its surroundings to prevent occupation by undesirable neighbors. There has been another vast expansion in the establishment of Chautauquas elsewhere, until the continent is now dotted with them. A competent authority informs the writer that within twelve months ten thousand a.s.semblies bearing the generic name Chautauqua have been held in the United States and the Dominion of Canada. There has been a third growth in the intellectual sweep of its plans. We have seen how it began as a system of training for teachers in the Sunday School. We shall trace its advancement into the wider field of general and universal education, a school in every department and for everybody everywhere.

To at least one pilgrim the a.s.sembly of 1875 was monumental, for it marked an epoch in his life. That was the writer of this volume, who in that year made his first visit to Chautauqua. (The general reader who has no interest in personal reminiscences may omit this paragraph.) He traveled by the Erie Railroad, and that evening for the first time in his life saw a berth made up in a sleeping-car, and crawled into it. If in his dreams that night, a vision could have flashed upon his inward eye of what that journey was to bring to him in the coming years, he might have deemed it an Arabian Night's dream. For that visit to Chautauqua, not suddenly but in the after years, changed the entire course of his career. It sent him to Chautauqua thus far for forty-six successive seasons, and perhaps may round him out in a semi-centennial.

It took him out of a parsonage, and made him an itinerant on a continent-wide scale. It put him into Dr. Vincent's office as an a.s.sistant, and later in his chair as his successor. It dropped him down through the years at Chautauqua a.s.semblies in almost half of the States of this Union. On Tuesday morning, August 3, 1875, I left the train at Jamestown, rode across the city, and embarked in a steamer for a voyage up the lake. As we slowly wound our way through the Outlet--it was on the old steamer _Jamestown_ which was never an ocean-greyhound--I felt like an explorer in some unknown river. Over the old pier at Fair Point was the sign, "National S. S. a.s.sembly," and beneath it I stepped ash.o.r.e on what seemed almost a holy ground, for my first walk was through Palestine Park. On Friday, August 6th, I gave a normal lesson, the first in my life, with fear and trembling. It was on "the city of Jerusalem,"

and I had practiced on the map until I thought that I could draw it without a copy. But, alas, one of the cla.s.s must needs come to the blackboard and set my askew diagram in the right relations. Twenty years afterward, at an a.s.sembly in Kansas, an old lady spoke to me after a lesson, "I saw you teach your first lesson at Chautauqua. You said that you had never taught a normal cla.s.s before, and I thought it was the solemn truth. You've improved since then!"

Some new features had been added to the grounds since the first a.s.sembly. Near Palestine Park was standing a fine model of modern Jerusalem and its surrounding hills, so exact in its reproduction that one day a bishop pointed out the identical building wherein he had lodged when visiting the city--the same hostel, by the way, where this writer stayed afterward in 1897, and from whose roof he took his first view of the holy places. Near Palestine Park, an oriental house had been constructed, with rooms in two stories around an open court. These rooms were filled with oriental and archaeological curiosities, making it a museum; and every day Dr. A. O. Von Lennep, a Syrian by birth, stood on its roof and gave in Arabic the Mohammedan call to prayer. I failed to observe, however, the people at Chautauqua prostrating themselves at the summons. Indeed, some of them actually mocked the make-believe muezzin before his face. On the hill, near the Dining Hall, stood a sectional model of the great pyramid, done in lath and plaster, as if sliced in two from the top downward, half of it being shown, and the room inside of it indicated. Also there was a model of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, covered with its three curtains, and containing within an altar, table, and candlestick. Daily lectures were given before it by the Rev. J. S. Ostrander, wearing the miter, robe, and breastplate of the high priest.

The evolution of the Chautauqua Idea made some progress at the second a.s.sembly. Instead of eight sessions of the Normal Cla.s.s, two were held daily. The program report says that fifty normal sessions were held; regularly two each day, one at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Bible topic. Breakfast must be rushed through at seven to brace up the students for their cla.s.s. Another was held at 3:30, on some subject pertaining to the pupil or the teacher; with extra sessions in order to complete the specified course. A cla.s.s in Hebrew was held daily by Dr.

S. M. Vail, and attended by forty students. Dr. Vail had been for many years professor of Hebrew in the earliest Methodist theological school, the Biblical Inst.i.tute at Concord, New Hampshire, which afterward became the School of Theology in Boston University. Dr. Vail was an enthusiast in his love of Hebrew language and literature. One who occupied a tent with him--all the workers of that season were lodged in a row of little tents on Terrace Avenue, two in each tent--averred that his trunk contained only a Hebrew Bible (he didn't need a lexicon) and a clean shirt.

Besides the cla.s.s in Hebrew, Madame Kriege of New York conducted a cla.s.s in kindergarten teaching, and Dr. Tourjee of Boston, W. F.

Sherwin, and C. C. Case held cla.s.ses in singing. All these were supposedly for Sunday School teachers, but they proved to be the thin end of the wedge opening the way for the coming summer school.

Even more strongly than at the earlier session, the Normal Cla.s.s, with a systematic course of instruction in the Bible and Sunday School work, was made the center of the program. It is significant of the importance a.s.signed to this department that for several years, no other meeting, great or small, was permitted at the normal hours. The camp must either attend the cla.s.ses or stay in its tents.

At this session, Mrs. Frank Beard, noting the insistent announcement of the Normal Cla.s.ses, and the persistent urging that everybody attend them, was moved to verse. As true poetry is precious, her effusion is here given:

To Chautauqua went On pleasure bent A youth and maiden fair.

Working in the convention Was not their intention, But to drive away dull care.

Along came John V---- And what did he see But this lover and his la.s.s.

Says he, "You must Get up and dust And go to the Normal Cla.s.s."

The great event in the a.s.sembly of '75 was the visit of General U. S.

Grant, then President of the United States on his second term. It was brought about partly because of the long-time friendship of the General with Dr. Vincent, dating back to the Galena pastorate of 1860 and '61, but also through the influence and activity of the Rev. Dr. Theodore L.

Flood, who though a successful Methodist minister was also somewhat of a politician. The President and his party came up from Jamestown on a steamer-yacht, and at Fair Point were lodged in the tent beside the Lewis Miller cottage. True to his rule while General and President, Grant made no speech in public, not even when a handsomely bound Bagster Bible was presented to him in behalf of the a.s.sembly. Those were the palmy days of "Teachers' Bibles," with all sorts of helps and tables as appendices; and at that time the Bagster and the American Tract Society were rivals for the Sunday School const.i.tuency. Not to be outdone by their compet.i.tors, the Tract Society's representative at Chautauqua also presented one of his Bibles to the President. One can scarcely have too many Bibles, and the General may have found use for both of them. He received them with a nod but never a word. Yet those who met him at dinners and in social life said that in private he was a delightful talker and by no means reticent. The tents and cottages on the Chautauqua of those days were taxed to almost bursting capacity to house the mult.i.tude over the Sunday of the President's visit. As many more would have come on that day, if the rules concerning Sabbath observance had been relaxed, as some had expected. But the authorities were firm, the gates by lake and land were kept closed, and that Sunday was like all other Sundays at Chautauqua.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Spouting Tree and Oriental House]

At the close of the a.s.sembly, the normal examinations were given to 190 students; some left the tent in terror after reading over the questions, but 130 struggled to the end and handed in their papers, of which 123 were above the pa.s.sing grade. There were now two cla.s.ses of graduates, and the Chautauqua Normal Alumni a.s.sociation was organized. Mr. Otis F.

Presbrey of Washington, D. C. (the man who on a certain occasion "looked like sixty"), was its first president. The secretary chosen was the Rev.

J. A. Worden, a Presbyterian pastor at Steubenville, Ohio, and one of the normal teachers at Chautauqua; who afterward, and for many years, was general secretary and superintendent of Sabbath School work in the Presbyterian Church.

At the a.s.sembly of 1875, a quiet, una.s.suming little lady was present, who was already famous, and helped to increase the fame of Chautauqua.

This was Mrs. G. R. Alden, the wife of a Presbyterian pastor, but known everywhere as "Pansy," whose story-books were in almost every Sunday School library on the continent. She wrote a book, _Four Girls at Chautauqua_, which ingeniously wove into the account of the actual events of the season, including some of its rainy days--that was the year when it rained more or less on fourteen of the seventeen days of the a.s.sembly--her four girls, so well imagined that they seemed real.

Indeed when one read the account of one's own speech at a children's meeting, he could not doubt that the Flossie of the story who listened to it was a veritable flesh and blood girl in the audience. The story became one of the most popular of the Pansy books, brought Chautauqua to the attention of many thousands, and led large numbers of people to Fair Point. Pansy has ever been a true friend of Chautauqua, and has written several stories setting forth its attractions.

CHAPTER VI

THE NATIONAL CENTENNIAL YEAR

THE founders of Chautauqua looked forward to its third session with mingled interest and anxiety. It was the centennial year of American Independence, and an exposition was opening in Philadelphia, far more noteworthy in its buildings and exhibits than any previous effort in the annals of the nation. The World's Fair in the Crystal Palace of New York, in 1855, the first attempt in America to hold an universal exposition, was a pigmy compared with the immense display in the park of Philadelphia on the centennial year. Could the mult.i.tudes from every State and from foreign lands be attracted from Philadelphia five hundred miles to Chautauqua Lake? Had the quest of the American people for new interests been satisfied by two years at the a.s.sembly? Would it be the wiser course in view of the compet.i.tion to hold merely a modest little gathering at Fair Point, or to venture boldly upon greater endeavors than ever before; to enlarge the program, to advertise more widely, and to compel attention to the new movement? Anyone who knew the adventurous, aspiring nature of both Miller and Vincent would unhesitatingly answer these questions.

The a.s.sembly of 1876 was planned upon a larger scale than ever before.

The formal opening took place on Tuesday evening, August 1st, in the forest-sheltered Auditorium, but two gatherings were held in advance and a third after its conclusion, so that the entire program embraced twenty-four days instead of seventeen.

The first meeting was the Scientific Conference, July 26th to 28th, aiming both to present science from the Christian point of view, and Christianity from the scientific point of view, showing the essential harmony between them, without either subjecting conclusions of science to church-authority or cutting up the Bible at the behest of the scientists. There had been frequent battles between the theologians and the students of nature and the "conflict of science and religion" had been strongly in evidence, ever since the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ in 1859. Most pulpits had uttered their thunders against "Darwinism," even though some of the pulpiteers had never read Darwin's book, nor could have understood it if they had tried. And many professors who had never listened to a gospel sermon, and rarely opened their Bibles, had launched lightnings at the camp of the theologians.

But here was something new; a company of scholars including Dr. R. Ogden Doremus of New York, Professor A. S. Lattimore of Rochester, Dr.

Alexander Winch.e.l.l of Michigan, and others of equal standing, on the same platform with eminent preachers, and no restraint on either side, each free to utter his convictions, and all certain that the outcome would be peace and not war.

The writer of these pages was present at most of those lectures, and remembers one instance showing that the province of science is in the past and the present and not in the future. Dr. Doremus was giving some brilliant experiments in the newer developments of electricity. Be it remembered that it was the year 1876, and in the Centennial Exposition of that year there was neither an automobile, a trolley-car, nor an electric light. He said, "I will now show you that remarkable phenomenon--the electric light. Be careful not to gaze at it too steadily, for it is apt to dazzle the beholder and may injure the eyesight." Then as an arc-light of a crude sort flashed and sputtered, and fell and rose again only to sputter and fall, the lecturer said, "Of course, the electric light is only an interesting experiment, a sort of toy to amuse spectators. Every effort to utilize it has failed, and always will fail. The electric light in all probability will never be of any practical value."

Yet at that very time, Thomas A. Edison in Menlo Park, New Jersey, was perfecting his incandescent light, and only three years later, 1879, Chautauqua was illuminated throughout by electricity. When the scientist turns prophet he becomes as fallible as the preacher who a.s.sumes to prescribe limitations to scientific discovery. We live in an age of harmony and mutual helpfulness between science and religion; and Chautauqua has wrought mightily in bringing to pa.s.s the new day.

It is worthy of mention that Chautauqua holds a connecting link with "the wizard of Llewellyn Park" and his electric light; for some years later Mr. Edison married Miss Mina Miller, daughter of the Founder Lewis Miller. The Miller family, Founder, sons, daughters, and grandchildren, have maintained a deep interest in Chautauqua; and the Swiss Cottage at the head of Miller Park has every year been occupied. Representatives of the Miller family are always members of the Board of Trustees.