THE PAGEANT
"GRANDFATHER," cried Roger as he sat down to dinner one day, "do you
remember that when we were in the trolley coming here from Westfield you
promised that some time you would tell us about Celoron?"
"I forgot all about it, son. Shall I tell you now?"
"You won't have to now. There's going to be a pageant of the history of
Chautauqua Lake and we'll learn the whole thing from that. There'll be
historical scenes, and Francis Wilson, the actor, will wind it up with a
real play. He's going to bring his company with him from New York."
"Who told you about it?" asked Ethel Brown. "The lady who is to direct
the whole thing came to the Girls' Club this morning and explained it to
us and picked out the girls she wants to take part."
"I met the Director and he told me," replied Roger. "He's going to be La
Salle himself, and the Director of the Summer Schools is to be another
of those old chaps--Brule, I think his name was; and the Institution
Organist is to take the part of Celoron."
"What are you going to be?" asked Mrs. Emerson.
"An Indian brave."
"I'm going to be an Indian boy," piped up Dicky. "The lady came to the
Boys' Club, too, this morning."
"You'll have to put soot on your hair, kid," teased Roger, "and brown
your speaking countenance."
"So shall I," said Helen. "I'm to be a squaw. A lot of girls from the
Vacation Club are to be squaws. It will be awfully good fun except the
browning up. They say that if you put vaseline on your face first the
stuff comes off without any trouble."
"I hope it does," Ethel Brown wished. "I'm to be an Indian girl."
"I especially hope it does," continued Helen, "because I have to be a
lady of the French Court later on and I'd hate to have my Indian color
stay with me!"
"Everybody is accounted for except Ethel Blue. What are you going to
do?" asked Mrs. Morton, smiling at her niece.
"I'm a Flower Sprite and so is Dorothy."
"You can wear your own complexion, then."
"I don't believe sprites ever have hair like mine."
"You can't prove that they don't," declared Roger, smartly. "The pageant
is going to be the grandest thing of the sort that Chautauqua ever had.
There are to be lots of grown people in it, and the choir and the
orchestra are to provide the music and there's to be a minuet--"
"Didn't I take my first lesson to-day!" exclaimed Helen. "My knees are
almost out of commission from that courtesy!"
"They wanted me to learn that, too; hand on your heart business for the
men, and prance around like an ostrich in a zoo trying to look over the
fence! I told them learning the Indian War Dance was all I was equal
to."
"It's more in your style," commented Helen drily.
"It seems a good opportunity to learn both. You and Helen might get up a
minuet when your club has some sort of party next winter," suggested
Mrs. Morton.
"That's so," agreed Helen; "and Margaret and James are both going to
learn it, and it will be a lot easier to drill the new ones if four of
us know it already."
"All right," Roger accepted the proposal promptly. "I'll tell them after
dinner that they can order one of those white monkey wigs for me, too."
"You won't look any sillier than you will as a red Indian," urged Helen.
"Roger would like to have us think that he'd rather appear as a child of
nature than a child of art," smiled his grandmother.
"So I would," insisted Roger; "but the main thing is to do what will
help most, like a true member of the United Service Club in good and
regular standing."
Ethel Blue applauded.
"That suits you, does it, kid?" and Roger grinned cheerfully at the
club's founder. "Are all of you going to rehearse this afternoon? They
say that when you run up into a bunch of people anywhere on the grounds
for the next week it will be a squad of pageant performers rehearsing
something."
"It looks to me as if it would be a tight squeeze to get it ready in
that time," observed grandfather.
"The lady who is to direct the pageant comes from Chicago and she has
only this spare time in all the summer."
"Some of the parts are all prepared," said Ethel Blue.
"How do you know?"
"Dorothy told me."
Dorothy sang in the Children's Choir and kept up with the musical
activities of Chautauqua more than the Mortons, who were not especially
musical.
"Dorothy says that all the music has been ready for some time, so that
the singers and players will need just one rehearsal to fit them in
right with the other parts of the performance."
"And one of the Vacation Club girls told me," said Helen, "that the
elaborate costumes for the ladies and gentlemen of the French Court were
to be sent from New York and Chicago, so that only the simple things
will have to be made here."
"The Flower Sprites are to wear floating slips of white cheese cloth,"
said Ethel Blue. "I think I can make mine myself."
"I know I can make my Indian clothes," said Ethel Brown, "because they
are going to have patterns at the Girls' Club this afternoon and some
one to show us how and we'll all make them together."
"The Vacation girls who are to be squaws are going down there this
afternoon, too," Helen said.
"I'll walk with you if you'll wait till I find my sewing bag."
"How are the sewing lessons coming on?" asked Mrs. Emerson.
"The best ever, Grandmother. I can make a pretty good buttonhole already
and by next week I'll be able to fill Mother's order for middies for the
Ethels."
"Perhaps your career will prove to be the humble one of sewing," guessed
grandmother slyly.
"I don't know that it is so very humble," defended Helen stoutly. "It's
one of the most useful occupations there is if you just look at the
domestic side of it, and it can be developed into a fine art if you want
to go into embroidery. And my teacher says that dressmaking is a fine
art, too, when you are designing dresses and not merely turning them out
as coverings for the human frame."
Grandmother laughed.
"The factories will turn out the coverings for us, but I can see that
your teacher means the adapting of a dress to the style of the wearer."
"She says that a dress ought to be suitable for the purpose for which it
is intended--"
"That is, that there should be a sharp distinction between a school
dress and a dancing school dress or, for a woman, between an afternoon
dress and a dinner dress."
"Yes. The designer ought to study the use to which the dress is to be
put and then plan it accordingly. Then she ought to make it suit the
person who is to wear it."
"That point seems to be forgotten nowadays when grandmothers and mothers
and daughters all wear the same ready-made dresses. The only difference
in them is the size."
"They ought to be suitable for the age of the wearer and for her size
and shape. If you put a tall woman's dress on a short, fat woman she
looks foolish. The lines of the costume ought to bring out the good
points of the wearer's figure and make you forget her bad points."
"That means that your mother ought to wear long, flowing lines because
she is short and I can wear a tunic if I want to because I am so tall
and thin that I can afford to have a few inches seemingly cut off me."
"Then there's coloring. I can wear almost any color because I'm rather
indefinite; I just have to be particular about getting the right shade.
But there are certain colors that Margaret can't wear at all on account
of her auburn hair--"
"And certain color schemes that she can work out splendidly just because
of her auburn hair."
"Doesn't she look pretty in that all brown suit of hers? And she's got a
dress of a queer shade of yellow that is just exactly right with her
hair and brown eyes. When she wears all those browns and yellows she
looks like Autumn."
"We'll see you coming out as Madame Helene and presiding over a big New
York dressmaking establishment," smiled Mrs. Emerson.
"I don't believe you will; but I do think there's plenty of opportunity
for a real artist in designing dresses, and I wish more girls went into
it instead of into teaching."
"Teaching and sewing used to be the only occupations that were thought
to be suitable for women when I was young."
"That was drudgery sewing--making men's shirts and doing a lot of finger
sewing that can be done by the machine now in the wink of an eye. But
the sewing that is worth while cultivating now is the kind that can't be
done by the machine but by the fingers of an artist. Embroidery and
specialized dressmaking like that we've been talking about--those are
the kinds of sewing that make you a craftswoman and an artist and not a
drudge."
"You've stowed away all that your teacher has told you, I see."
"She did tell me most of that, but some of it I thought out and then
asked her about. You see, since that time when I told Mother I wanted to
pay my board--"
"I'm afraid you hurt your mother's feelings then."
"Oh, Granny dear, do you really think so? I didn't mean to, but I
couldn't seem to make anybody understand until I said that," Helen
paused an instant disconsolately. "Any way, since that time I've been
thinking a lot about what I want to do. I want to go to college, but I
don't want to teach or be a nurse or a doctor. Margaret says she's going
to be a newspaper woman or be on a magazine or something of that sort.
But I seem to be hard to suit."
"It's a long time yet before you have to decide."
"I know it is, but if I decide pretty soon I can make all my college
work help me toward what I am going to do afterwards."
"That would be an advantage."
"The trouble is that I like all the homey occupations; I'd like to be
the best housekeeper in the world."
"That's a modest wish! However, housekeeping is a science in these days
of organizing ideas and knowledge, and if you want to keep house on a
large scale it would be perfectly possible for you to learn about
sanitation and ventilation and so on at college and then find a position
as housekeeper for some charitable institution."
"Or be a sort of teaching housekeeper connected with a settlement. I
really should like that. If you don't mind I wish you and Mother would
visit the School of Mothercraft that is in a cottage half way up the
hill to the Post Office. I was passing it yesterday and I went in, and,
interesting!--well, I should say it was!"
"What do they teach--domestic science?"
"Not the same kind that other schools teach. They teach just what a
mother ought to know to run her house properly and to bring up her
children properly. They have babies there and the girls who are studying
take care of them just as if they were responsible for them. They learn
how to feed them to make them grow, and they learn--Oh, it's the best
kind of domestic science you ever knew anything about!"
Helen was quite breathless when she stopped.
"Your mother and I will surely go in the next time we go up the hill."
"The school is in New York in the winter, so we can go to see it there
sometimes--and I think--I really think, Granny, that I've found what I
want."
"I hope you have, dear. It's an interesting something that you've found,
at any rate. I'm afraid the Ethels didn't wait for you. They went on
when they saw us talking so earnestly."
"Never mind. I'm glad I told you. You see, I told Margaret and she
didn't think much of it. Just housekeeping seemed too small for her. But
I think it's natural and interesting and gives you lots of
opportunities. If you don't have a family of your own to look after you
can help out some other woman who has one that she doesn't know how to
manage, or I--I really think I'd like to run an orphan asylum and be a
mother to several hundred chicks at once."
"If you don't hurry you won't learn how to make Indian dresses for
them."
"They're easy," laughed Helen. "I expect to finish mine this afternoon
and make Roger's to-morrow afternoon and then help on any others that
are lying about to be attended to. Margaret and I told our sewing
teacher about the United Service Club and she said that she could give
us a chance to help with these costumes. There won't be much
self-sacrifice in it, for she's going to superintend it all so it will
be almost like having another sewing lesson."
"It seems to me she is qualifying to become a member herself if she is
giving her time in the afternoons to helping out with all these
costumes."
"I come across people every day who are just like that, dear Gran.
Chautauqua is the greatest place in the world, I believe, for
co-operation and helpfulness."
"Helpfulness and kindliness and loyalty make up the 'Chautauqua spirit.'
You've probably discovered that that is a very real thing."
"It's what makes everybody go about speaking to people they'd just stare
at at home."
"And finding out that they're interesting after all."
Over her sewing for several afternoons to come Helen thought many times
of her conversation with her grandmother and she was keenly delighted
when Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton went to the School of Mothercraft and
found themselves as pleased with its purposes and its way of carrying
them out as Helen herself had been.
"We think we are making a new occupation for women out of her oldest
occupation," smiled the head of the school. "We are organizing women's
natural abilities and the duties that have been hers time out of mind in
a modern way that will fit her to be a good mother and housekeeper in
her own household or some other woman's, or to teach homecraft to
students just as we are doing here. We've already had more applications
than we have been able to fill for Mothercraft teachers to go to the
West."
Meanwhile, as Roger had predicted, every part of the grounds was
"infested," as he described it, with groups of people rehearsing for the
pageant. In the hall of the School of Physical Education the minuet was
being practiced whenever the gymnastic classes left the floor free for
an hour; the reader with the Water Sprites and Flower Sprites and the
bold representatives of the Wind and the Sun foregathered in the largest
room of the School of Expression; Indian men and boys stamped and
grunted in the Boys' Club, while the Girls' Club was the scene of the
squaws' Dance of Grief. La Salle and Brule and Celoron spent an anxious
life warily dodging the people who wanted to capture them for
rehearsals, and only submitted to having their measurements taken on
condition that they should not be asked to try on their costumes until
the day of the performance. It was Helen and Margaret and their
classmates who were making them but they were so absorbed in doing all
these extra matters in addition to their regular club tasks and
pleasures that they felt it would only add one more thrill if at this
last-minute trying-on all the costumes should be proved misfits and have
to be made over in one day!
Nothing of the sort happened, however, though there were dress
rehearsals at seven o'clock in the morning of the appointed day, when
early risers saw braves in full war paint flocking to the lake front,
with a tread not as stealthy as it would be at night when boots should
be exchanged for moccasins.
The scenes were staged on a large raft anchored in the lake before the
hotel and girt with low bushes so that it looked like an island. The
observers assembled on the lawn that sloped from the hotel to the
water, and spread along the pebbly beach. Those in front brought camp
chairs or sat cross-legged on the ground and those behind looked over
their heads. Strong lights were thrown on the improvised island from
electric lights with reflectors. Mr. and Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton
were so fortunate as to secure comfortable and convenient positions.
The three scenes of the First Part represented myths of the Indians who
long ago used to live about Chautauqua Lake. The Spirit of the Lake
appeared in a canoe drawn by invisible power. As she landed upon the
island the Flower Sprites greeted her with singing.
"Can you make out Ethel Blue?" asked Mr. Emerson, peering through his
glasses.
"It seems to me she is the next to the end in the front row," replied
Mrs. Morton. "That certainly is Dorothy on the end."
Very charming they looked with their flowing white robes and their
garlands, and very manly were the lovers, Wind and Sun, who wooed the
Lake Spirit to remain on the island. Their wooing was vain, however, for
the Spirit made them understand that she was to give her love only to a
new spirit yet to come, Mankind.
The next scene illustrated one of the meanings of the word
"Chautauqua"--"The place of easy death." An Indian princess, stooping to
drink from the lake, was drawn down into its depths.
The origin in the lake of the fish called the muscallonge whose size
and spirit make its capture a triumph for fishermen was the subject of
the third scene, in which Indian braves fishing near the island were the
central figures.
The presentation of actual historical facts began with the Second Part.
"I rather suspect," said Mr. Emerson amusedly, "that our young people
are going to learn more history from this performance than I should have
been able to tell them."
"Helen has been reading about the explorers in the library in the
College. I imagine she has her eye on another history prize next
winter."
"Here is what the program says is going to happen. Let me read it to you
before the scene begins and then we won't have to bother our heads about
the story and we can try to pick out our children."
"PART II.--1610-1615. SCENES OF
EARLY ERIE OCCUPATION
"Three Erie scouts are seen exploring the country with a view of
settlement. After satisfying themselves that the Island is safe and
advantageous they depart, soon returning with their whole tribe. Then
follows an historical reproduction of an Indian village. Tents are set
up, fires lighted, fishing and swimming indulged in. The children weave
baskets and play games. All is peaceful, until an Iroquois scouting
party, passing near, shoots the chief of the Eries. Instant confusion
reigns. The braves seize their tomahawks and pursue the enemy in canoes.
The medicine man attends the wounded chief, the squaws moan in grief,
and upon the return of the successful Eries with their dead and
prisoners, the young braves of the tribe indulge in a war dance. As the
tribe work themselves up into a frenzy and bloodshed and torture seem
imminent, the outburst is quelled and the attention of the Indians is
diverted by the coming of Etienne Brule.
"Brule was a young Frenchman who, in 1615, carried a message of peace
from Samuel Champlain, in Canada, to the Andastes Indians in
Pennsylvania."
All the young Mortons except Ethel Blue took part in this scene. Roger
was one of the three scouts, and so was conspicuous enough to be easily
picked out by his relatives on shore. It was not so easy to discover
Helen and Margaret Hancock in the group of sorrowing squaws.
"They would be apt to be together; I believe they're both at the right,"
guessed Mrs. Emerson.
There were so many Indian children rolling around on the ground and
playing with the flowers and the dogs that Dicky was indistinguishable
until the war dance with its shuffle and stamp and muffled shout excited
him. James and Roger were especially ferocious in appearance and in
behavior and Dicky found himself so entranced with his brother's
spirited acting that he himself added a touch that caused a roar of
laughter from the spectators on the shore.
"Do look at that _darling_ child!" cried one after another, and the
mother of the darling child tried, to look unconscious while she was as
amused as any one.
"Do you see?" exclaimed a voice directly behind Mr. Emerson. "He's
following one of the braves about. He's imitating every motion he makes.
Did you ever see such miniature ferocity!"
"He's a pocket edition."
"He's the most delightful creature I've seen in many moons," said
another, and Dicky, as unconscious as a little animal, stamped and
shuffled and shouted and enjoyed himself to the utmost. It was evident
that to him the coming of Etienne Brule was a sore disappointment.
Brule's approach was heralded by the arrival of a single canoe paddled
by Indians who told that a white man was on his way. Then came three
canoes bearing Brule and his Huron companions. The young man's calm air
soothed the Indians on the island and they invited him to land and to
smoke the pipe of peace. He told his errand, gave them presents, ate
with them, and went on his way.
A period of 55 years was supposed to pass between this scene and the
next.
"That will be long enough for Helen and Margaret to change their
dresses," smiled Mrs. Emerson.
Again the island represented an Erie camp, and again the coming of a
white man was reported, but unlike his predecessor La Salle arrived in
state. He was in a large canoe which bore the banner of France and he
was escorted by six canoes filled with ladies and gentlemen of France.
Landing on the island the "Little Father" claimed the land "with all the
countries, lake and streams adjacent thereto" in the name of the "Most
High, Mighty and Redoubtable Monarch, Louis the Fifteenth, most
Christian King of France and Navarre."
After an exchange of gifts the French ladies and gentlemen entertained
the Indians by dancing the minuet. This innovation in the wilderness was
received with approval by the red men.
The Hancocks and Helen and Roger were easily distinguishable in the
dance, and Ethel Blue, who had found her way to her aunt's side,
together with Dorothy, who was not able to find her mother in the crowd,
were delighted over their elegance and grace.
"Ethel and I have almost learned it watching them practice," she
whispered, "so if we really did do it in the Club next winter we'd only
have to train two boys."
Even longer than between scenes one and two was the lapse of time
between scenes two and three. It was 79 years after La Salle's
expedition that Bienville de Celoron, escorted by Roger and James, who
had changed again into Indian costume, and a large retinue of other
Indians and of Frenchmen arrived at the island.
"They were six days, history says, in making the portage from Lake Erie
which we make on the trolley in a little over an hour," explained Mr.
Emerson.
"They had to cut the forest as they travelled, I suppose," said his
wife.
"And carry 23 canoes and food and travelling equipment for 270 people."
"It's no wonder they are languid," laughed Mrs. Morton as a
disembarking youth moved so slowly as nearly to overset his craft.
"Celoron has the French banner like La Salle," cried Ethel Blue.
"He, too, is taking possession of the country for the king. See, the
priest is taking the latitude and longitude of the new land."
"What are they doing now? Roger is digging a hole."
"Celoron buried lead plates in various places along his route. The
purpose of his expedition was inscribed on them. Probably Roger is
preparing to bury one of them here."
This proved to be the case. When the hole was ready the plate was placed
in it with due ceremony and then Celoron made a formal announcement of
the claim of the King of France, and this section of the pageant was
ended.
"Oh, I'd like to see it all again," sighed Ethel Blue, looking about for
Ethel Brown as the party moved with the crowd up the hill to the
Amphitheatre.
Helen sat and looked and laughed and wept a tear or two as the story of
"The Little Father of the Wilderness" came to its pathetic, triumphant
end. Yet through it all her heart was light because the days of the
pageant with all their hurry and labor had brought her a glimpse of the
future, a glimpse of a work that might be hers when she was free to
choose--a glimpse of a work that would help others as well as herself
and that would mean a career and yet the life of home.