THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT
CHAUTAUQUA was a lusty 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 assemblies 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 Assembly 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
assistant, and later in his chair as his successor. It dropped him down
through the years at Chautauqua assemblies 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. Assembly," and beneath it I stepped ashore
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 class must needs come to the
blackboard and set my askew diagram in the right relations. Twenty years
afterward, at an assembly 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 class 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
Assembly. 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
Assembly. Instead of eight sessions of the Normal Class, 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 class. 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 class 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 Institute 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 class in Hebrew, Madame Kriege of New York conducted a
class in kindergarten teaching, and Dr. Tourjee of Boston, W. F.
Sherwin, and C. C. Case held classes 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 Class, 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
assigned 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 classes or stay in its tents.
At this session, Mrs. Frank Beard, noting the insistent announcement of
the Normal Classes, 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 lass.
Says he, "You must
Get up and dust
And go to the Normal Class."
The great event in the Assembly 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 assembly. 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 constituency. Not to be outdone by
their competitors, 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 multitude 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.
[Illustration: Spouting Tree and Oriental House]
At the close of the Assembly, 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 passing grade. There were now two classes of graduates,
and the Chautauqua Normal Alumni Association 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 Assembly of 1875, a quiet, unassuming 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 Assembly--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.