THE TROY METHOD OF ORGANIZING A CIRCLE.
The “Rock of Ages” was sung, a prayer was offered by Mr. Martin, after which Mr. Farrar said:
I desire to give you a little history of the inauguration of our circle work in Troy. I do so because I am confident that what was done there last year may be done in every city, in every village, and may be multiplied a thousand times.
About the middle of last September I wrote an article on “Reading, Circles for Reading, and The C. L. S. C.,” and published it in the Troy Daily Times.
I wrote this article, published it on Wednesday, calling a meeting at my church for Thursday evening, inviting anybody and everybody who desired, to be present. The evening was quite unfavorable. I expected about twenty. I was exceedingly surprised and gratified in the interests of the C. L. S. C. work when I found nearly three hundred people present. Being inspired by their presence, I began to talk to them on reading, the importance of it, the value of it to-day, and the cheapness of literature. I unfolded to them the C. L. S. C. plan, the numbers that were taking it up, the enthusiasm that prevailed here at Chautauqua, and how the Circle was spreading all over the world, not only in this country but in other countries. It was all new to many of them.
At the conclusion of my half hour’s talk I asked how many persons wanted to join some such circle as this. About every hand in the audience went up. I was surprised again. Looking over the audience, I knew nearly every one of them, for I was back the second time as pastor of the same church, and knowing that four or five denominations were represented there, I suggested that there ought to be a circle in every church. I did not want to “scoop up” the whole right there in our church, and I was generous enough to say that there ought to be a dozen circles established in our city, one in connection with every church, and in the suburbs. I said that a week from that night we would organize a circle there, and any who desired to be connected with that circle would be gladly welcomed.
During the week I received several letters from parties in the city, and out of the city, asking about the C. L. S. C., what its course of reading was, etc. I followed it in the Daily Times with another letter on Wednesday, saying that our circle was to meet on Thursday, and explaining the text books that we were to take up for the year, and more fully entering into the C. L. S. C. idea. Our evening came, and we had over three hundred present. I had the whole list of books with me. I took them up and showed them to each person. I said, “this is the course.” I went on unfolding the whole idea of the course, the amount of time each year, the examinations at the end of the year, and the outlook of the four years’ course. I told them that this was the student’s outlook from college halls, with the exception of the mathematics and the languages to be translated.
Then I asked how many desired to join this Circle. Over two hundred hands went up. Immediately we fell to organization. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was elected president, and a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, rector of Christ Church, close by me, was elected vice-president. We have in our organization a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and a board of managers consisting of five.
I found on inspecting the number that joined our circle that we were about equally divided Baptists, Protestant Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodist Episcopalians. Our board of managers was wisely selected from these various churches, so that there might be the largest remove possible from anything like an organization confined to our church. I say this because I believe that people are hungry for just such an organization as this. There are thousands in our communities who are tired of idle gossip. They want something to talk about, and the only way to stop gossip is to put something into their heads on a higher plane. I have had testimony from our members repeatedly, “Now we have so little time to talk about these other things.” Whenever they come together they talk about these wonders found in the C. L. S. C. work.
This board of five managers arranges our monthly plan. Our large meetings are monthly. Our circle divides itself up; six or a dozen, or twenty, form little organizations, read together, meet once a week, and then we meet as a large circle monthly and review our work. This board of managers lays out the month’s work. The first week after our monthly meeting this board of managers is called together. They make out their plan, print it on a postal card, and send it out at once to every member of the circle, so that every member knows what the plan is to be three weeks before the meeting. Our method in the large meeting is to review our work by the essay method.
Let me give you a program. First, singing. I was fortunate enough to have an enthusiastic singer in our number, and I gave him the work of organizing a glee club. He gathered twenty or twenty-five of the very best young people in the number, and formed a glee club, and they led our devotions. We followed with scripture and prayer. And then began our essays. We usually have three, four, sometimes five essays, and no essay is over ten minutes in length. We desire that the essays shall not exceed eight minutes. It requires a deal of skill and practice to reduce our thoughts on a subject to a six or eight minutes essay, but it is practicable. Then we are all interested in the subject which we have been studying for a month. When an individual rises and reads, we feel that we have gone over the same subject, and it is like a review to us, and helps to fasten it more definitely in our minds. Following each essay we have remarks and questions. We never criticise an essay. That would be unkind. You could not do it. You would intimidate everybody.
We ask questions and throw in additional remarks. We take up half an hour, or three-quarters at most, devoted to the three, four or five essays. Following these we appoint some person to ask the questions which are printed in The Chautauquan. Any person who will ask and answer these questions will find that he has a wonderfully clear résumé of the whole subject in his mind. I suppose that we are indebted to Mr. Martin for them. They are very clear, very concise, and greatly appreciated by the Troy members.
Following these questions we have a recess of twenty minutes, in which it is the custom of our circle to shake hands, make each others’ acquaintance, encourage each other, find out about each other, and inquire about the work. Upon the recall the Glee Club gives a song. Then follows the round-table. I need not explain this because you are all familiar with the round-table. After that a conversazione on some prominent character of the world, old or new. We desire that every member will give us some extract of five lines, not to exceed five lines, unless it would break the harmony of the thought, from every person brought before us. We have had Shakspere, Longfellow, Bryant, and a variety of persons.
Immediately after this conversazione follows “a miscellaneous exercise”—anything that needs to be taken up. While we were studying geology, we went down to the village of Albany where the capital is located. They have a very fine series of geological rooms arranged by Prof. Hall, the State Geologist. As you enter the room, there are the very lowest specimens of the rocks with their fossils. As you go up story after story you reach the highest rocks. Prof. Hall, by previous appointment, met our large circle of about two hundred. We chartered a car or two and went down. He met us and gave us a very satisfactory lecture. We appreciated it.
When we came to astronomy, we found out where we could find an astronomer. We invited him, and he came and gave us a lecture. Then we had a teacher of the high school stand before us, and allow us to question him to our heart’s content. We found it available to work in all the outside force possible. When we studied the subject of art we got together all the pictures of the town that we could find. I was in Gloversville as pastor at that time. We arranged them, and spent two or three very delightful evenings. You have two or three, another has one, another has six; bring them all together and discuss the whole subject of art. We found it very profitable.
In Troy our circle is so enthusiastic in its work that there is a constant clamor of outside people to get in. We sometimes allow a few outsiders, and there is hardly a session that we do not have four to five hundred in our gathering, but the front seats are always reserved for members, and visitors, if there be any, must take the back seats. There are anywhere from fifty to one hundred and fifty clamoring to be admitted into the circle this fall. I do not know what we shall do. If we admit them, we shall go into the audience room. I think it is better to divide up.
I have given you our work. I said in the outset, it is possible for any young man or woman, pastor or superintendent, through your village paper, to write a short article calling the attention of the people to it, saying that in such a place there will be an organization of this work. I have the impression that you can gather quite a large circle in every place, two or three of them. But my conviction is from the work as I have observed it through Troy and vicinity, that you need somebody in that circle, at the head of it, who loves it. You can make nothing in this world grow without love. Not even the flowers you may plant in your garden will grow unless you love them.
As the result of the article in the Troy Times, eight circles were organized in our city. As the result of those two articles, twenty-six circles were organized around Troy.
I would be glad to hear from you to-day. Criticise my plan as much as you please. I have taken more time because Dr. Vincent urged me to do so. He urged me to take twenty-five minutes. I have only taken twenty. Give me your plans, any suggestions, any practical idea that you have worked out in your circles.
Mr. Martin: I can say that I commend every feature that has been mentioned here by Mr. Farrar in the method of conducting local circles. I believe we have tested in Pittsburgh every one he has mentioned. There are several others we have tried, to which I would like to refer. For instance, I think it well for persons to start with the inspiration and a love of the Circle right here at Chautauqua. A great many persons have come to me on the ground, and asked me how to form a local circle, saying they had no local circles in their vicinity. I say to them if they have two or three members on the ground here who belong together in a circle, meet under the trees and start your organization here. We started with seven members under these trees by the Hall of Philosophy, in the year 1878, and we had somewhere between three and four hundred before the following January, and have as many more since. Last year about half a dozen who graduated in the class of ’82 met under the trees here, and we formed our preliminary organization. We carried the spirit and love of the C. L. S. C. home with us, and we formed in Pittsburgh an alumni association of nearly sixty members. We expect to increase the number largely during the coming year.
One word with reference to the use of newspapers. Our executive committee apportion the different papers of the city between them. We have five members, and each member looks after a paper to see that the paper looks after C. L. S. C. matters. We make each member the editor of a C. L. S. C. department in a newspaper, and it is his duty to get in as many notices about the C. L. S. C. as possible. Our press has very generously opened to us its columns. Every monthly meeting is noticed before and after in the papers. I am glad to say that we have got into many considerable controversies in the newspapers. We like them because they bring our organization into notice.
We avail ourselves of the papyrograph, the electric pen, the type writer, and the various plans for duplicating that we now have, in the way of sending out notices, preparing the programs, etc. Any of you who know how cheaply any of these appliances can be used for printing, will see how efficiently they can be employed for the use of the circle.
Another point: If we get a little depressed, or a little behind, we get Dr. Vincent or one of the counselors to come and give us a rousing lecture. We have given them good audiences, and they have spread a new enthusiasm. What an amount of enthusiasm can be developed about the C. L. S. C. If you will have the patience to answer clearly and fully all questions that are asked you about the C. L. S. C., you will find that you are doing a grand missionary work. I know my business is often interrupted by people who come in and ask about the C. L. S. C., but I am always sorry if I ever have to turn any one away without information. If I give them full information, and they go away and join the C. L. S. C., and form a local circle afterward, I feel that I have done a missionary work.
Mr. Farrar: Any suggestions?
A voice: Did you permit persons to become members of your local circle who did not belong to the parent society?
Mr. Farrar: Yes. But we requested them, if they did not wish to take up the full course of reading, to join the C. L. S. C. and pay their fifty cents, and take The Chautauquan. We honored the home office. But they need not fill out the questions unless they choose.
Mr. Bridge: In that way you will get a great many members of the C. L. S. C. who are not doing the work.
Mr. Farrar: Very few. We took a few husbands who wanted to come with their wives. “Very good,” I said, “pay your fifty cents and take The Chautauquan.”
Rev. J. O. Foster: We had a large circle where I was last appointed. We found in the school a man well posted in geology. We found the depot agent was an astronomer, and he was very enthusiastic over the invitation that we gave him. He came down and spattered the blackboard all over with facts. He got a long strip of paper and stuck up around the room, and marked out the planets. He gave us a very fine lecture on astronomy, so good that the people requested him to repeat it before the whole congregation. We had this “jelly-pad business,” and struck off our programs the week before. Every one knew what he was expected to do. We secured plenty of books, if any one was at a loss for books. We had about twenty in the circle, and that circle is now running. I think it is three and a half years old. I do not know of any older than that.
Mr. Martin: We have one five years old.
Mr. Foster: Very good. Dr. Goodfellow organized this. Another member and I went to people in the city and asked them to lend us their pictures upon several subjects. You will be astonished at the amount of material you can gather together in a single afternoon to illustrate any subject.
Dr. Vincent: I have no doubt that some small local circles have quite unique plans which they have adopted, and I hope if they hesitate to speak out, that they will write out their plans for us.
A Lady: I was about to speak for a small circle. I am very positive in our circle of twenty it would be almost impossible to have essays, except occasionally. The members generally would be so frightened at the idea of having to write an essay that we should lose the circle entirely. We have to pet them a little, and we use the conversational method as freely as possible to get them to express themselves. What they can not tell we tell them. In my experience—I have been conductor four years—I find the essay method frightens small circles. Where you have circles of two hundred, where they have a great many ministers, and lawyers, you can get them to write essays.
A Lady: I would say that I belong to a circle out West of six members. We pursued the essay work for the first two years entirely. Every one of us for the first two years wrote an essay every week. [Applause.]
Dr. Eaton: I would like to speak for another small circle. We had a program. We opened with singing and prayer, and then the leader, who had prepared himself thoroughly, or tried to prepare himself thoroughly on the lesson, particularly in science and in history, examined every class by questioning and removing every difficulty connected with them. The whole circle replied at once, answering the questions. If there were any in the circle that could not answer a question, they had it answered for them, and were not placed under any embarrassment by the sense of failure. A great many said of these meetings every two weeks, that they obtained a better knowledge by this thorough drill than by reading privately at home. Likewise we had essays, but not very frequently. We had essays in the first part of the evening. Sometimes there was a failure to respond, but generally the subject was assigned to particular individuals, and a great many facts in connection with the difficulties in history were brought in that way. I think we commenced with a circle of about twenty or thirty, and we graduated here a year ago some sixteen members, I think. And others are coming in, but with what success I am unable to say, as I have not been in that place all the time. I think that every one in that circle would bear testimony that in this way—by close examination, the plan of a regular class drill—we have obtained a better knowledge than in any other way, and that they were satisfied at the end of the year they had accomplished more and better work than they would under any other circumstances.
A voice: I would like to say we consider that the writing of these essays and insisting upon it, was as much for the advantage of the persons writing these essays as for that of those who listened to them. Therefore, we had a critic who was to write the criticisms, and had them read by the president. Do you think that was a good way?
Mr. Farrar: We thought it was not the best way. Dr. Vincent suggests that the criticisms might be given privately to the writer. I found it quite difficult to get essays. Many young ladies and gentlemen looked upon it as a fearful task. Many times I had to call on them, and sit down with them, and talk them into it, showing them how they could do it. And never one wrote an essay in our circle but said “When you want me to write an essay, call on me again.” I have tried a dozen others who persisted in refusing, but at the close of the year they came to me and said: “If you will forgive us for our refusing to write you may call upon us next year.”
After singing, the benediction was pronounced by Dr. Vincent.