And there will be Prince Bolly presiding either at hotel or spelling-match with equal grace. General Lewis offers the prizes for the best spellers; would it not be a fair return for the best spellers to offer a prize for the best hotel keeper, with the secret certainty, of course, that Mr. Lewis would win it, and so get his reward for services in behalf of correct orthography and good living at Chautauqua?
People at Chautauqua always live high—1,400 feet above the sea. The place is pure atmospherically, aquatically, morally, and intellectually they live in a rarified and quickening medium. The whole effect is elevating, though we never saw a person on the grounds who had “got high.”
Wallace Bruce, the man of Scotch name and lineage, but of all-world culture, will be there and personify the literati of all times and nations. To know Bruce is a liberal education in belles-lettres.
A wit of his time proposed as an epitaph on Congreve, the projector of the rocket (in a double sense) this wicked sentence. “He has gone to the only place where his fireworks can be excelled.” That place might be Chautauqua instead of a worse place, if Congreve had lived till now. The world of Chautauqua will be delighted with pyrotechnics both by day and by night this year. The famous Japanese day fireworks, which have proved such an attraction at Manhattan Beach, Long Branch, and other resorts, will be the sensation at Chautauqua beach. We imagine we can hear the “ohs!” from the “windy suspirations of forced breath” of tens of thousands of spectators.
The program this year fairly glitters with great names, as, Joseph Cook, Talmage, Judge Tourgée, Hon. Will Cumback, and the long list of D.D.’s, collegians and specialists.
The Teachers’ Retreat advances, not retrogrades. Read the program; wonder and admire. The experimental classes of Miss Read should be worth the price of the course to any teacher.
Music is to have another rise in the scale this year. Such a list of soloists and instructors was never before offered at any summer institute of music, and then the grand organ and other accessories!
Froebel is again to be commemorated. It is hoped that some one will be prepared to give a succinct résumé of Froebelism. The question, “What is kindergarten?” is one of the unanswered conundrums of the day.
Prepare to smile—Frank Beard is coming again.
Some one once said he preferred to go sleigh-riding in the summer, when he could enjoy the excursion without freezing to death. Now one can go on a sea voyage without being sea sick, and see the sights of a trip abroad without the cost, expense, and fatigue of foreign travel. It was a brilliant conception, that “Ideal Summer Trip Beyond the Sea.” If it does not prove one of the hits of this season of hits by the Hittites, we do not hit the mark in our guess.