Pennsylvania.—I enjoy the reading and study more than I can express, believing that its influence is elevating. I regret that I can not enjoy the advantages of a local circle. I did try to interest some in my own neighborhood, but did not succeed.
Pennsylvania.—It is helping me regain what I lost under the pernicious influence of novel reading. It fills many moments, that would have been spent in idle dreaming, with rare pleasure in the acquirement of knowledge. Its purifying influence is making life more real and earnest. I belong to a small circle numbering six members. Two of the number read last year, and were instrumental in the organization of the circle this year. We are all enthusiastic members, meeting regularly each week. We have real social meetings, with no formality or coldness, and they are a source of great benefit and enjoyment to us all.
Pennsylvania.—You may send me about twenty-five “Popular Education” circulars, and the same number of “Spare Minute Course” tracts, and I will try to aid the C. L. S. C. by distributing them, and speaking a word for it. I have not been able to do much for it yet, but it has done a great deal for me. The first year, and up to February of this year, I did the reading all alone. Sometimes it was very discouraging, but every month when The Chautauquan came, and I read the letters from other members, the circles and others, my enthusiasm received an impetus that carried me on into the next month, and so on through the year. I do not pretend to keep up with the class. Do not think I had finished over half the required readings at the close of the year. But, if the only object of the C. L. S. C. was to have the reading done, I might have done it. My conception of the “Chautauqua Idea” is growth. It has been a means of growth to me. I have grown intellectually, morally and spiritually. It destroyed a taste for light reading, and created an appetite for real knowledge, giving enlarged views of life and life’s work.
Indiana.—This is my third year of work, and I feel much more zealous than at the start. No early training can take the place of such a course as this, yet with a foundation how easy it all appears when we once get at it. It is wonderful how the interest grows. I go out but little, my friends find my C. L. S. C. books scattered around when they come in. At first they attracted little attention, and I failed to create much interest in them by speaking, but as time goes on and they still see the same thing they begin to wonder and ask questions, until now I am frequently asked to explain “the whole plan,” and find willing hearers. There are four of us in this place who pay the annual fee, but I succeeded in getting several more to subscribe for The Chautauquan. In another year I hope we shall have an interesting class. “We four” are not formally organized, but our sympathy brings us closely together wherever we meet. I have the complete set of C. L. S. C. books—could not get along without them.
Wisconsin.—I tried for years, ten years at least, to arrange a course of reading for myself (before I ever heard of the C. L. S. C., too), that would be practical and instructive at the same time; though I made many attempts I always found it impossible to pursue the courses of study I selected, but I never gave up the effort. My thirst for knowledge has always been so great I never am happy unless I feel that every day I have made some improvement, or acquired some knowledge that will be of lasting benefit. So when I had the opportunity of joining the C. L. S. C. I hailed it with delight and gratitude, and never think of its founders without thanking them in my inmost heart for the good it has done, and the good it promises in the future.