I come to inform all candidates for enrollment in the “Society of the Hall in the Grove” that the hour appointed for your reception has arrived; the Hall has been set in order; the Path through the Grove has been opened; the Arches under which you must pass have been erected; the Key which will open this Gate has been placed in my hands. And to you who, as members of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, have completed the four years’ Course of Reading, and now hold in your hands a pledge of the same, I extend, in the name of the authorities, a welcome into St. Paul’s Grove, under the First Arch—and let the watchman guard carefully the Gate.
After the announcement by the Messenger, he turned and opened the gate. The first to enter was Mr. Miner Curtis, an invalid, borne in a wheeled carriage by the advance members of the class of ’83, and accompanied by his wife and son, who were graduates of last year.
Having entered the Gate, and the Gate having been closed, the class proceeded very slowly toward the Hall, passing the second and third Arches. As they walked up the beautifully decorated way, the “Choir of the Hall in the Grove” stationed at the fourth Arch, and led by Prof. C. C. Case, sang “A Song of To-day:”
“Sing peans over the Past!
We bury the dead years tenderly.”
At the entrance to the Hall stood the Superintendent of Instruction to welcome the coming class, and as they passed by the Arch nearest the Hall, the fifty-two little girls standing in double columns, scattered the way of the coming graduates with the beauteous flowers, emblematic of the flower-strewn paths of intellectual light which they may hope to tread in the coming years.
On entering the building the “Society of the Hall in the Grove” received their brothers and sisters with the most marked tokens of good cheer, waving their handkerchiefs and vocally expressing the kindly feeling of the seniors of the year agone.
At precisely 10:20 the “C. L. S. C. Glee Club,” Prof. W. F. Sherwin, conductor, led the classes (which filled the Hall to repletion), as they sang
“A sound is thrilling thro’ the trees