From the Golden Gate to the Golden Horn. By Henry Frederick Reddall. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. 1885. Price, $1.25.
CHAUTAUQUA IN JAPAN.
BY WM. D. BRIDGE.
Japan moves to the front, for Chautauqua has taken firm root in Japan. The Chautauqua Idea is an ecumenical idea, and it is the province of this article to show the workings of this idea in Japan during the past six months.
Late in the summer of 1884 Mrs. A. M. Drennan (C. L. S. C. class of ’82), a resident missionary in Japan, at Osaka, entered into correspondence with Chancellor Vincent as to the possibility of translating valuable English materials in the line of the “C. L. S. C.” into the Japanese vernacular. Among the material tracts, papers, etc., sent, was one which she put into the hands of an educated native, well versed also in English, who said on reading it: “If that book can be put into the hands of the young men, Tom Paine and other infidels must leave Japan.”
Chancellor Vincent, on reviewing the necessities of the field, and marking the wondrous developments of that newborn nation, arranged with Mrs. Drennan for the translation of the “Required Reading” in The Chautauquan into Japanese, guaranteeing a prescribed sum per month for expenses of translating for one year.
March 30, 1885, Mrs. Drennan writes: “I wish I could convey to you something of an idea of the enthusiasm in reference to our Chautauqua Society here. In much less than a week after the first advertisement in the papers, our secretary had received nearly three hundred letters of inquiry, and, on application, had given out every one of the first five hundred copies of the ‘Hand-Book.’ A second edition of five hundred was made, and now, in less than a week, only two hundred copies remain.”