CHAUTAUQUANS AT HOME.
BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
After the grand review—dress parade, oratory, music, flags, and fireworks—comes the common, everyday routine—plow, pen, needle and nursery. Farewell to the holiday! All hail to the working day! Between the two there is a vast difference; and both are good.
There is a difference between the peal of morning bells rolling over lake and through forest trees, with the warble of wild wood birds, waking one up to a day of music and eloquence, Sunday clothes and good society, and the gruff call or dissonant bell ring of somebody whose business it is to tell you to be up and at it, at once and for all day, whether you feel like it or not.
There is a difference between sitting down to a breakfast that was prepared for you by servants, and getting up to build a fire and boil a kettle and broil a steak, and wait for all the household to come down and in, and get through, and give you a chance to do something else before a half dozen other things claim your time and thought, and thus make way for a dozen and one additional things that fill up the unprinted program of your own domestic or official “assembly” at home.
There is a difference between a precious Bible reading at eight o’clock, with all the sweetest texts in the book put into lines or clusters or circles like gems in royal treasure plate, and the care of a “mussed up” table, a pile of soiled dishes, or a naughty, nervous, or afflicted child.
There is a difference between one of “dear brother” Adam’s devotional conferences at nine o’clock, with the fresh experiences of many hearts (who for the time forget crying children and crowded kitchen) full of joy and peace and triumph, with the ingenious interpretations of old, or difficult, or out-of-the-way texts, with the sweet and fervent prayers that sound as if heaven were near and not afar off, and as if all the people one saw filling the Amphitheater were saints of God who had left the “exceeding glory” for an hour to give Chautauqua a taste of the celestial life—there is, I say, a difference between all this and the sweeping and dusting, the stewing and sweating, the clerking and teaching, the hammering and plowing—and all the rest of the indoor and outdoor exercises that usurp the blessed nine o’clock devotional conference hour, for which at home no bell rings, and to which no organ or solo welcomes.