“Perhaps I can help you a little,” spoke out an old fish who had come up the stream unobserved some time before. “I lived in Lake Chautauqua myself for some years until my daughter sent for me to come and live with her in yonder lake.”
They all looked at the old fish with great veneration, and thanked him kindly.
“Well, how shall we begin?” said an impatient daisy.
“I should think the first thing to be done is to make a motion that we have a Chautauqua,” Bachelor said.
Then rose up a tall old fern. “I make a motion to that effect.”
“I second it,” chirped a sparrow.
“All in favor of the motion say ‘aye,’” said Bachelor, in a deep, important voice.
And then arose such a chorus of “aye’s” as never was heard before in that grove. The wind blew it, the brook gurgled it, the great forest trees waved it, all the little flowers filled the air with their perfumed voices, the far-off lake murmured its assent, the purple mountain nodded its weary old head, the sun shot triumphantly through the dark clouds, and all God’s works seemed joining in the “aye aye, aye,” that echoed from hillside to wood.