Dr. Vincent kept the place on its toes not only by the steady improvement of its platform, its amusements, in the quality of the people who came to teach and preach, but by a steady flow of new undertakings. He planned incessantly to stir not only our souls but our minds. We came to expect new ideas at each successive session and were never disappointed if sometimes a little bewildered. Behind all these various undertakings was the steadying hand of Lewis Miller, the silent partner, who had begun by spying out the land, establishing a community, laying the foundations for the Institution as it exists today—a center of democratic, Christian culture.

Dr. Vincent’s masterpiece, as I always thought, came in 1878 when he laid before his Chautauquans a plan which had been long simmering in his never quiet mind. He did this in the finest of what we call inspirational talks that I ever heard—at least it stirred me so deeply that I have never forgotten the face of the orator nor, more important, the upturned faces of his hearers. He announced a scheme for a four-year course of home reading under the direction of the Chautauqua management adapted to men and women who had missed a college education, but who felt a deep desire for knowledge and were willing to adopt any practical plan which would give them a college outlook. It was to be called the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

Now this does not sound exciting; but as a matter of fact it was deeply exciting, for the speaker was pouring out his heart. He had never had a college education; he had never ceased to feel the lack of what he believed it would have given him. He had struggled to make up for his loss by persistent, systematic daily reading and study. Establishing the habit as a boy, he had never abandoned it. It had given him deep satisfaction, supplied, he thought, the college outlook. He believed there were thousands of men and women in the United States, scores, possibly hundreds, in his audience, who had been forced, as he had been, to sacrifice their early ambitions for education. They had hidden the hunger in their hearts where at times it still gnawed. He was offering them the same help he had found, and confidently, glowingly, he outlined the course of home reading which Dr. John H. Finley has so aptly named the American Adult Education Pioneer.

The uplifted faces all about me told the story, particularly the faces of the women of thirty or more. Women of that generation had had their natural desire for knowledge intensified by the Woman’s Rights movement, in which the strongest plank had been a demand for the opportunity for higher education. These women were now beyond the day when they could go to college, but here was something which they saw intuitively was practical.

The immediacy of their response was in a degree accounted for by their devotion to Dr. Vincent. I suppose most of the women who frequented Chautauqua were more or less in love with him, the worship a man of overflowing sentiment receives from the benches, but most of his audience would have preferred to die rather than reveal their secret passion.

Well, it was a great emotional experience with large and immediate practical results, for, before the summer session was over, eight thousand people had joined the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

They had joined, and they were buying the books chosen. The most important volume in that first year’s course was Green’s “Short History of the English People”—in my judgment the most important book save one that the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle ever included, that exception being W. C. Brownell’s “French Traits.” The sudden demand for so large and expensive a volume as Green’s History, outside of regular trade channels, followed as it was by spectacular sales of other books from which neither publisher nor writer had expected anything out of the normal, set the whole publishing world agog, and naturally raised the question, “How are we to get in on this new market?”

There were many approaches, all legitimate enough so far as I know. I found a rather amusing proof of one not long ago in Marjorie Wiggin Prescott’s fine collection of manuscripts and rare books—a volume of Lew Wallace’s “Ben Hur” enriched by a letter to the publisher, signed by Mrs. Wallace and dated November 24, 1884. The letter, which is self-explanatory, is reproduced here with Mrs. Prescott’s permission.

Crawfordsville, Nov. 24, 1884.

Dear Sir