The two Sundays, August 9th and 16th, were golden days in the calendar. An atmosphere of quiet and peace reigned throughout the grounds. No steamboats made the air discordant around the pier; the gates were closed and the steamers sailed by to more welcome stations; no excursion trains brought curious and noisy throngs of sightseers. Tents and cottages lay open while their dwellers worshiped under the trees of the Auditorium, for no one was required to watch against thieves in the crowd. The world was shut out, and a voice seemed to be saying, "Come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile."

The day began with a Sunday School graded to embrace both young and old. The riches of officers and teachers formed an embarrassment. For once, nay twice (for there were two Sundays), a Superintendent had at call more instructors than he could supply with classes. On each Sunday the attendance at the school was fifteen hundred.

At the sunset hour each evening an "Eventide Conference" was held on the lake side. The dying day, the peaceful surroundings, the calm sheet of water, the mild air, combined to impart a tone of thoughtful, uplifting meditation. I have heard old Chautauquans speak many times of the inspiring spiritual atmosphere breathed in the very air of the first Chautauqua.

Never before had been brought together for conference and for study so many leaders in the Sunday School army, representing so large a variety of branches in the church catholic. And it was not for a day or two days as in conventions and institutes, but for a solid fortnight of steady work. The Chautauqua of to-day is a widely reaching educational system, embracing almost every department of knowledge. But it must not be forgotten that all this wide realm has grown out of a school to awaken, instruct, and inspire Sunday School workers. In their conception, however, the two famous founders realized that all truth, even that looked upon as secular, is subsidiary, even necessary for successful teaching of the word of God. Hence with the courses of study and conferences upon practical details, we find on the program, some literature and science, with the spice of entertainment and amusement.

The conception of Dr. Vincent was not to locate the Assembly in one place, but from time to time to hold similar meetings on many camp grounds, wherever the opportunity arose. There is a suspicion that Lewis Miller held his own secret purpose to make it so successful on Chautauqua Lake as to insure its permanent location at Fair Point. That was a wise plan, for with settlement in one place, buildings could be erected, and features like Palestine Park could be increased and improved. Whether it was by a suggestion or a common impulse, on the last day of the Assembly a meeting was held and a unanimous appeal was presented to make Fair Point the home of the Assembly. The trustees of the camp meeting shared in the sentiment and offered to receive new members representing the Assembly constituency. As a result, the officiary was reorganized, no longer as a camp meeting but as an Assembly Board. For two years Fair Point was continued as the name of the Post Office, although the title "Chautauqua Sunday School Assembly" was adopted. But soon Fair Point became "Chautauqua" on the list of the Post Office Department, and the old name lingers only in the memory of old Chautauquans.

Before we leave that pioneer Chautauqua, we must recall some of its aspects, which might be forgotten in these later days, at once amusing, perplexing, and sometimes trying. More steamers, great and small, were plying Chautauqua's waters than at the present under the steamboat corporation system. Old Chautauquans will remember that ancient three-decker, The Jamestown, with its pair of stern wheels, labeled respectively "Vincent" and "Miller." Each steamer was captained by its owner; and there was often a congestion of boats at the pier, especially after the arrival of an excursion train. Those were not the days of standard time, eastern and central, with watches set an hour fast or slow at certain well-known points. Each boat followed its own standard of time, which might be New York time, Buffalo or Pittsburgh time, forty minutes slower, or even Columbus or Cincinnati time, slower still. Railroads crossing Ohio were required to run on Columbus time. When you were selecting a steamer from the thirty placards on the bulletin board at the Fair Point Post office, in order to meet an Erie train at Lakewood, unless you noticed the time-standard, you might find at the pier that your steamer had gone forty minutes before, or on arriving at Lakewood learn that your boat was running on Cincinnati time, and you were three quarters of an hour late for the train, for even on the Erie of those days, trains were not always an hour behind time.

Nor was this variety of "time, times, and half-time" all the drawbacks. When news came that an excursion train was due from Buffalo, every steamboat on the lake would ignore its time-table and the needs of the travelers; and all would be bunched at the Mayville dock and around it to catch the passengers. Or it might be a similar but more tangled crowd of boats in the Outlet at Jamestown to meet a special train from Pittsburgh. Haven't I seen a bishop on the Fair Point pier, who must get the train at Lakewood to meet his conference in Colorado, scanning the landscape with not a boat in sight, all piled up three miles away?

Palestine Park, Looking North
Dead Sea in foreground: Mount Hermon in distance 		Tent-Life in 1875
J. L. Hurlbut, J. A. Worden, Frank Beard, J. L. Hughes

Nor were the arrangements for freight and baggage in those early years any more systematic than those for transportation. Although Chautauqua Lake is on the direct line of travel east and west, between New York and Chicago, and north and south between Buffalo and Pittsburgh, Fair Point, the seat of the Assembly, was not a railroad station. Luggage could be checked only to Jamestown, Lakewood, or Mayville, and thence must be sent by boat. Its destination might be indicated by a tag or a chalk mark, or it might remain unmarked. Imagine a steamer deck piled high with trunks, valises, bundles of blankets, furniture, tent equipment, and things miscellaneous, stopping at a dozen points along the lake to have its cargo assorted and put ashore—is it strange that some baggage was left at the wrong place, and its owner wandered around looking vainly for his property? One man remarked that the only way to be sure of your trunk was to sit on it; but what if your trunk was on the top or at the bottom of a pile ten feet high? Considering all the difficulties and discomforts of those early days—travel, baggage, no hotels nor boarding houses, a crowded dining hall with a hungry procession outside perhaps in the rain waiting for seats at the tables, the food itself none of the best—it is surprising that some thousands of people not only found the Assembly, but stayed to its conclusion, were happy in it, lived in an enchanted land for a fortnight, and resolved to return the very next year! More than this, they carried its enthusiasm and its ideals home with them and in hundreds of places far apart, the Sunday Schools began to assume a new and higher life. Some time after this, but still early in Chautauqua's history, a prominent Sunday School man expressed to the writer his opinion that "people who came home from Chautauqua became either a mighty help or a mighty nuisance. They brought with them more new ideas than could be put into operation in ten years; and if they couldn't get them, one and all, adopted at once they kicked and growled incessantly."

Before we leave the Assembly of 1874, we must not forget to name one of its most powerful and far-reaching results—the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This assembly was held soon after the great crusade of 1874 in Ohio, when multitudes of women, holding prayer meetings on the sidewalk in front of liquor saloons literally prayed thousands of them out of existence. While the fire of the crusade was still burning, a number of women held meetings at Chautauqua during the Assembly, and took counsel together concerning the best measures to promote the temperance reform. They united in a call signed by Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown, Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller, and others, for a convention of women to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, November 17, 1874. At this convention, sixteen States were represented, and the national Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized, an institution which did more than any other to form public sentiment, to make State after State "dry," and finally to establish nation-wide constitutional prohibition. It may not be generally known that this mighty movement began at the first Chautauqua Assembly.