CHAPTER V

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT

Chautauqua was a lusty infant when it entered upon life in 1874, and it began with a penetrating voice, heard afar. Like all normal babies (normal seems to be the right word just here) it began to grow, and its progress in the forty-seven years of its life thus far (1920) has been the growth of a giant. Territorially, on Chautauqua Lake, it has enlarged at successive stages from twenty acres to more than three hundred and thirty acres, impelled partly by a demand of its increasing family for house-room, educational facilities, and playgrounds, partly from the necessity of controlling its surroundings to prevent occupation by undesirable neighbors. There has been another vast expansion in the establishment of Chautauquas elsewhere, until the continent is now dotted with them. A competent authority informs the writer that within twelve months ten thousand assemblies bearing the generic name Chautauqua have been held in the United States and the Dominion of Canada. There has been a third growth in the intellectual sweep of its plans. We have seen how it began as a system of training for teachers in the Sunday School. We shall trace its advancement into the wider field of general and universal education, a school in every department and for everybody everywhere.

To at least one pilgrim the Assembly of 1875 was monumental, for it marked an epoch in his life. That was the writer of this volume, who in that year made his first visit to Chautauqua. (The general reader who has no interest in personal reminiscences may omit this paragraph.) He traveled by the Erie Railroad, and that evening for the first time in his life saw a berth made up in a sleeping-car, and crawled into it. If in his dreams that night, a vision could have flashed upon his inward eye of what that journey was to bring to him in the coming years, he might have deemed it an Arabian Night's dream. For that visit to Chautauqua, not suddenly but in the after years, changed the entire course of his career. It sent him to Chautauqua thus far for forty-six successive seasons, and perhaps may round him out in a semi-centennial. It took him out of a parsonage, and made him an itinerant on a continent-wide scale. It put him into Dr. Vincent's office as an assistant, and later in his chair as his successor. It dropped him down through the years at Chautauqua assemblies in almost half of the States of this Union. On Tuesday morning, August 3, 1875, I left the train at Jamestown, rode across the city, and embarked in a steamer for a voyage up the lake. As we slowly wound our way through the Outlet—it was on the old steamer Jamestown which was never an ocean-greyhound—I felt like an explorer in some unknown river. Over the old pier at Fair Point was the sign, "National S. S. Assembly," and beneath it I stepped ashore on what seemed almost a holy ground, for my first walk was through Palestine Park. On Friday, August 6th, I gave a normal lesson, the first in my life, with fear and trembling. It was on "the city of Jerusalem," and I had practiced on the map until I thought that I could draw it without a copy. But, alas, one of the class must needs come to the blackboard and set my askew diagram in the right relations. Twenty years afterward, at an assembly in Kansas, an old lady spoke to me after a lesson, "I saw you teach your first lesson at Chautauqua. You said that you had never taught a normal class before, and I thought it was the solemn truth. You've improved since then!"

Some new features had been added to the grounds since the first Assembly. Near Palestine Park was standing a fine model of modern Jerusalem and its surrounding hills, so exact in its reproduction that one day a bishop pointed out the identical building wherein he had lodged when visiting the city—the same hostel, by the way, where this writer stayed afterward in 1897, and from whose roof he took his first view of the holy places. Near Palestine Park, an oriental house had been constructed, with rooms in two stories around an open court. These rooms were filled with oriental and archæological curiosities, making it a museum; and every day Dr. A. O. Von Lennep, a Syrian by birth, stood on its roof and gave in Arabic the Mohammedan call to prayer. I failed to observe, however, the people at Chautauqua prostrating themselves at the summons. Indeed, some of them actually mocked the make-believe muezzin before his face. On the hill, near the Dining Hall, stood a sectional model of the great pyramid, done in lath and plaster, as if sliced in two from the top downward, half of it being shown, and the room inside of it indicated. Also there was a model of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, covered with its three curtains, and containing within an altar, table, and candlestick. Daily lectures were given before it by the Rev. J. S. Ostrander, wearing the miter, robe, and breastplate of the high priest.

The evolution of the Chautauqua Idea made some progress at the second Assembly. Instead of eight sessions of the Normal Class, two were held daily. The program report says that fifty normal sessions were held; regularly two each day, one at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Bible topic. Breakfast must be rushed through at seven to brace up the students for their class. Another was held at 3:30, on some subject pertaining to the pupil or the teacher; with extra sessions in order to complete the specified course. A class in Hebrew was held daily by Dr. S. M. Vail, and attended by forty students. Dr. Vail had been for many years professor of Hebrew in the earliest Methodist theological school, the Biblical Institute at Concord, New Hampshire, which afterward became the School of Theology in Boston University. Dr. Vail was an enthusiast in his love of Hebrew language and literature. One who occupied a tent with him—all the workers of that season were lodged in a row of little tents on Terrace Avenue, two in each tent—averred that his trunk contained only a Hebrew Bible (he didn't need a lexicon) and a clean shirt.

Besides the class in Hebrew, Madame Kriege of New York conducted a class in kindergarten teaching, and Dr. Tourjee of Boston, W. F. Sherwin, and C. C. Case held classes in singing. All these were supposedly for Sunday School teachers, but they proved to be the thin end of the wedge opening the way for the coming summer school.

Even more strongly than at the earlier session, the Normal Class, with a systematic course of instruction in the Bible and Sunday School work, was made the center of the program. It is significant of the importance assigned to this department that for several years, no other meeting, great or small, was permitted at the normal hours. The camp must either attend the classes or stay in its tents.