At this session, Mrs. Frank Beard, noting the insistent announcement of the Normal Classes, and the persistent urging that everybody attend them, was moved to verse. As true poetry is precious, her effusion is here given:
To Chautauqua went
On pleasure bent
A youth and maiden fair.
Working in the convention
Was not their intention,
But to drive away dull care.
Along came John V——
And what did he see
But this lover and his lass.
Says he, "You must
Get up and dust
And go to the Normal Class."
The great event in the Assembly of '75 was the visit of General U. S. Grant, then President of the United States on his second term. It was brought about partly because of the long-time friendship of the General with Dr. Vincent, dating back to the Galena pastorate of 1860 and '61, but also through the influence and activity of the Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Flood, who though a successful Methodist minister was also somewhat of a politician. The President and his party came up from Jamestown on a steamer-yacht, and at Fair Point were lodged in the tent beside the Lewis Miller cottage. True to his rule while General and President, Grant made no speech in public, not even when a handsomely bound Bagster Bible was presented to him in behalf of the assembly. Those were the palmy days of "Teachers' Bibles," with all sorts of helps and tables as appendices; and at that time the Bagster and the American Tract Society were rivals for the Sunday School constituency. Not to be outdone by their competitors, the Tract Society's representative at Chautauqua also presented one of his Bibles to the President. One can scarcely have too many Bibles, and the General may have found use for both of them. He received them with a nod but never a word. Yet those who met him at dinners and in social life said that in private he was a delightful talker and by no means reticent. The tents and cottages on the Chautauqua of those days were taxed to almost bursting capacity to house the multitude over the Sunday of the President's visit. As many more would have come on that day, if the rules concerning Sabbath observance had been relaxed, as some had expected. But the authorities were firm, the gates by lake and land were kept closed, and that Sunday was like all other Sundays at Chautauqua.
Spouting Tree and Oriental House
At the close of the Assembly, the normal examinations were given to 190 students; some left the tent in terror after reading over the questions, but 130 struggled to the end and handed in their papers, of which 123 were above the passing grade. There were now two classes of graduates, and the Chautauqua Normal Alumni Association was organized. Mr. Otis F. Presbrey of Washington, D. C. (the man who on a certain occasion "looked like sixty"), was its first president. The secretary chosen was the Rev. J. A. Worden, a Presbyterian pastor at Steubenville, Ohio, and one of the normal teachers at Chautauqua; who afterward, and for many years, was general secretary and superintendent of Sabbath School work in the Presbyterian Church.
At the Assembly of 1875, a quiet, unassuming little lady was present, who was already famous, and helped to increase the fame of Chautauqua. This was Mrs. G. R. Alden, the wife of a Presbyterian pastor, but known everywhere as "Pansy," whose story-books were in almost every Sunday School library on the continent. She wrote a book, Four Girls at Chautauqua, which ingeniously wove into the account of the actual events of the season, including some of its rainy days—that was the year when it rained more or less on fourteen of the seventeen days of the Assembly—her four girls, so well imagined that they seemed real. Indeed when one read the account of one's own speech at a children's meeting, he could not doubt that the Flossie of the story who listened to it was a veritable flesh and blood girl in the audience. The story became one of the most popular of the Pansy books, brought Chautauqua to the attention of many thousands, and led large numbers of people to Fair Point. Pansy has ever been a true friend of Chautauqua, and has written several stories setting forth its attractions.