Hear! Hear! Pioneers!
Height to height, fight for right,
Pioneers!
Who are you? Who are you?
We are the class of eighty-two!
Pioneers—Ah!
No college class was ever graduated with half the state and splendor of ceremony that was observed on that first Recognition Day, in a ritual prepared by Dr. Vincent, and observed to the letter every year since 1882. He chose to call it not a Commencement, but a Recognition, the members of the Circle being recognized on that day as having completed the course and entitled to membership in the Society of the Hall in the Grove, the Alumni Association of the C. L. S. C.
A procession was formed, its divisions meeting in different places. The graduating class met before the Golden Gate at St. Paul's Grove, a gate which is opened but once in the year and through which none may pass except those who have completed the course of reading and study of the C. L. S. C. Over the gate hung a silk flag which had been carried by the Rev. Albert D. Vail of New York to many of the famous places in the world of literature, art, and religion. It had been waved from the summit of the Great Pyramid, of Mount Sinai in the Desert, and Mount Tabor in the Holy Land. It had been laid in the Manger at Bethlehem, and in the traditional tomb of Jesus in Holy Sepulcher Church. It had fluttered upon the Sea of Galilee, upon Mount Lebanon, in the house where Paul was converted at Damascus, and under the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople. It had been at the Acropolis and Mars' Hill in Athens, to Westminster Abbey, and to Shakespeare's tomb at Stratford, to the graves of Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Upon its stripes were inscribed the names of forty-eight places to which that flag had been carried. The class stood before the Golden Gate, still kept closed until the moment should come for it to be opened, and in two sections the members read a responsive service from the Bible, having wisdom and especially the highest wisdom of all, the knowledge of God, as its subject.
Lutheran Headquarters
United Presbyterian Chapel
At the same time one section of the parade was meeting in Miller Park, in front of the Lewis Miller Cottage. Another was at the tent where lived Dr. Vincent, and still another division, the most interesting of all, on the hill, in front of the Children's Temple. This was an array of fifty little girls in white dresses, with wreaths in their hair and baskets of flowers in their hands. At the signal, the procession moved from its different stations, and marched past the Vincent Tent, led by the band and the flower girls, and including every department of Chautauqua, officials, trustees, schools, and Sunday School Normal Class. In the later years each class of graduates marched, led by its banner, the Class of 1882, the Pioneers, bearing in front their symbol, the hatchet. Before all was the great banner of the C. L. S. C. presented to the Circle by Miss Jennie Miller, Lewis Miller's eldest daughter, bearing upon one side a painting of the Hall of Philosophy and the three mottoes of the Circle; on the other a silk handkerchief which had accompanied the flag on its journey to the sacred places. The pole holding up the banner was surmounted by a fragment of Plymouth Rock.