The Story of Chautauqua

by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

While a boy he came to his father and said, "I don't want to go to school any longer, I want to go to work and earn my own living, and there's a place in Boston that is open to me." "Well," said his father, "perhaps you would better take the place, I've noticed that you are not paying much attention to your studies of late. I'm very sorry for I have set my heart on giving you a good education. You don't know now, but you'll find out later that the difference between the man who gives orders and the man who takes them is that generally one of the two men knows more than the other, and knowledge brings a man up in the world." The boy went to Boston and took a job in a big store, and he found that he was taking a good many orders from those above him and giving none to others. He realized that for success in life he needed an education. Ashamed to give up and go home, he began to attend an evening school which some of us had established. There I met him and was able to give him some encouragement and some help. He became a well-read and, in the end, a successful business man. As soon as he heard of the Chautauqua Circle, he began to read its books and was made President of a local circle. That table is filled with the members of his circle and he sits at the head of it.

I wish that I could write down a story as it was told me by Dr. Duryea, at Chautauqua. It was of a man who sat at his table in the Hotel and was always in a hurry, never finishing his meals in his haste to get to lectures and classes. The Doctor got him to talking and he forgot to drink his coffee while telling his story. He said that he kept a country store in a village in Arkansas, where the young men used to come in the evenings and tell stories together. He felt that he was leading a rather narrow life and needed intelligence, but did not know where to obtain it. There were books enough in the world, but how could he choose the right ones? A newspaper fell under his notice containing some mention of the C. L. S. C.; he sent his fee to the office, obtained the books for the year, and began to read in the intervals of time between customers in his store. For retirement he fixed up a desk and shelf of books in the rear of the shop. Some of his evening callers said, "What have you got back there?" and he showed his books, telling them of the C. L. S. C. A number of them at once decided to join, and soon he found himself the conductor of a Chautauqua Circle with twenty members. They fixed up a meeting place in a store-room in a garret under the eaves, talked over the topics, and read papers. When the text-book on electricity was before them, they made experiments with home-made batteries and ran wires all around the room. The man said, "Those fellows look to me to answer all sorts of questions, and I find that I am getting beyond my depth. I have come to Chautauqua to fill up and I'm doing it. But the difficulty is that too many things come at the same time; here's a lecture on American authors and one on biology, and one on history, all at once, and I never know which to attend. But Chautauqua is a great place, isn't it?"

A servant in a family, while waiting at the table, heard the lady and her daughters talking of the Circle which was being formed. The girl asked her mistress if she would be permitted to join. With some hesitation, the lady said, "Why, yes, if you really wish to read the books, you can be a member." This serving-maid soon showed herself as the brightest scholar in the group, far superior in her thirst for knowledge to her young mistresses. She was encouraged and aided to seek a higher education, entered a Normal School, and became a successful teacher.

One letter received at the office contained, in brief, the following: "I am a working-man with six children and I work hard to keep them in school. Since I found out about your Circle, I have begun to read, getting up early in the morning to do it. I am trying hard to keep up, so that my boys will see what father does—just as an example to them."

A letter from a night watchman said, "I read as I come on my rounds to the lights, and think it over between times."

A steamboat captain on one of the western rivers wrote that he enjoyed reading the books and found the recollection of their contents a great benefit, "for when I stand on the deck at night I have something good to think about; and you know that when one has not taken care of his thoughts they will run away with him and he will think about things he ought not."

I was well acquainted with a gentleman and his wife, both of unspotted character, but unfortunately living apart from some incompatibility. He was accustomed to call upon her every fortnight, in a formal manner, professedly to meet their children, and on one of his visits he mentioned that he was beginning the C. L. S. C. readings. She was desirous of knowing what those letters meant; he explained and gave her a circular of information. She, too, joined the Circle, and next time at his call they spent an evening pleasantly discussing the subjects of reading that both were pursuing. From a fortnightly they dropped into a weekly interview, and after a time spent nearly all their evenings together. One day I met them together, and being aware of their former relations, I perhaps showed surprise. The husband took me aside and said that they were now living together very happily, thanks to the C. L. S. C. They had forgotten their differences in a common object of interest.

In the early years of the C. L. S. C. one book of the course was on the subject of practical Christianity. At one time, the religious book was The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation, by Dr. Walker, a work widely read two generations ago and regarded as a standard. We received at the office a letter from a high-school teacher who said that he was an agnostic and did not wish to read such a book—could he not read some scientific work by Tyndall or Huxley in place of it? Miss Kimball referred his letter to me, and I took it to Dr. Vincent. He considered the question, and then wrote in substance this answer:

If you were a Unitarian, you could read a volume by James Martineau; if you were a Roman Catholic, you could read one of many good Catholic religious books; if you were a Jew you might take some book upon your own religion. But you call yourself an agnostic, that is, one who does not know God and has no religion, and therefore, to meet the requirements of your course it will be necessary for you to read some candid, sane work on the Christian religion; and such is Walker's "Plan of Salvation."

The letter closed with a friendly request that he would read the book without a strong prejudice against it, and some hearty sympathetic sentences which Dr. Vincent knew how to write. For a year we heard nothing of the man; we concluded that he had been offended at the requirement and had left the Circle. We were surprised when at last another letter came from him stating that he had read the book, at first unwillingly, but later with deep interest; also that association with believers in the Circle had shown them, not as he had supposed, narrow and bigoted, but broad in their views. He had seen in them a mystic something which he desired; he had sought and found it. "To-day," he wrote, "I have united with the Presbyterian Church, and this evening I led the Christian Endeavor meeting."