The horror of it was increased by the fact that for a week all Chautauqua had been giving itself over to the peaceful joys of music. For six days Victor Herbert's Orchestra had provided a feast of melody and harmony and rhythm and everybody on the grounds had participated, either as auditor or as performer, in some of the vocal numbers. Mrs. Morton and Mr. Emerson and Roger had sung in the choir and Dorothy had raised her sweet pipe in the Children's Choir. And at the end of the week had come this crashing discord of war.
Yet the routine of a Chautauqua Sunday went on unbroken. The elders went at nine o'clock to the Bible Study class in the Amphitheatre, and at half past nine the younger members of the family dispersed to the various places where the divisions of the graded Sunday School met. Roger and Helen found the high school boys and girls in the Hall of Christ; the Ethels met the children of the seventh grade at the model of Palestine by the lakeside, and Dicky went to the kindergarten just as he had done on weekday mornings, though what he did after he entered the building was far different.
At ten o'clock Sunday School was over and the older children and the grown-ups scattered to the devotional services at the various denominational houses which Helen and the Ethels had noticed on their first day's walk. At eleven all Chautauqua gathered in the Amphitheatre in a union service that recognized no one creed but laid stress on the beauty and harmony common to all beliefs.
The coming week was that of the special celebration of the founding of Chautauqua Institution forty years before, so it was fitting that Bishop Vincent should preach from the platform which owed its existence to the God-given idea of service which he had brought into being. The ideal church and the ideal Christian were his themes.
"Personality is always enlarged and ennobled by having to do with and becoming responsible for some great institution," he said and even the children understood that the Church suggests a pattern for good thoughts and for service to others which uplifts the people who try to shape their own lives by it.
"Isn't he a beautiful old man," whispered Ethel Blue to Ethel Brown. "Do you suppose we'll ever have a chance to speak to him?"
It seemed to Ethel Brown almost an impossibility; yet it happened that very afternoon.
At three o'clock the Junior Congregation met in the Amphitheatre and the Ethels went, although they had sat through the morning service. It was a glad sight—several hundred girls and boys smiling happily and singing joyously and often grown people sat in the upper seats of the auditorium where they would not intrude upon the gathering below but would be able to see and hear the fresh young faces and voices.
It happened that Bishop Vincent, passing by with Miss Kimball, stopped for a few minutes at the head of one of the aisles to listen to the last hymn, and he was still there when the young people poured out upon the upper walk. Miss Kimball recognized the Ethels and called them to her.
"Here are two little acquaintances of mine, Bishop," she said; "I know they want to speak to you and shake hands with you."