Chautauqua Institution

“ Among the most gracious and beautiful offices performed by the atmosphere is the reflection and refraction of light. The blue dome of the sky, the magnificent coloring of the clouds, and all the delicate and ever varying tints of the morning and evening twilight are due to its influence. Without the air we should be in complete darkness until the sun rose, a fiery ball, above the horizon. All day long the only light we should receive would come directly from the sun, or be reflected from objects on the earth. At sunset, darkness would instantly be spread over us like a pall. ”

“ All things are precious, for in all things one may find traces of his grace. All things are sublime, for all things are connected with a glorious unity, which fills heaven and earth, eternity past and eternity to come. Flowers, fossils, microscopic dust, foul soil, things that crawl and things that soar, ooze from the sea-depths, lofty heights that salute the stars—all are divine in origin and nature. A boot-black may be a king—boot-black and king—both at once. Human eyes see only the black hands, patched knees and crouching form that bespeak servility. ”

“ Where is the ambitious man, who, looking on his ambition as the wound of his soul, desires in good earnest to be thoroughly cured? Where is the voluptuous man, who, truly afflicted at his unhappy situation, wishes efficaciously, and as his sovereign good, to be freed from his passion? Where is the avaricious man, who, ashamed of his injustice, sincerely and from his heart detests his iniquity? Where is the woman, who, listening to religion, hath a horror of vanity, and thinks of extirpating her self-love? ”

“ The joy of Cupid was boundless, when Psyche, more lovely than ever, stood by his side. Jupiter, regarding her for a time with silent admiration, then, presenting a cup of nectar, said: “Take this, and be henceforth immortal. The bitter waters that have occasioned all your sufferings, after this divine draught will be forgotten. Venus shall no longer mourn your union with her son. It has the approval of the gods, and shall endure forever.” ”

“ Almost every state, and many of the territories, were represented, and the very fact that Yale draws its men from so many widely different sources has an important influence upon the character of the students. The swift-coursing, tingling blood of the West is infused into the old, staid, New England institution, which restrains, modifies, and directs it. The enthusiasm of Yale is due in a great measure to this western element. There is a whole-heartedness about Yale students which you will find in no other eastern institution. Nor is money at Yale the basis of social standing. ”

“ In summer we should step from the glare of a vertical sun and heat of the nineties, into a cool, refreshing shade, kept, of a purpose, darker than sitting-room, dining-room and kitchen, to prevent flies from swarming into the hall and up the stairway and becoming the pest of the morning sleeper. The back stairs also are closed, either above or below, so that premonitory hints of meals to come may not ascend to the bedrooms and go down the front stairs to guests in the parlor, thus proclaiming on the housetop what you whisper to your cook in the kitchen. ”

“ Overshoes must be left here; slippers must be put on there; the front stair-carpet must only be trodden by the visitor’s foot; the front door-latch must never be lifted by the children’s hand; curtains must be drawn close lest carpets fade; and autumn fires remain unlighted lest ashes fly. These were housekeepers, not home makers. The virtue of carefulness is a housewife’s glory; but when carried to an excess, it becomes a woman’s shame, leading her to imagine that meat is more than life, raiment than body, and house than man. ”

“ If the ground glass of the vestibule door be exposed and staring, the hall floor bare and cold, the hall chair hard and stiff, the doors to the reception or sitting-room all closed, rising black and grim before you, and the hall itself so dark that you can not see even where to lay down your companionable umbrella, does there not come over you a chill, as if you were being repelled by the spirit of inhospitality? ”

“ It is the aptest device we have ever seen for furnishing a daily inspiration to model housekeeping. No woman with a spark of household pride in her soul can pull away the leaves of this pretty calendar day by day and read the bright thoughts, the practical hints, and the encouraging words which Mrs. Terhune has put on them without profit. It is a pretty object, too, for a wall, with its richly colored sketch of Marion Harland herself, sitting in the corner of her library. ”

“ Many think of the soil only in connection with the sad words of the burial service, ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes.’ Let us, while we may, gain more cheerful associations with our kindred dust. For a time it can be earth to strawberry blossoms, ashes to bright red berries, and their color will get into our cheeks, and their rich, sub-acid juices into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral and physical alteration that will so change us that we shall believe in evolution, and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. ”

“ As night approached her courage failed, and all the past kindness of her husband coming in mind made her design appear most ungrateful, yet she must keep her promise, and at any risk, satisfy the doubts that were distracting her. So when all voices were hushed, the lights out, and deep silence reigned in the palace, she took the lamp from the place where she had concealed it, and, with trembling, drew near the couch where she saw her husband lying fast asleep. What was her glad surprise when she found him none other than the beautiful god Cupid himself. ”

“ The old trees stand like venerable giants, with as much of hope as of memory in their hearts, and in their annual robe of verdure forget that for so many years they have watched the coming and the going of the seasons. Young trees that have grown a dozen years older since the first Chautauqua song broke the silence are now stately and beautiful, ready to be witnesses for a hundred years, of the strange things to be done here, and of which we who are looking about for graves only dream of now. ”

“ There is never need of saying to an American housewife, let the room where you receive your friends be as handsome as may be. I would rather say let it be as comfortable as you know how to make it. Do not keep it dark and unwholesome, stuffy and shut up. If your economical soul refuses to expose its treasures always to the light of day, at least do your best to make the room look habitable, and as if it were put into daily use. ”

“ Are not the pleasures of life often tasted without acknowledgment? Is not the conduct of life often proceeded in without any reference to the will and authority of him who is the author of it? Is not the mind in a state of habitual estrangement from God, his existence absent from our reflections, and his superintendency as a judge and as a lawgiver absent from our principles? ”

“ It is often disagreeable to admit a plain truth, and there are truths which one may safely admit in private which have an almost incendiary character when printed. To admit in private that the commercial outlook is not good costs nothing; to print the fact and prove it is to run the risk of aggravating the causes of the unpromising condition of affairs. The public is like a patient whose chance of recovery depends upon his not knowing his critical condition. ”

“ The fruit generally gets ripe a week or two earlier than you expect it will, and is brought to you on a day for which you have planned other work; but, after all, there is to the well-regulated mind a rare pleasure in being confronted with a basket of luscious fruit which may be preserved for enjoyment in the winter; and I maintain that the pleasure we receive in midwinter from a dish of peaches, cherries, or plums on the table is not wholly of the senses, but the mind itself enjoys the contrasting picture which inevitably comes before it. ”

“ A book case on the wall held well thumbed grammars and geographies side by side with dictionaries, college text-books and a cook book or two; while before the fireplace that “filled the room on one side,” you might see a young Nimrod greasing his boots or polishing his gun; and later, the little folks popping corn, making caramels, or boiling taffy. When the wise woman, after looking well to the ways of her household, devises such liberal things as these in their behalf, no wonder her children rise up and call her blessed. ”

“ A blue-clad, brass-badged inspector, holding your sworn statement in his hand, demands the keys to your trunks. The manner in which you comply will have much to do with the rigor of his investigation, as will your general appearance and make-up. These officials become as good judges of character by externals as do railroad conductors. One of the latter once said to me: “I can pick out all the fresh passengers in a coach as soon as I open the door, by the way they sit, look, and breathe. If they try to deceive, their faces will betray them; they look too unconcerned and innocent. ”

“ The most powerful telescopes can detect there the presence of neither atmosphere nor cloud.
A most remarkable proof of divine wisdom can be seen in the nice adjustment by which the pressure of the air prevents undue evaporation from the lakes and seas, and at the same time furnishes the medium by which moisture is conveyed to the remotest parts of the earth. The fact that water, in the form of mist or clouds, should float, and not fall in a substance many times lighter than itself, is one of the most wonderful of nature’s phenomena. ”

“ It is perfectly just to say that it would be proper to accompany the repeal with any legislation which might be required to enable courts to take account of all the equities in each case, even to require that original holders of bonds, or their heirs be found, and that any reduction from par in the original sales be allowed to the state. It would, in short, be possible to do justice as exactly as men can do justice in transactions of this complicated character, and to secure the tax-payers of the states in default against any oppression. But the great public is not going to be convinced. ”

“ He measures out to you every moment of your existence. He gives you not merely the air you breathe, but he gives you the faculty of breathing. He provides for you not merely the external goods which are scattered around you in such bounteous profusion, but it is he who furnishes you with the capacity of enjoying them. You talk of the pleasures of the world, and fly to them as your refuge and your consolation against the displeasure of an offended Deity, but think that it is only by a continuance of his unmerited favor that you have these pleasures to fly to. ”

“ The students who of late years have come from distant states have modified the general character of the college, but have not destroyed the old influence. The recognition of religion, which in some universities has well-nigh disappeared, still holds its own, and the same bell which, in years gone by, summoned sleepy and half-dressed students to the murky chapel, at five in the morning, now, at a more convenient hour, assembles in the handsome “Battell” those who have come to college from every state in the Union. ”

“ Art has not altogether been useless, although more than once unwise. Penuriousness has sometimes spoiled lines and angles, and mixed bad colors. Stupidity has blundered into sad combinations and contrasts; but on the whole Art has clasped hands with Nature, and made the place Chautauqua a lovely and fitting tabernacle for the Chautauqua Idea.
There is a Chautauqua within Chautauqua. To see this other Chautauqua, one must have eyes—eyes that look into the innermost things. He must see beyond groves and crowds, beyond lake and sky, beyond buildings and programs. ”

“ Imagine the blazing indignation, the mass meetings, the general uprising of an outraged people, if the Mormons should take it in their heads to burn three million acres of our grain crop. Yet the distillers not only burn up more than the tenfold amount, but fan the flames to kindle a soul and body consuming conflagration, and shriek about infringements of their privileges if a bold hand here and there succeeds in snatching a brand from the burning. ”

“ There is a price to pay for every comfort, and we can not rightly enjoy the comfort without paying its full price. But that seemed a hard doctrine, and so the inventors went to work. They gave up that abomination, the air-tight stove, which rose in grim blackness an offense to the eye, and parched all the air for us before we had breathed it in. ”

“ We may succeed in raising up an honest generation to follow us; for our part, we of this generation must wear the stigma and groan under the burden of our dishonor. We are not able to allow creditors of defaulting states to present their cases to our own courts and have them passed upon as all other debts are. The nation has a court to consider claims against itself; but a state is free of even such supervision, and is authorized to be guilty of any dishonesty. The other remedy which Mr. Hume proposes is not practicable for the foregoing reasons. ”

“ He stands on the bank of a beautiful stream clear as crystal, or in the midst of the water, but when he attempts to quench his raging thirst it is impossible even to wet his lips. Sisyphus, once king of Corinth, and a great sinner, was condemned to roll a block of stone up a high mountain, but, soon as the top was reached, the huge stone, by some sudden impulse, rolled back to the plain, and with weary limbs he must continue the fruitless struggle. Ixion, also an insolent offender, is chained, hands and feet, to an ever revolving wheel and tortured without respite or hope of release. ”

“ A wide piazza gives room not only for a few chairs, and the picturesque and comfortable hammock, but for a table, as well, where the afternoon cup of tea can rest, or the work-basket with the weekly mending. A broad platform with awnings is a comfortable and picturesque addition to a house of plain and unattractive exterior. Happy and healthy are the households whose piazzas are their summer sitting-rooms.
The vestibule should have closets or some very plain and simple receptacle for umbrellas and India rubber shoes. In the hall proper comes up the vexed question of the hat tree. ”

“ Their drawing rooms are made comfortable, with easy chairs strong enough to hold a man’s weight, with tables conveniently placed, with books here and an embroidery frame there, and a lady’s work basket near at hand, not at all too fine for daily use. I have seen an American lady hustle her work basket out of the room when the door-bell rang, hide her thimble in her pocket, and assume an air of elegant idleness and leisure, as if she were ashamed to be caught needle in hand. ”

“ For the external beauty of home does not depend on the amount of money spent in its adornment. Money buys a great deal of clutter that had far better be left in the shops; money buys a vast amount of superfluous stuck-on ornaments, that were better left off, but money does not and can not buy good taste—an eye for color, thoughtful care for the general comfort, a quick wit, and common sense. Yet these are the safest and surest helps to the woman who aims to make her home attractive to the eye and restful to the body. ”