Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

“ If I understand Chautauqua, this is what it means: It finds its value in the vitality of its students. . . . It summons those who are alive with true human hunger to come and learn of that great world of knowledge of which he who knows the most knows such a very little, and feels more and more, with every increase of his knowledge, how very little it is that he knows. ”

“ Every idea which becomes a force in the world has its primal origin in a living man or woman. It drops as a seed into one mind, grows up to fruitage, and from one man is disseminated to a multitude. The Chautauqua Idea became incarnate in two men, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller, and by their coördinated plans and labors made itself a mighty power. ”

“ Considering all the difficulties and discomforts of those early days—travel, baggage, no hotels nor boarding houses, a crowded dining hall with a hungry procession outside perhaps in the rain waiting for seats at the tables, the food itself none of the best—it is surprising that some thousands of people not only found the Assembly, but stayed to its conclusion, were happy in it, lived in an enchanted land for a fortnight, and resolved to return the very next year! ”

“ And I take it that Chautauqua has assailed the second problem. Now, leisure is a dreadfully bad thing unless it is well used. A man with a fortune ready made and with leisure on his hands, is likely to get sick of the world, sick of himself, tired of life, and become a useless, wasted man. What shall you do with your leisure? I understand Chautauqua is trying to answer that question and to open out fields of thought, to open out energies, a largeness of mind, a culture in the better senses, with the varnish scratched off. ”

“ He had longed, but vainly, for the privilege of higher education in the college, but in his youth there were no Boards of Education with endowments extending a helping hand to needy students. His school-days ended in the academy, but not his education, for he was to the end of his life a student, reading the best books, even when their subjects and style demanded a trained mind. As one who knew him well and for more [117] than a generation, I may say without hesitation that John Heyl Vincent possessed more knowledge and richer culture than nine out of ten men holding a college diploma. ”

“ I hold in my hand a copy of the New Testament, and I wish to say that in this little book, only a quarter of the Bible, you will find a clearer light on man's nature, and character, and destiny than may be read in all the ancient books of the world taken together. ”

“ Almost every year Frank Beard was at Chautauqua, teaching a class in art, making pictures in the children's class, giving one or two crayon lectures, and occasionally on Sunday evenings an illustrated Bible reading. As already intimated, that was the age when there was a craze for autographs, and everybody carried around an autograph album, seeking signatures from the celebrities. After a popular lecture a crowd hastened to the platform and a hundred hands, each holding an album, would be stretched out toward the speaker, demanding his autograph. ”

“ Robert Stuart MacArthur, the eminent Baptist preacher:
I regard the Chautauqua Idea as one of the most important ideas of the hour. This idea, when properly utilized, gives us a "college at home." It is a genuine inspiration toward culture, patriotism, and religion. The general adoption of this course for a generation would give us a new America in all that is noblest in culture and character.
Dr. Edward Everett Hale, of Boston, Chaplain of the United States Senate, in his Tarry At Home Travels, wrote:
If you have not spent a week at Chautauqua, you do not know your own country. ”

“ And it was not for a day or two days as in conventions and institutes, but for a solid fortnight of steady work. The Chautauqua of to-day is a widely reaching educational system, embracing almost every department of knowledge. But it must not be forgotten that all this wide realm has grown out of a school to awaken, instruct, and inspire Sunday School workers. In their conception, however, the two famous founders realized that all truth, even that looked upon as secular, is subsidiary, even necessary for successful teaching of the word of God. ”

“ He had a power almost marvelous of freeing men from the chain of appetite. I was present once at a meeting in New York where from the platform I looked upon a churchful of men, more than three hundred in number, whose faces showed that the "pleasures of sin" are the merest mockery; and after his address a multitude came forward to sign Mr. Murphy's pledge and put on his blue ribbon. At Chautauqua Mr. Murphy made no appeal to victims of the drink habit, for they were not there to hear him, but he did appeal, and most powerfully, in their behalf, to the Christian assemblage before him. ”

“ Training camps had sprung up like magic all over the land, from ocean to ocean, and young men by the hundred thousand had volunteered, with others by the million soon cheerfully to accept drafting orders. Almost every university had been transformed into a war college. President Vincent was at the intensive military training school at Plattsburg, N. Y. Every morning before breakfast two hundred men at Chautauqua were marching and counter-marching, and learning the manual of arms with wooden guns, with President Bestor and most of the officials of the Institution in the lines. ”

“ Chautauqua through its home-reading course has accomplished far more than its founder even dreamed.
The speaker answered an objection to the plan of study based upon its superficiality.
Superficial it is, and so is any college course of study. The boy who stands at the close of his senior year, on Commencement Day, to receive his parchment and whatever honors belong to him, who does not feel that his whole course has been superficial, will not be likely to succeed in the after struggle of life. But superficiality is better than absolute ignorance. ”

“ The Chautauqua movement as conceived by its leaders is a great movement for cultivating an avocation apart from the main business of life, not only giving larger vision, better intellectual training, but giving more earnest desire and greater ability to serve and grow through the vocation.
This from Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education:
Think of one hundred thousand persons of mature age following up a well-selected course of reading for four years in science and literature, kindling their torches at a central flame! ”

“ At all times a troop of children might be seen around it. At least one little girl made her father walk down every day to the wonder, to the neglect of other walks on the Assembly ground. Afterward at home from an extended tour, they asked her what was the most wonderful thing that she had seen in her journey. They expected her to say, "Niagara Falls," but without hesitation she answered, "The tree that spouted water at Chautauqua." The standards of greatness in the eyes of childhood differ from those of the grown-up folks. ”

“ Thus the redskin, the voyageur, and the redcoat in turn dipped their paddles into the placid waters of Lake Chautauqua. They all passed away, and the American frontiersman took their place; he too was followed by the farmer and the vinedresser. In the last half of the nineteenth century a thriving town, Mayville, was growing at the northern end of the lake; the city of Jamestown was rising at the end of the Outlet; while here and there along the shores were villages and hamlets; roads, such as they were before the automobile compelled their improvement, threaded the forests and fields. ”

“ May we not believe—if the students of Chautauqua be indeed what we have every right to expect that they will be, men and women thoroughly and healthily alive through their perpetual contact with the facts of life—that when they take the books which have the knowledge in them, like pure water in silver urns, though they will not drink as deeply, they will drink more healthily than many of those who in the deader and [xviii] more artificial life of college halls bring no such eager vitality to give value to their draught? ”

“ Dr. Charles F. Deems, pastor of the Church of the Stranger in New York, also came to Chautauqua for the first time this year. He was at home equally in theology, in science, and on the questions of the day, with a remarkable power of making truth seemingly abstruse simple to common people. I recall a lecture on a scientific subject, at which he saw on the front seat two boys, and he made it his business to address those boys and simplify his message seemingly for them while in reality for his entire audience. But we cannot even name the speakers who gave interest to the program of 1877. ”

“ Could the multitudes from every State and from foreign lands be attracted from Philadelphia five hundred miles to Chautauqua Lake? Had the quest of the American people for new interests been satisfied by two years at the Assembly? Would it be the wiser course in view of the competition to hold merely a modest little gathering at Fair Point, or to venture boldly upon greater endeavors than ever before; to enlarge the program, [73] to advertise more widely, and to compel attention to the new movement? ”

“ In 1898 Professor George E. Vincent was formally appointed Principal of Instruction, and very soon every department of Chautauqua, both in its lecture platform and its educational [273] work, felt the touch of a master hand. Some of us oldsters who had loved Chautauqua from its earliest years, had felt anxious for its future as we saw one of its Founders called aside into other fields, and the other failing in strength, although we knew not how near was his earthly end. ”

“ When outward circumstances discourage, trample the circumstances under foot. Be master of circumstances, like the king that God has called you to be. God give you such hearts, such toil, such triumphs, and give you such masterhood as shall one day place you among the kings and priests of a redeemed and purified universe!
After the applause following this address subsided, a poem was read, written for the occasion by the ever-ready Mary A. Lathbury. It pictured [129] the modern Chautauqua as representing the old Jerusalem which pilgrims sought for worship and inspiration. ”

“ They have a cut-and-dried program, and a fellow can't get a word in anywhere. I'm going home. Give me the convention where a man can speak if he wants to."
In most of the camp meetings, but not in all, Sunday was the great day, a picnic on a vast scale, bringing hundreds of stages, carryalls, and wagons from all quarters, special excursion trains loaded with visitors, fleets of boats on the lake or river, if the ground could be reached by water route. No doubt some good was wrought. Under the spell of a stirring preacher some were turned from sin to righteousness. ”

“ Men at the head have changed, but not the policy of the institution. It has remained unshaken in its loyalty to the Christian religion and penetrated through and through with the Christian spirit, without flying the flag or wearing the badge of any one denomination of Christians. These have been the principles that placed Chautauqua at the front in its beginning and have kept it at the front through forty-eight years. ”

“ Never has the aim of Chautauqua been to make money; it has had no dividends and no stockholders. It has opened avenues and leased lots [393] to hundreds of people, but it has not sought financial gain. Neither of its Founders nor any of their associates have been enriched by it, for all profits—when there have been any—have been expended upon improvements or enlargement of plans. It has shown the progressive spirit, while firm in its principles, open to new ideas, willing to listen to both sides of every question. ”

“ Perhaps the most popular courses have always been those in physical culture, pursued by teachers in public and private schools, enabled by Chautauqua to make their work in their home schools more efficient and extensive. One might spend weeks at Chautauqua, attending the lectures and concerts in the Amphitheater and the Hall, and enjoying the bathing and boating opportunities of the Lake, yet never realizing that on College Hill, and down at the Gymnasium, are nearly five thousand young men and young women diligently seeking the higher education. ”

“ To this end, all uplifting and stimulating forces, whether secular or religious, are made to conspire in their impact upon the person whose weal is sought. . . . Can we wonder that Chautauqua is a sacred and blessed name to multitudes of Americans?
The late Principal A. M. Fairbairn, of Mansfield College, Oxford, foremost among the thinkers of the last generation, gave many lectures at Chautauqua, and expressed himself thus:
The C. L. S. C. movement seems to me the most admirable and efficient organization for the direction of reading, and in the best sense for popular instruction. ”

“ I hope they will break more windows until the city fixes up playgrounds for them!" Jacob Riis lived long enough to see at Chautauqua one of the finest playgrounds, and to find in it one of the happiest crowds of children on the continent. One blessing for tired mothers at Chautauqua is that their children are in safekeeping. They may be turned loose, for they can't get outside the fence, and in the clubs and playgrounds they are under the wisest and most friendly care. ”

“ Just then came the suggestion—made by President Lewis Miller, as Dr. Vincent told me at the time—that both the classes should read the books together, making the same course the second year for the Pioneers, and the first year's reading of "the Vincents," as the members of '83 named themselves. In a college there is a progression of studies, for one science must follow another; but in the Chautauqua Circle, it makes no difference whether the reader begins with the history of Greece or of Rome, or of England, or of America. New members can enter any year and read with those already reading. ”

“ It is true that there is no branch of human knowledge so important as that which teaches the duties that we owe to God and to each other, and that there is no law of the universe, sublime and wonderful as it may be, so worthy of being made fully known as the law of love, which makes him who obeys it a blessing to his species, and the universal observance of which would put an end to a large proportion of the evils which affect mankind. ”

“ The Recognition Address this year was by President E. B. Bryan of Colgate University, on the all-important question: "Who are Good Citizens?"
The forty-third Assembly in 1916 found our country in the throes of a presidential election, party strife bitter, and the nation divided on the impending question of our entrance into the world war. The feverish pulse of the time was manifested in the opinions expressed by the different speakers. Dr. George E. Vincent gave a lecture on "What is Americanism"—a sane, thoughtful view which was needed in that hour. ”