To render any real impression of the Chautauqua Summer Assembly, I must approach this many-mooded subject from a personal point of view.  Others, more thoroughly informed in the arcana of the Institution, have written the history of its development from small beginnings to its present impressive magnitude, have analyzed the theory of its intentions, and have expounded its extraordinary influence over what may be called the middle-class culture of our present-day America.  It would be beyond the scope of my equipment to add another solemn treatise to the extensive list already issued by the tireless Chautauqua Press.  My own experience of Chautauqua was not that of a theoretical investigator, but that of a surprised and wondering participant.  It was the experience of an alien thrust suddenly into the midst of a new but not unsympathetic world; and, if the reader will make allowance for the personal equation, some sense of the human significance of this summer seat of earnest recreation may be suggested by a mere record of my individual reactions.

I had heard of Chautauqua only vaguely, until, one sunny summer morning, I suddenly received a telegram inviting me to lecture at the Institution.  I was a little disconcerted at the moment, because I was enjoying an amphibious existence in a bathing-suit, and was inclined to shudder at the thought of putting on a collar in July; but, after an hour or two, I managed to imagine that telegram as a Summons from the Great Unknown, and it was in a proper spirit of adventure that I flung together a few books, and climbed into the only available upper berth on a discomfortable train that rushed me westward.

In some sickly hour of the early morning, I was cast out at Westfield, on Lake Erie,—­a town that looked like the back-yard of civilization, with weeds growing in it.  Thence a trolley car, climbing over heightening hills that became progressively more beautiful, hauled me ultimately to the entrance of what the cynical conductor called “The Holy City.”  A fence of insurmountable palings stretched away on either hand; and, at the little station, there were turn-stiles, through which pilgrims passed within.  Most people pay money to obtain admittance; but I was met by a very affable young man from Dartmouth, whose business it was to welcome invited visitors, and by him I was steered officially through unopposing gates.  I liked this young man for his cheerful clothes and smiling countenance; but I was rather appalled by the agglomeration of ram-shackle cottages through which we passed on our way to the hotel.

I say “the hotel,” for the Chautauqua Settlement contains but one such institution.  It carries the classic name of Athenaeum; but the first view of it occasioned in my sensitive constitution a sinking of the heart.  The edifice dates from the early-gingerbread period of architecture.  It culminates in a horrifying cupola, and is colored a discountenancing brown.  The first glimpse of