it reminded me of the poems of A.H.  Clough, whose chief merit was to die and to offer thereby an occasion for a grave and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold.  Clough’s life-work was a continual asking of the question, “Life being unbearable, why should I not die?”—­while echo, that commonplace and sapient commentator, mildly answered, “Why?”:  and this was precisely the impression that I gathered from my initial vista of the Athenaeum between trees.

On entering the hotel I was greeted over the desk (with what might be defined as a left-handed smile) by one of the leading students of the university with which I am associated as a teacher.  He called out, “Front!” in the manner of an amateur who is amiably aping the professional, and assigned me to a scarcely comfortable room.

My first voluntary act in the Chautauqua Community was to take a swim.  But the water was tepid, and brown, and tasteless, and unbuoyant; and I felt, rather oddly, as if I were swimming in a gigantic cup of tea.  From this initial experience I proceeded, somewhat precipitately, to induce an analogy; and it seemed to me, at the time, as if I had forsaken the roar and tumble of the hoarse, tumultuous world, for the inland disassociated peace of an unaware and loitering backwater.

With hair still wet and still dishevelled, I was met by the Secretary of Instruction,—­a man (as I discovered later) of wise and humorous perceptions.  By him I was informed that, in an hour or so, I was to lecture, in the Hall of Philosophy, on (if I remember rightly) Edgar Allan Poe.  I combed my hair, and tried to care for Poe, and made my way to the Hall of Philosophy.  This turned out to be a Greek temple divested of its walls.  An oaken roof, with pediments, was supported by Doric columns; and under the enlarged umbrella thus devised, about a thousand people were congregated to greet the new and unknown lecturer.

I honestly believe that that was the worst lecture I have ever imposed upon a suffering audience.  I had lain awake all night, in an upper berth, on the hottest day of the year; I had found my swim in inland water unrefreshing; and, at the moment, I really cared no more for Edgar Allan Poe than I usually care for the sculptures of Bernini, the paintings of Bouguereau, or the base-ball playing of the St. Louis “Browns.”  This feeling was, of course, unfair to Poe, who is (with all his emptiness of content) an admirable artist; but I was tired at the time.  It pained me exceedingly to listen, for an hour, to my own dull and unilluminated lecture.  And yet (and here is the pathetic point that touched me deeply) I perceived gradually that the audience was listening not only attentively but eagerly.  Those people really wanted to hear whatever the lecturer should say:  and I wandered back to the depressing hotel with bowed head, actuated by a new resolve to tell them something worthy on the morrow.