Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 4

"All right, then, I'll try to fix it up," said Jo, and he swung off up the path, pulling off his cap to Mrs. Morton as she nodded "Good-bye" to him.

"Hi," exclaimed Roger joyfully as Jo disappeared; "isn't he a good chap!

Now then, Mater, if your oldest son were a little younger or your younger son were a little older one of them might be a caddy on the golf links and earn his ice-cream cones that way," and he danced a few joyous steps for his mother's admiration.

"If you undertake a thing like this you'll have to stick to it," Mrs.

Morton warned again, for Roger's chief fault was that he tired quickly of one thing after another.

"A postage stamp'll be nothing to me, and you're a duck to let me do it.

Here, kids," he cried as the two Ethels came out of the house, "gaze on me! I'm a h.o.r.n.y-handed son of toil. I belong to the laboring cla.s.ses. I earn my living--or rather my rooming--by the perspiration of my eyebrow," and he explained the situation to the admiring girls and to Helen, who joined them.

"I wish there was something I could do," sighed Helen enviously. "I suppose I could wait on table somewhere."

"I'm afraid it will have to be in this cottage right here," responded her mother. "Even when Mary comes to-morrow we shall be short handed so everybody will have to help."

Mary had been Roger's nurse and had stayed on in the family until now, when d.i.c.ky was too old to need a nurse, she had become a working housekeeper. She had remained behind to put the Rosemont house in order after the family left, and she was expected to arrive the next day by the same train that had brought the family.

"I will, Mother," said Helen. "It's only that doing something to earn your living seems to be in the air here, and I must have caught a germ on the way down from the trolley gate."

"You'll be doing something to earn your living by helping at home, and all you would get by waiting on table at a boarding cottage would be your meals and not money."

"Still, it would relieve Father's pocketbook if there were one mouth less to feed."

"True, dear, but Father is quite willing to pay that much for his daughter's service to her family, if you want to look at it in that light."

"It sounds sort of horrid and mercenary, but when I'm older then I'll really do some sort of work and repay Father," and Mrs. Morton nodded her appreciation of Helen's understanding that a Lieutenant's pay is pretty small to bring up four children on.

"This is an age of mutual help and service," she said. "We must be a co-operative family and help each other in every way we can. What you will do for me this summer will be just as much help to me as what Roger will do by providing himself with a room."

"Somehow doing things at home never seems to count," complained Helen.

"But it does count. Service is like charity; they both begin at home."

"I know just how you feel, though, Sis," confided Roger when his mother had gone into the house. "I don't think I ever felt so good in all my life as I do this minute just because I'm going to earn my own room."

CHAPTER III

OPENING OF THE a.s.sEMBLY

"NOW then, people dear," said grandmother, joining the group on the porch, "even if we don't have the house in the exact order that we want it in to-day we must take time to go to the formal opening of the a.s.sembly."

"What happens?" asked Helen.

"If there's a lecture," said Roger apprehensively, "me for the woods."

"If you stand on the edge of the Amphitheatre you can slip away after the introduction but it is worth your while to be present when the gavel falls because you want to follow every important event as it happens right through the season."

So the whole family fell into line when the bell in the tower on the lake sh.o.r.e rang to indicate that in five minutes a meeting would begin.

"That tower has been built since I was here," said Mrs. Emerson.

"It's called the Miller Memorial Tower," said Ethel Blue gravely.

"How in the world did you find that out so quickly?"

"We saw it from the porch and ran down there to look at it," she replied.

When either of the Ethels said "we" the other Ethel was the partner in the plural form.

"Who told you it was called the Miller Tower?"

"A nice girl about our age who was sitting on the bench near it. She heard us wondering and she came over and said it was named in memory of Mr. Miller. He was one of the founders of Chautauqua Inst.i.tution."

"He's dead now," explained Ethel Brown, "but Bishop Vincent is alive and he'll be here on the grounds in a few days. He's the other founder. He's the one that had the Idea."

"What idea?" asked Helen.

"Dorothy said--"

"Who is Dorothy?"

"Dorothy is the girl who was talking to us. Dorothy said it was a great Idea that Bishop Vincent had to make people come out into the woods to study and to hear lectures and music."

"Bishop Vincent is a remarkable man," said Grandmother, who had been listening with interest to the girls' explanations. "You are lucky young people to be able to see him and perhaps to speak to him."

From the lake the family procession walked up another steep hill to the Amphitheatre, a huge structure with a sloping floor, covered with benches, and having a roof but no sides. At one end was a platform and behind it rose the golden pipes of a large organ. The audience was gathering rapidly. Only the pit was full, for on this opening day of the a.s.sembly people had not yet come in great numbers, while many, like the Emersons and Mortons, had but just arrived and were not settled.

As the bell finished ringing the Director of the Inst.i.tution walked upon the stage and after rapping three times with his gavel declared the a.s.sembly open.

"Chautauqua Inst.i.tution has three activities;" he said, "its a.s.sembly, its Summer Schools and its all-the-year-round Home Reading Course. Its work never begins and never ends. Chautauqua has given a new word to the language; has been the pioneer in summer a.s.semblies and summer schools, and has become the recognized leader of the world in home education.

Since 1874 the Chautauqua movement has spread until there are 3,000 summer gatherings in this country alone which have taken the name.

"During these years this platform here at Chautauqua has been one of the greatest forums of our modern life. Here every good movement has received a hearty welcome. During the first year, from this place went out the call for the organization of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Here was held the first successful summer school in America.

"Here new organizations have found their first opportunity. Here great political and social and economic problems have been discussed by those who by knowledge and experience are able to speak with authority.

Chautauqua, the place, has been beautified and equipped with every convenience for community life. It has been a paradise for little children, has offered every opportunity for wholesome recreation, has given the best of music, literature, poetry and art freely to those who enjoy them.

"Every one who enjoys any of the privileges of this great Inst.i.tution has a corresponding measure of obligation. The measure of what you take away from Chautauqua is wholly determined by what you bring to it. No system of lectures or of individual study can compare with this great co-operative opportunity which Chautauqua gives for living together, for working out one's own intellectual and religious salvation in terms of intercourse with others. Here are gathered people of vision, people who are striving for efficiency of personality, people who realize that we live in a time of new opportunities and new duties."

A burst of applause followed these inspiring words. Then the young people all left quietly, except Roger, who stayed with the elders after all, when he found that the speaker was to be the President of Berea College, Kentucky. Roger had read of President Wilson's calling these Southern highlanders "a part of the original stuff of which America was made," and he wanted to hear about their st.u.r.dy life from a man who knew them well.

The girls went exploring toward the southern end of the grounds.

"I believe this must be the Girls' Club," said Ethel Brown. "Dorothy told us where it was. She said she was going to join it."

"They learn to make baskets and to cook and to swim and to do folk dancing and all sorts of things," explained Ethel Blue. "Don't you think Aunt Marion will let us belong, Helen?"