Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 7

"Oh, it's fun to see the grown-up people trying it just as if they were kids. They don't let anybody under fifteen go in. Mr. Vincent, the president, says young people are 'such uncomfortably good spellers.'"

"Ethel Blue wouldn't agree with him."

"It's true, though, because when you're in school you're getting practice every day, and the grown-up people don't get so much practice.

They look up words in the dictionary instead of remembering the right way to spell them."

"It must be funny to see grown-up people fail, but I suppose they give them the hardest words there are."

"They take the words out of the Home Reading Course books for the next year. Miss Kimball told you about the Home Reading Course, didn't she?"

"Oh, we knew before," the girls all cried in chorus. "Our grandmother is a graduate."

"And Aunt Marion is in this year's cla.s.s."

"And so is Grandfather."

"My father is, too," said James. "He's a doctor, you know, and he says that if he didn't read that he wouldn't know anything but bones and fevers."

"What does he mean?" asked Ethel Brown, who liked to have everything perfectly clear.

"He means he wouldn't read anything but his medical journals and he'd 'go stale.'"

"Is your father coming on Recognition Day?"

"He's coming if n.o.body has a smashed head or smallpox just at the wrong time. He says he wouldn't miss it for anything. The Recognition Day procession marches along this path we're on."

"When will Recognition Day be?" asked Ethel Brown.

"The middle of August."

Ethel Blue groaned.

"Everything is so far off!" she exclaimed.

"Here's the hotel--the Hotel Athenaeum," and James nodded toward a large building with a tower and with a veranda on which guests were sitting looking out upon the lake.

"The band concerts are right here all summer. The band plays up on the hotel piazza and the people walk around below here and sit on the gra.s.s.

It looks pretty when the girls have on pretty dresses."

"Are there lots of girls here?" asked Helen.

"About five million," returned James cheerfully. "I've got a sister who's going over to call on you as soon as she sees you on your porch.

That's the only way people can make calls here. Everybody's out all the time going to lectures and cla.s.ses so you have to catch them when you see them."

"You're neighbors so we'll see her right off," said Helen hopefully.

"What's this building?"

"This is the Arcade. There are some shops in it and doctors and things.

The women all learn to embroider here--see, round this corner on the piazza is where the teacher stays. Mother goes there all the time, and my married sister. You know they joke at Chautauqua women for embroidering right through lectures and concerts. Somebody wrote some rhymes about it once."

"Let's have them."

"I never fail to oblige when I'm asked for them. Listen. It's dedicated 'To the Wool-Gatherers.'

"I don't go out on Sundays At Chautauqua, for you see To just set still and listen, Are the hardest things that be.

"At 'Devotional' 'tis different, There my crochet-work I take, The one-two-three, skip-two, do-one, Just keeps me wide awake.

"I haint heard much the preacher said To-day,--I dropped a st.i.tch-- But 'twas splendid, and I think 'Twas on the duties of the rich.

"With lectures, sermons, concerts, And all such things as that, 'Tis nice to think they culture me While I set there and tat.

"All hail to old Chautauqua, I'll carry off this year, Some thirty yards of edging, To prove that I was here."

"Right here on this open s.p.a.ce is where they used to have the lectures forty years ago," James went on, somewhat abashed by the applause he received. "It's called Miller Park now."

"What became of the hall?"

"There never was any hall. There was a raised platform and the people sat in front of it and when it rained they had to put up their umbrellas."

"The trees have grown since, I suppose."

"There were trees there then, but they thinned them out to make room.

The first houses were built around the edge of the open place. Those over there are some of the original articles."

The girls saw a row of small cottages rising side by side, their porches almost touching.

"They aren't bad looking," said James patronizingly, "but the Inst.i.tution doesn't allow houses to be built so close together now."

"Why not?"

"They say that there's no reason why a cottage shouldn't be as good looking on a small scale as a big house and no house can look its best if it's jammed up into another one's lap, so now they require people to leave some land around them."

They had crossed Miller Park and pa.s.sed between two houses to a walk that ran along the lakeside.

"Here's our house, right here," said James, "and there's Margaret on the porch now."

"And Dorothy," cried the Ethels together.

Margaret Hanc.o.c.k ran down the steps at her brother's call and asked her new friends to stay a while.

"If you don't mind making the first call," she laughed.

She was a clear-eyed girl, not as pretty as Helen, but with a frank expression that was pleasant to see. "n.o.body stands on ceremony at Chautauqua," she went on, "and if you want to see anybody you've got to seize her right where you find her."

They all laughed, for she had used almost the same words as her brother.

"You see how the Hanc.o.c.k family holds together," said James.