Part 1

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A CHAUTAUQUA IDYL

by

GRACE LIVINGSTON

Boston D Lothrop Company Franklin and Hawley Streets

Copyright, 1887, By D. Lothrop Company.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

MY DEAR MR. LOTHROP:—

I have read Miss Livingston’s little idyl with much pleasure. I cannot but think that if the older and more sedate members of the Chautauquan circles will read it, they will find that there are grains of profit in it; hidden grains, perhaps, but none the worse for being hidden at the first, if they only discover them. Miss Livingston has herself evidently understood the spirit of the movement in which the Chautauquan reading circles are engaged. That is more than can be said of everybody who expresses an opinion upon them. It is because she expresses no opinion, but rather tells, very simply, the story of the working out of the plan, that I am glad you are going to publish her little poem: for poem it is, excepting that it is not in verse or in rhyme.

Believe me, Very truly yours, EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

A CHAUTAUQUA IDYL.

DOWN in a rocky pasture, on the edge of a wood, ran a little brook, tinkle, tinkle, over the bright pebbles of its bed. Close to the water’s edge grew delicate ferns, and higher up the mossy bank nestled violets, blue and white and yellow.

Later in the fall the rocky pasture would glow with golden-rod and brilliant sumach, and ripe milk-weed pods would burst and fill the golden autumn sunshine with fleecy clouds. But now the nodding buttercups and smiling daisies held sway, with here and there a tall mullein standing sentinel.

It was a lovely place: off in the distance one could see the shimmering lake, to whose loving embrace the brook was forever hastening, framed by beautiful wooded hills, with a hazy purple mountain back of all.

But the day was not lovely. The clouds came down to the earth as near as they dared, scowling ominously. It was clear they had been drinking deeply. A sticky, misty rain filled the air, and the earth looked sad, very sad.

The violets had put on their gossamers and drawn the hoods up over their heads, the ferns looked sadly drabbled, and the buttercups and daisies on the opposite bank, didn’t even lean across to speak to their neighbors, but drew their yellow caps and white bonnets further over their faces, drooped their heads and wished for the rain to be over. The wild roses that grew on a bush near the bank hid under their leaves. The ferns went to sleep; even the trees leaned disconsolately over the brook and wished for the long, rainy afternoon to be over, while little tired wet birds in their branches never stirred, nor even spoke to each other, but stood hour after hour on one foot, with their shoulders hunched up, and one eye shut.

* * * * *

At last a little white violet broke the damp stillness.

“O dear!” she sighed, “this is so tiresome, I wish we could do something nice. Won’t some one please talk a little?”

No one spoke, and some of the older ferns even scowled at her, but little violet was not to be put down. She turned her hooded face on a tall pink bachelor button growing by her side.

This same pink button was a new-comer among them. He had been brought, a little brown seed, by a fat robin, early in the spring, and dropped down close by this sweet violet.

“Mr. Button,” she said, “you have been a great traveller. Won’t you tell us some of your experiences?”

“Yes, yes; tell, tell, tell,” babbled the brook.

The warm wind clapped him on the shoulder, and shook him gently, crying,—“Tell them, old fellow, and I’ll fan them a bit while you do it.”

“Tell, tell,” chirped the birds overhead.

“O yes!” chorused the buttercups and daisies.

The little birds opened one eye and perked their heads in a listening attitude, and all the violets put their gossamer hoods behind their ears so that they might hear better.

“Well, I might tell you about Chautauqua,” said pink bachelor thoughtfully.

“And what is Chautauqua?” questioned a saucy little fish who had stopped on his way to the lake to listen.

“Chautauqua is a place, my young friend, a beautiful place, where I spent last summer with my family,” said the bachelor in a very patronizing tone.

“Oh! you don’t say so,” said the naughty little fish with a grimace, and sped on his way to the lake, to laugh with all the other fishes at the queer new word.

“Go on, go on, go on,” sang the brook.

“We lived in a garden by a house just outside the gates,” began Bachelor.

“What gates?” interrupted the eager daisies.

“Why, the gates of the grounds.”

“What grounds?”

“Why, the grounds of Chautauqua.”

“But who is Chautauqua?” asked the puzzled violets.

“Don’t you know? Chautauqua is a beautiful place in the woods, shut in from the world by a high fence all around it, with locked gates. It is on the shore of a lovely lake. Many people come there every year, and they have meetings, and they sing beautiful songs about birds and flowers and sky and water and God and angels and dear little babies and stars. Men come there from all over this world, and stand up and talk high, grand thoughts, and the people listen and wave their handkerchiefs till it looks like an orchard full of cherry trees in blossom.

“They have lovely singers—ladies who sing alone as sweet as birds, and they have great grand choruses of song besides, by hundreds of voices. And they have instruments to play on,—organs and pianos, and violins and harps.”

“How beautiful,” murmured the flowers.

“Tell us more,” said the brook; “tell us more, more, more,—tell, tell, tell!”

“More, more,” said the wind.

“It lasts all summer, so the people who can’t come at one time will come at another, though my cousin said she thought that one day all the people in the world came at once. There must have been something very grand to bring so many that day. There were not enough rooms for visitors to sleep in, and Chautauqua is a large place, the largest I was ever in. Yes,” reflectively, “I think all the world must have been there.”

The little white violet looked up.

“There was one day last summer when no one came through the pasture, and no one went by on the road, and all day long we saw not one person. It must have been that day, and they were all gone to Chautauqua,” she said softly.

“I shouldn’t wonder at all,” said Bachelor.

Then they all looked sober and still. They were thinking. The idea that all the people in the world had come together for a day was very great to them.

At last one spoke:

“How nice it would be if all the flowers in the world could come together for a day,” said the little violet.

“And all the birds,” chirped a sparrow.

“And all the brooks and lakes and ocean,” laughed the brook.

“And all the trees,” sighed the tall elm.

“Oh! and all the winds. We could make as beautiful music as ever any organ or piano made.”

“But what is it all for?” asked a bright-eyed daisy.

“To teach the people all about the things that the great God has made, and show them how to live to please Him, and how to please Him in the best way,” promptly answered Bachelor.

“There is a great good man at the head of it, and I heard a lady say that God Himself sent him there to take care of Chautauqua for Him, for it is all made to praise God. They have schools,—everybody studies, but it is all about God that they learn,—about the things He made, or how to praise Him better, and all the talking,—they call it lecturing,—is to help men to praise and love God more. They have three beautiful mottoes:

“‘We study the word and works of God.’ ‘Let us keep our Heavenly Father in our midst,’ and, ‘Never be discouraged.’”

“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” said the old forest tree.

“It is just what we need,” piped one of the birds. “We don’t praise God half enough. Here we’ve been sitting and sulking all the afternoon because it is raining, and never one thankful chirp have we given for all the yesterdays and yesterdays when it hasn’t rained. We need a Chautauqua. I declare, I’m ashamed!” And he poured forth such a glad, thankful song of praise as thrilled the old forest trees through and through and most effectually waked the napping ferns.

“Yes,” said the listening daisies, when the song was done and the bird had stopped to rest his throat, “we do need a Chautauqua.”

* * * * *

“Let’s have a Chautauqua!” cried the brook.

“But how could we,” said the wise-eyed violet, “when we know so little about it?”

“I will tell you all I know,” said Bachelor graciously. “You see we lived just outside the gates, and people used often to come and buy my brothers and sisters. Once a young man came and bought a very large bunch of them and took them to a young lady in a white dress, and she wore them everywhere for three or four days—you know our family is a very long-lived one, and we are something like the camel, in that we can go a long time without a drink of water—well, she kept them carefully and took them everywhere she went, and they saw and heard a great many new things. One evening this young lady sat in a big place full of people, and an old lady sitting behind her said to another lady, ‘Just see those pink bachelor buttons! My mother used to have some just like them growing in her garden, years and years ago, and I haven’t seen any since.’ The young lady heard her, turned around and gave her a whole handful of my brothers and sisters. After the meeting was out, the old lady carried them away with her, but one slipped out of her hand and fell on the walk, and some one came along in the darkness and crushed her. Quite early the next morning our neighbor, Mr. Robin, going to the market for a worm for breakfast, saw her lying in this sad state, and with great difficulty brought her home to us. She lived only a day or two longer, but long enough to tell us many of her experiences.

“After she had faded and gone, our friend Robin went every day to hear and see what was going on inside the great gates, and every night when the bells were ringing”—

“What bells?” interrupted an impolite buttercup.

“The night bells for the people to go to sleep by. They rang beautiful music on bells by the water to put the people to sleep, and in the morning to wake them, and they had bells to call them to the big place to praise God, and hear the lectures and singing.”

“Beautiful, beautiful,” murmured the brook.

“And every night,” proceeded the bachelor, “when the bells were ringing we would wake up and Robin would tell us all about the day inside the gates. Of course I can’t remember all, but I will tell you all I know.”

* * * * *

“Perhaps I can help you a little,” spoke out an old fish who had come up the stream unobserved some time before. “I lived in Lake Chautauqua myself for some years until my daughter sent for me to come and live with her in yonder lake.”

They all looked at the old fish with great veneration, and thanked him kindly.

“Well, how shall we begin?” said an impatient daisy.

“I should think the first thing to be done is to make a motion that we have a Chautauqua,” Bachelor said.

Then rose up a tall old fern. “I make a motion to that effect.”

“I second it,” chirped a sparrow.

“All in favor of the motion say ‘aye,’” said Bachelor, in a deep, important voice.

And then arose such a chorus of “aye’s” as never was heard before in that grove. The wind blew it, the brook gurgled it, the great forest trees waved it, all the little flowers filled the air with their perfumed voices, the far-off lake murmured its assent, the purple mountain nodded its weary old head, the sun shot triumphantly through the dark clouds, and all God’s works seemed joining in the “aye aye, aye,” that echoed from hillside to wood.

* * * * *

“A unanimous vote, I think,” said Bachelor, after the excitement had somewhat subsided.

“The next question is, When shall we have it?”

“Oh! right away, of course,” nodded a buttercup. “See! the sun has come out to help us.”

“But,” objected white Violet, “we can’t. We must invite all the flowers and birds and brooks and trees all over the world, and they will have to get ready. It will take the flowers the rest of this summer and all of next winter to get their dresses made and packed in their brown travelling seed trunks. I’m sure it would me if I were to go away from here for the summer, and it is late in the season already. We couldn’t get word to them all in time.”

“Yes,” said the fish, “and there are the travelling expenses to be arranged for such a large company. We should have to secure reduced rates. They always do on Chautauqua Lake.”

“Oh! as to that,” said the wind, “I and the birds would do the transportation free of charge, and the brook would do all it could, I’m sure.”

“Of course, of course,” babbled the brook.

“That is very kind of you indeed,” said Bachelor. “But I should think that the earliest possible beginning that we could hope to have would be next spring.”

After much impatient arguing on the part of the buttercups and daisies, it was finally agreed that the first meeting of their Chautauqua should be held the following spring.

“It must last all summer,” they said, “because some of us can come early and some late. There is the golden-rod now, it never can come till late in the fall.”

“Of course, of course; certainly, certainly,” chattered the brook.

* * * * *

“What comes next?” softly asked the wild rose.

“The next thing to do is to appoint a committee to make out the programme,” remarked the fish.

“Committee! Who is that?” cried a butterfly.

“Programme! what’s programme?” chirped a sparrow.

“O dear! we need a dictionary,” sighed the roses.

“What’s a dictionary?” asked a little upstart of a fern.

“Silence!” sternly commanded Bachelor. “Will Miss Rose kindly explain the meaning of dictionary, after which Mr. Fish will proceed to tell us about programme and committee.”

Little Rose blushed all over her pretty face, and after thinking a moment, replied,—

“A dictionary is a book that tells what all words mean.”

“Oh!” sighed the wind, “we must have a dictionary.”

Mr. Fish having made a dash up stream after a fly, now resumed his sedate manner and spoke:

“My friends, a programme says what we will have every day, and a committee are the ones who make it.”

“Then let’s all be committee,” said the buttercup.

“That’s a very good plan,” said Bachelor. “Now, what shall we have? They always have a prayer meeting first at Chautauqua.”

“We can all pray,” said the elm. “Let us have a prayer meeting first every morning to thank the dear God for the new day, and let the rising sun be the leader.”

“That is good,” said the flowers, and bright rays of light, the sun’s little children, kissed them tenderly.

“What is next?”

“They have a large choir, and every morning after the prayer meeting they meet and practise with the great organ and piano and band.”

“We will be the singers,” chorused the birds.

“I will tinkle, tinkle, like a piano,” sang the brook, “tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,—”

“I will play the band, for I have very many instruments at my command, and my friend the thunder will play the organ, while you, dear old trees, shall be my violins and harps, and every morning we will practise,” said the wind.

“What do they have next at Chautauqua?” asked a pert blackbird.

“Lectures,” said the fish.

“What are lectures?”

“Talks about things.”

“What things?”

“Oh! evolution and literature and theology and philosophy and art and poetry and science, and a great many other things.”

The high-sounding words rolled out from that fish’s mouth as if he actually thought he understood them.

Silence reigned for a few minutes, deep and intense, at last broken by the white violet:

“We never could have all those, for we don’t know anything about them. And who could talk about such things? None of us.”

Silence again. They were all thinking earnestly.

“I don t believe it. Not one word,” chattered a saucy squirrel. “That’s a fish story. As if _you_ could get on dry land and go to lectures.”

“Oh! very well, you needn’t believe it if you don’t want to,” answered the fish in a hurt tone, “but I heard a man on board the steamer read the programme, and those are the very words he read.”

“If we only had a dictionary,” again sighed the rose.

“Dictionary, dictionary, dic, dic, dictionary,” murmured the brook, thoughtfully.

“A dictionary is absolutely necessary before we can proceed any further,” said the south wind. “And as I am obliged to travel to New York this evening, I will search everywhere, and if possible bring one back with me. Anything can be had in New York. It is getting late, and I think we had better adjourn to meet again to-morrow. I hope to be able to return by two o’clock. In the meantime, let us all think deeply of what we have heard, and if any one can see a way out of our difficulty, let him tell us then.”

The sunbeams kissed the flowers good-night, the forest trees waved farewell to the good wind, the brook called, “Good-night! sweet dreams till to-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow,” and all the air was soft with bird vespers.

* * * * *

Into the bright sunshine of the next afternoon came the winds and the eager birds to the place on the bank where the violets grew.

The daisies leaned far over the bank to listen.

The south wind came bringing two or three torn sheets of an old dictionary.

“It is all I could find, and I’ve had hard work to get this,” said he. “I went in at a window where lay an open dictionary.—I had no idea that a dictionary was such a very large book.—It was an old one, so I had no trouble in tearing out these few leaves, as the paper was so tender. I took them out of the window and hid them in a safe place and went back for more, but just as I was turning the leaves over to find evolution, some one came up and shut the window, and I had to crawl out through the cracks. Well, I have all the ‘P’s’ and some of the ‘T’s’; we can find theology and poetry.”

“Philosophy, too,” said wise Violet.

“My dear, that is spelled with an ‘f,’” said the kind old wind patronizingly.

“O, no! I am sure you are mistaken. It is ‘p-h-i-l’; look and see if I am not right.”

The wind slowly turned over the leaves of his meagre dictionary, and, sure enough, there it was,—“p-h-i-l-o-s-o-p-h-y.”

“Is it there? What does it say?” questioned the eager flowers.

“Philosophy, the love of, or search after, wisdom,” slowly read the wind.

“Oh!” said the flowers, “is that all it is? Why, we know philosophy.”

“I think the forest trees could lecture on philosophy,” said the wind.

“Yes, yes, yes,” they all cried. “The forest trees, for they are very old and have had longer to search for wisdom than we.”

“Very well; three lectures a week on philosophy, by the old forest trees; write it down, please,” cried Bachelor.

The secretary, a scarlet-headed woodpecker, carefully carved it on the trunk of an old tree, and I think you can still find the minutes of that day written in lines of beauty all over the tree.

“Theology is the next word,” announced the wind, and again turned over the leaves of their precious dictionary.

“The science of God,” he read. “Science, what is science?” If we only had the “s’s!”

“I know what it is,” chirped a bird. “I hopped into the schoolhouse this morning, and a book was open on the desk, and no one was there, so I hopped up and took a look to see if there was anything in it to help us. The first words my eye fell on were these,—‘science is knowledge.’ And I didn’t wait for any more, but flew away to sit in a tree and say it over so that I wouldn’t forget it. Going back a little later to see if I could get any more words, I found the schoolhouse full of dreadful boys. As I flew away again, this little piece of paper blew out of the window, and I brought it, thinking it might be helpful.”

As he finished speaking, he deposited a small fragment of a definition spelling-book at the foot of the elm tree, and flew up into the branches again, for he was a bashful bird, and this was a very long speech for him to make before so many.

“Good, good, good,” cried all the committee.

“To go back to theology,” said the wind. “It is the science of God. Science is knowledge, therefore theology is knowledge of God. That is a very great thing. Who is able to lecture on the knowledge of God?”

Silence all. No one dared to volunteer. None felt worthy to do so great a thing.

Out spoke a shy little wren. “Last night I slept in a notch close over a church window, and the window was open and there was a meeting of the people there and the minister read out of the Bible these words: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.’”

She paused a moment to gather courage, and then said, “Why couldn’t the heavens teach theology?”

“Bless your heart, little wren, that is the very thing,” cried the blustering north wind. And all the flowers cried,—“The heavens shall teach theology!”

The sky bowed its assent and said, “I will do my best to perform the wonderful work entrusted to me.”

And the happy brook murmured, “Glory, glory, glory! the glory of God.”

* * * * *

“Now we will see what this bit of paper has for us,” said the wind as he picked up the paper at the foot of the elm.

“Ah! What have we here? Evolution! Just what we want: ‘evolution, the act of unfolding or unrolling.’”

He stopped with a thoughtful look.

“Yes, I see. As the young leaves and flowers unfold. The plants must take full charge of this department, I think. I remember once turning over the leaves of a fat, dark-gray book, with gilt letters on its back. It lay on a minister’s window-seat, and it looked interesting, so I read a few minutes while the minister was out and not using it, and among other things that I read was this, and it stayed with me ever since: ‘A lily grows mysteriously. Shaped into beauty by secret and invisible fingers, the flower develops, we know not how. Every day the thing is done: it is God.’ You see, my dear,” addressing himself to a pure white lily that had only that morning unfolded its delicate petals to the sun, “you see a great many don’t understand how it is done. You need to tell how God has made you able to unfold.”

“Yes, we will, we can,” they all cried.

“The flowers will speak on Evolution,” wrote down Woodpecker.

“There are three more words spoken by our friend Fish, still unexplained,—literature,—”

“I know what literature means, Mr. Wind, it is books,” announced a bright butterfly who had just arrived on the scene.

“Are you sure?” questioned the fish doubtfully.