and helped to increase the fame of Chautauqua.
This was Mrs. G. R. Alden, the wife of a Presbyterian pastor, but known
everywhere as "Pansy," whose story-books were in almost every Sunday
School library on the continent. She wrote a book, _Four Girls at
Chautauqua_, which ingeniously wove into the account of the actual
events of the season, including some of its rainy days--that was the
year when it rained more or less on fourteen of the seventeen days of
the Assembly--her four girls, so well imagined that they seemed real.
Indeed when one read the account of one's own speech at a children's
meeting, he could not doubt that the Flossie of the story who listened
to it was a veritable flesh and blood girl in the audience. The story
became one of the most popular of the Pansy books, brought Chautauqua to
the attention of many thousands, and led large numbers of people to Fair
Point. Pansy has ever been a true friend of Chautauqua, and has written
several stories setting forth its attractions.

CHAPTER VI

THE NATIONAL CENTENNIAL YEAR

THE founders of Chautauqua looked forward to its third session with
mingled interest and anxiety. It was the centennial year of American
Independence, and an exposition was opening in Philadelphia, far more
noteworthy in its buildings and exhibits than any previous effort in the
annals of the nation. The World's Fair in the Crystal Palace of New
York, in 1855, the first attempt in America to hold an universal
exposition, was a pigmy compared with the immense display in the park of
Philadelphia on the centennial year. Could the multitudes from every
State and from foreign lands be attracted from Philadelphia five hundred
miles to Chautauqua Lake? Had the quest of the American people for new
interests been satisfied by two years at the Assembly? Would it be the
wiser course in view of the competition to hold merely a modest little
gathering at Fair Point, or to venture boldly upon greater endeavors
than ever before; to enlarge the program, to advertise more widely, and
to compel attention to the new movement? Anyone who knew the
adventurous, aspiring nature of both Miller and Vincent would
unhesitatingly answer these questions.

The Assembly of 1876 was planned upon a larger scale than ever before.
The formal opening took place on Tuesday evening, August 1st, in the
forest-sheltered Auditorium, but two gatherings were held in advance and
a third after its conclusion, so that the ent