ever inside
the walls of Chautauqua. So once more he overhauled his trunk, dug up
his ticket from its lowest strata, and departed in peace.

One departure from camp-meeting customs at once wrought a change in the
aspect of Chautauqua and greatly promoted its growth. We have noted the
fact that in the earlier years no householder or tent-dweller was to
receive boarders, and all except those who cooked at home ate in a
common dining-hall. After the third Assembly, this restriction was
removed and anyone could provide rooms and board upon paying a certain
percentage of receipts to the management. The visitors who came in 1877
missed, but not in sorrow, the dingy old Dining-Hall, which had been
torn down. But everywhere boarding houses had sprung up as by magic, and
cottages had suddenly bulged out with new additions, while signs of
"Rooms and Board" greeted the visitants everywhere. In fact, so eager
were the landlords for their prey, that runners thronged the wharf to
inform new arrivals of desirable homes, and one met these agents even at
the station in Mayville. There was an announcement of the Palace Hotel,
the abode of luxurious aristocracy. The seeker after its lordly
accommodations found a frame building, tent-covered and tent-partitioned
into small rooms for guests. But even this was an improvement upon the
rows of cots in the big second story of the old lodging house, where
fifty people slept in one room, sometimes with the rain dripping upon
them through a leaky roof. Year by year the boarding cottages grew in
number, in size, and in comfort. Fain would we name some of these
hostelries, whose patrons return to them season after season, but we
dare not begin the catalogue, lest by an omission we should offend some
beloved landlady and her guests. In a few years the Palace Hotel,
half-house and half-tent, gave place to the Hotel Athenaeum, on the same
site, whose wide balcony looks out upon the lake, and whose tower has
been a home for some choice spirits. The writer knows this for he has
dwelt beside them.

[Illustration: Old Hall of Philosophy]

[Illustration: The Golden Gate

Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, Dr. J. H. Vincent, Lyman Abbott, Bishop H. W.
Warren]

On the extreme southwestern limit of the old camp ground was a ravine,
unoccupied until 1877. On the slopes of this valley the declivity was
cleared and terraced, seats--this time with backs--were arranged upon
its sides; toward the lake it was somewhat bank