ed up to form a place for
the speakers' platform. Over it was spread the tent, formerly known as
"the pavilion," brought from the hill beside Vincent Avenue. This was
the nucleus out of which grew in after years the famous Chautauqua
Amphitheater. At first it was used only on rainy days, but after a year
or two gradually took the place of the out-of-doors Auditorium.

Near the book-store on the hill stands a small gothic, steep-roofed
building, now a flower-shop. It was built just before the Assembly of
1877 as a church for the benefit of those who lived through the year at
Chautauqua, numbering at that time about two hundred people. The old
chapel was the first permanent public building erected at Chautauqua and
still standing.

The program of '77 began with a council of Reform and Church Congress,
from Saturday, August 4th to Tuesday, August 7th. Anthony Comstock, that
fearless warrior in the cause of righteousness, whose face showed the
scars of conflict, who arrested more corrupters of youth, and destroyed
more vile books, papers, and pictures than any other social worker, was
one of the leading speakers. He reported at that time the arrest of 257
dealers in obscene literature and the destruction of over twenty tons of
their publications. There is evil enough in this generation, but there
would have been more if Anthony Comstock had not lived in the last
generation. Another reformer of that epoch was Francis Murphy, who had
been a barkeeper, but became a worker for temperance. His blue ribbon
badge was worn by untold thousands of reformed drunkards. He had a power
almost marvelous of freeing men from the chain of appetite. I was
present once at a meeting in New York where from the platform I looked
upon a churchful of men, more than three hundred in number, whose faces
showed that the "pleasures of sin" are the merest mockery; and after his
address a multitude came forward to sign Mr. Murphy's pledge and put on
his blue ribbon. At Chautauqua Mr. Murphy made no appeal to victims of
the drink habit, for they were not there to hear him, but he _did_
appeal, and most powerfully, in their behalf, to the Christian
assemblage before him. Another figure on the platform was that of John
B. Gough,--we do not call him a voice, for not only his tongue, but
face, hands, feet, even his coat-tails, were eloquent. No words can do
justice to this peerless orator in the cause of reform. These were the
three mighty men of the council