ming season,
to be named _The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle_; with a
course of study to be carried through four years, with forty minutes as
each day's task, for nine or ten months of each year, in the various
branches of knowledge, analogous to the four years of college study. He
was so full of his theme and so eloquent upon it that I could only
listen to the outpouring utterances. The general purpose was clear
before him, but not the details of its operation. Dr. Vincent's eyes
were ever set upward toward the mountain-tops glorious in the sunlight,
and he did not always think of the thickets to be cut and the path to be
made from the lower plain to the summit. I could see some of the
difficulties in the way, some obstacles that must be overcome, and
sagely shook my head in doubt of the scheme. It was a radical departure
from the earlier ideals, for thus far everything on the Chautauqua
program had been along the line of Sunday School training, and this was
a forsaking of the well-trodden path for a new world of secular
education. Why try to rival the high schools and arouse the criticism of
the colleges? How would the regular constituency of Chautauqua feel
at this innovation? No doubt under the spell of his enthusiasm, some
would join the proposed class in literature and science--but how could
science be studied by untrained people without laboratories, or
apparatus, or teachers? And after the spell of the Chautauqua season
would not the pledges be forgotten at home, and the numbers in the home
classes soon dwindle away to nothing?

Dr. Vincent asked me a question as we sat in the glow of the fireplace.
"How many do you think can be depended on to carry on such a course as
is proposed?"

"Oh, perhaps a hundred!" I answered. "People who want to read will find
books, and those who don't care for reading will soon tire of serious
study."

The doctor sprang up from his chair and walked nervously across the
room. "I tell you, Mr. Hurlbut, the time will come when you will see a
thousand readers in the C. L. S. C."

I smiled, the smile of kindly unbelief! His impulse, his dream was
noble, to be sure, but so utterly impracticable. I tell this little tale
to show how far below the reality were the expectations of us both. Only
a few years after this conversation the enrolled members of the C. L.
S. C. counted sixty thousand readers pursuing the course at one time,
with probably as many more readers unregister