numbers
over 1919, the highest mark of past years. Provision was made for
improving and enlarging the golf links, and for building a new club
house on the grounds of the golf course.

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAUTAUQUA'S ELDER DAUGHTERS

CHAUTAUQUA, planted upon the shore of its Lake, grew up a fruitful vine,
and within two years shoots cut from its abundant branches began to take
root in other soils. Or, to change the figure, the seeds of Chautauqua
were borne by the winds to many places, some of them far away, and these
grew up, in the course of little more than a generation, a hundred, even
a thousand fold. Many of these daughter-Chautauquas were organized by
men--in some instances by women--who had caught the spirit of the
mother-assembly; others by those who had heard of the new movement and
saw its possibilities; some, it must be confessed, by people who sought
to save a decayed and debt-burdened camp meeting, and a few with lots to
lease at a summer resort. From one cause or another, immediately after
the first Assembly had won success, Dr. Vincent began to receive
pressing invitations to organize similar institutions in many places. As
he was already fulfilling the duties both of an editor and a secretary
for the rapidly growing Sunday School cause, he could accept but few of
these many calls. But a number of younger men trained by a year or two
of experience in teaching at Chautauqua were around him and to these he
directed most of the enquirers. At least three Assemblies arose in 1876,
two years after the founding of Chautauqua. Of these I possess some
knowledge and will therefore name them, but without doubt there were
others which soon passed away and left scarcely a memory.

So far as I have been able to ascertain, the first gathering to follow
in the footsteps of Chautauqua was the Sunday School Parliament on
Wellesley Island, one of those romantic Thousand Islands in the St.
Lawrence River, where it emerges from Lake Ontario. This island stands
on the boundary line between the United States and Canada, but the home
of the Parliament was on the Canadian side of the line. The name
"Chautauqua" has now become generic and almost any gathering in the
interests of the Sunday School, or of general literature with a
sprinkling of entertainment, is apt to be named "a Chautauqua." But in
those early days the word Chautauqua was not known as the general term
of an institution of the assembly type, and the new gat