herings were
named "Congress" or "Encampment" or "Institute," and for this gathering
the title "Sunday School Parliament" was taken, as smacking somewhat of
English origin. Its organizer and conductor was the Rev. Wilbur F.
Crafts, at that time a Methodist minister, afterwards a
Congregationalist, and still at present working as the head of the
International Reform Bureau in Washington, D. C. He was aided in the
plan and direction by Mrs. Crafts, for both of them were then prominent
leaders in Sunday School work. It was my good fortune to be present and
conduct the Normal Class during a part of the time. As compared with
Chautauqua, the Parliament was small, but its spirit was true to the
Chautauqua ideal and it was maintained faithfully for ten or twelve
years. The place had been established as a camp-meeting ground, but it
shared the fate of many camp meetings in gradually growing into a summer
resort for people in general. As cottages and cottagers increased the
Chautauqua interest declined, and finally the attempt to maintain
classes and meetings after the Chautauqua pattern was abandoned, and the
island took its place among the summer colonies in that wonderful group.

The same year, 1876, saw another camp ground becoming a Chautauqua
Assembly,--at Petoskey, near the northern end of Lake Michigan. Here a
beautiful tract of woodland, rising in a series of terraces from Little
Traverse Bay, about forty miles south of the Straits of Mackinac, had
been obtained by a Methodist camp-meeting association, and laid out in
roads forming a series of concentric circles. Here the first Bay View
Assembly was held in 1876, and again in its scope were combined the camp
meeting, the summer home, and the Chautauqua conception, three divergent
aims that have rarely worked well together. It will be remembered that
on its land side the original Chautauqua was shut off from the outer
world by a high fence, and everybody was compelled to enter the ground
through a gate, at which a ticket must be purchased. At Bay View, as at
most camp-meeting grounds, access was open on every side. At first they
undertook to support the Assembly by collections, but the receipts
proved inadequate, and they placed a ticket window at each lecture hall
and endeavored to induce the cottagers to purchase season tickets, a
plan which has been pursued down to the present time. One of the
founders of Bay View, perhaps the one who suggested it, was Dr. Wm. H.
Perr