yonder."

He did so, according to the story, and fell from the top of the fence
into the Dead Sea, which at once swelled its waters and washed away the
city of Jericho. The eminent divine, it is said, drenched with water and
spattered with mud, walked up the Jordan Valley and over the mountains
of Ephraim, destroying the cities and obliterating sundry holy places;
one foot caught in Jacob's Well, and his head bumped on Mount Gerizim.
He reached the hotel at last, but the next morning showed the land of
Palestine in worse ruin than had been wrought by Nebuchadnezzar's army.
All this I, myself, read in a New York newspaper that is said to
contain "All the news that is fit to print"; but I here and now declare
solemnly that there is not a shred of truth in the story, for I saw the
Bishop, and I saw the Park!

The Round Lake meetings are held to this day, courses of lectures are
given, and classes are held. But the Park of Palestine, which was to
surpass Chautauqua's Park, is no more. It was built on swampy ground,
after a few years sank under the encroaching waters of the lake, and was
never restored.

The other institution founded in 1878 was the Kansas Chautauqua
Assembly. It was organized by the Rev. J. E. Gilbert, then a pastor of a
Methodist Church in Topeka, who was an active Sunday School worker and
started other assemblies during his different pastorates in the Middle
West. It was held for three years at Lawrence, then at Topeka for two
years, and finally in 1883 located at Ottawa, about fifty miles
southwest from Kansas City. Most of the Assemblies already named were
held upon camp grounds, but the Ottawa Assembly was unique in its
location upon the large Forest Park just outside the city, leased for
this purpose by the authorities. Being public property, no cottages
could be built upon it, but a city of three hundred tents arose every
summer, and after a fortnight were folded and taken away. For nearly
twenty years this Assembly was under the direction of the writer, and in
every respect followed the lines laid down by its parent Chautauqua.
Buildings were put up for classes, which served as well for the annual
agricultural fair in the fall. In our first year at Ottawa, our normal
class was held out of doors, the members seated upon the unroofed grand
stand of the Park, and I was teaching them with the aid of a blackboard.
Clouds began to gather rapidly and a storm seemed to be in prospect. I
paused in the les