a camp ground and inheriting some of the camp-meeting
opportunities, the gathering was planned to be unlike a camp meeting in
its essential features, and to reach a constituency outside that of the
camp ground. Its name was a new one, "The Assembly," and its sphere was
announced to be that of the Sunday School. There was to be a definite
and carefully prepared program of a distinctly educational cast, with no
opening for spontaneous, go-as-you-please meetings to be started at any
moment. This was arranged to keep a quietus on both the religious
enthusiast and the wandering Sunday School orator who expected to make a
speech on every occasion. On my first visit to Fair Point--which was not
in '74 but in '75--I found a prominent Sunday School talker from my own
State, grip-sack in hand, leaving the ground. He explained, "This is no
place for me. They have a cut-and-dried program, and a fellow can't get
a word in anywhere. I'm going home. Give me the convention where a man
can speak if he wants to."

In most of the camp meetings, but not in all, Sunday was the great day,
a picnic on a vast scale, bringing hundreds of stages, carryalls, and
wagons from all quarters, special excursion trains loaded with visitors,
fleets of boats on the lake or river, if the ground could be reached by
water route. No doubt some good was wrought. Under the spell of a
stirring preacher some were turned from sin to righteousness. But much
harm was also done, in the emptying of churches for miles around, the
bringing together of a horde of people intent on pleasure, and utter
confusion taking the place of a sabbath-quiet which should reign on a
ground consecrated to worship. Against this desecration of the holy day,
Miller and Vincent set themselves firmly. As a condition of accepting
the invitation of the Camp Meeting Association to hold the proposed
Assembly at Fair Point, the gates were to be absolutely closed against
all visitors on Sunday; and notice was posted that no boats would be
allowed to land on that day at the Fair Point pier. In those early days
everybody came to Fair Point by boat. There was indeed a back-door
entrance on land for teams and foot passengers; but few entered through
it. In these modern days of electricity, now that the lake is girdled
with trolley lines, and a hundred automobiles stand parked outside the
gates, the back door has become the front door, and the steamboats are
comparatively forsaken.

In addition to the