Then an
adjournment, sometimes hasty, was made to a large tent up the hill,
known as the Tabernacle.

One day, during the second season of the Assembly in 1875, Professor
William F. Sherwin, singer, chorus leader, Bible teacher, and wit of the
first water, was conducting a meeting in the Auditorium. The weather had
been uncertain, an "open and shut day," and people hardly knew whether
to meet for Sherwin's service in the grove or in the tent on the hill.
Suddenly a tall form, well known at Chautauqua, came tearing down the
hill and up the steps of the platform, breathless, wild-eyed, with mop
of hair flying loose, bursting into the professor's address with the
words, "Professor Sherwin, I come as a committee of fifty to invite you
to bring your meeting up to the Tabernacle, safe from the weather, where
a large crowd is gathered!" "Well," responded Sherwin, "you may be a
committee of fifty, but you look like sixty!" And from that day ever
after at Chautauqua a highly respected gentleman from Washington, D.C.,
was universally known as "the man who looks like sixty."

When we speak of Sherwin, inevitably we think of Frank Beard, the
cartoonist, whose jokes were as original as his pictures. He would draw
in presence of the audience a striking picture, seemingly serious, and
then in a few quick strokes transform it into something absurdly funny.
For instance, his "Moses in the Bulrushes" was a beautiful baby
surrounded by waving reeds. A sudden twist of the crayon, and lo, a wild
bull was charging at the basket and its baby. This was "The Bull
Rushes." Beard was as gifted with tongue as with pen, and in the
comradeship of the Chautauqua platform he and Sherwin were continually
hurling jokes at each other. Oftentimes the retort was so pat that one
couldn't help an inward question whether the two jesters had not
arranged it in advance.

Frank Beard used to hold a question drawer occasionally. There was a
show of collecting questions from the audience, but those to be answered
had been prepared by Mr. Beard and his equally witty wife, and written
on paper easily recognized. One by one, these were taken out, read with
great dignity, and answered in a manner that kept the crowd in a roar.
On one occasion Professor Sherwin was presiding at Mr. Beard's question
drawer--for it was the rule that at every meeting there must be a
chairman as well as the speaker. The question was drawn out, "Will Mr.
Beard please explain the differe