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Page 41
This previous engagement was a steamboat ride upon the lake. When you want
to give a sure-enough party at Chautauqua, you charter a steamboat and
escape from the enclosure, having seduced a sufficient number of other
people to come along and sing. On this particular evening, the party
consisted of the Chautauqua School of Expression,--a bevy of about thirty
young women who were having their speaking voices cultivated by an admired
friend of mine who is one of the best readers in America; and they sang
with real spirit, so soon as we had churned our way beyond remembrance of
(I mean no disrespect) the Baptist House. But this boat-ride had a curious
effect on the four or five male members of the party. We touched at a
barbarous and outrageous settlement, named (if I remember rightly) Bemus
Point; and hardly had the boat been docked before there ensued a
hundred-yard dash for a pair of swinging doors behind which dazzled lights
splashed gaudily on soapy mirrors. I did not really desire a drink at the
time; but I took two, and the other men did likewise. I understood at once
(for I must always philosophize a little) why excessive drinking is
induced in prohibition states. Tell me that I may not laugh, and I wish at
once to laugh my head off,--though I am at heart a holy person who loves
Keats. This incongruous emotion must have been felt, under this or that
influence of external inhibition, by everyone who is alive enough to like
swimming, and Dante, and Weber and Fields, and Filipino Lippi, and the
view of the valley underneath the sacred stones of Delphi.
Within the enclosure of Chautauqua one does not drink at all; and I infer
that this regulation is well-advised. I base this inference upon my
gradual discovery that all the regulations of this well-conducted
Institution have been fashioned sanely to contribute to the greatest good
of the greatest number. That is my final, critical opinion. But how we did
dash for the swinging doors at Bemus Point!--we four or five
simple-natured human beings who were not, in any considerable sense,
drinking men at all.
Then the congregated School of Expression tripped ashore with nimble
ankles; and there ensued a general dance at a pavilion where a tired boy
maltreated a more tired piano, and one paid a dime before, or after,
dancing. One does not dance at Chautauqua, even on moon-silvery summer
evenings:--and again the regulation is right, because the serious-minded
members of the community must have time to read the books of those who
lecture there.
And this brings me to a consideration of the Chautauqua Sunday. On this
day the gates are closed, and neither ingress nor egress is permitted.
Once more I must admit that the regulation has been sensibly devised. If
admittance were allowed on Sunday, the grounds would be overrun by
picnickers from Buffalo, who would cast the shells of hard-boiled eggs
into the inviting Sea of Galilee; and unless the officers are willing to
let anybody in, they can devise no practicable way of letting anybody out.
Besides, the people who are in already like to rest and meditate. But
alas! (and at this point I think that I begin to disapprove) the row-boats
and canoes are tied up at the dock, the tennis-courts are emptied, and the
simple exercise of swimming is forbidden. This desuetude of natural and
smiling recreation on a day intended for surcease of labor struck me (for
I am in part an ancient Greek, in part a medi�val Florentine) as strangely
irreligious. All day the organ rumbles in the Amphitheatre (and of this I
approved, because I love the way in which an organ shakes you into
sanctity), and many meetings are held in various sectarian houses, the
mood of which is doubtless reverent--though all the while the rippling
water beckons to the high and dry canoes, and a gathering of many-tinted
clouds is summoned in the windy west to tingle with Olympian laughter and
Universal song. How much more wisely (if I may talk in Greek terms for the
moment) the gods take Sunday, than their followers on this forgetful
earth!
But we must change the mood if I am to speak again of what amused me in
the pagan days of my initiation at Chautauqua. Life, for instance, at the
ginger-bread hotel amused me oddly. To one who lives in a metropolis
throughout the working months, the map of eating at Chautauqua seems
incongruous. Dinner is served in the middle of the day, at an hour when
one is hardly encouraged to the thought of luncheon; and at six P.M. a
sort of breakfast is set forth, which is denominated _Supper_. This Supper
consists of fruit, followed by buckwheat cakes, followed by meat or eggs;
and to eat one's way through it induces a curious sense of standing on
one's head. After two days I discovered a remedy for this undesired
dizziness. I turned the _menu_ upside down, and ordered a meal in the
reverse order. The Supper itself was a success; but the waitress (who, in
the winter, teaches school in Texas) disapproved of what she deemed my
frivolous proceeding. Her eyes took on an inward look beneath the
pedagogical eye-glasses; and there was a distinct furrowing of her
forehead. Thereafter I did not dare to overturn the _menu_, but ate my way
heroically backward. After all, our prandial prejudices are merely the
result of custom. There is no real reason why stewed prunes should not be
eaten at three A.M.
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