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Show CHAUTAUQUAS AND WIND. A correspondent who recently visited one of the eastern Chautauquas writes half seriously about the merits of the attractions on that particular day. which offered a program at once varied, amusing, and advertised as instructive. The feature that struck our correspondent most forcibly was a lecture by one of the best-known men in the world. It struck him with disappointment. disappoint-ment. Where he had expected statesmanship, he got a lengthy dissertation on the beauties and bounties of nature in that vicinity, which led to much mention of the value of the husbandman to our country. Then the long-suffering artisan was not to be overlooked in his relation to our prosperity, prosper-ity, and he came in for a round of praise. The artisan ar-tisan naturally suggested the capitalist, who was presumably present and therefore not to be neglected, neglect-ed, with a meed of gratitude for investing his money where it might return a satisfactory per cent. Altogether, Al-together, our old friends the tiller, the toiler and the toller took up forty minutes of the auditors' time, and probably added forty dollars to the lecturer's lec-turer's bank account, but nothing to the sum of human wisdom. WTiere our correspondent looked for some diversion diver-sion in the way of oratory, he got words lots of them-"hear)-sight talk," he says, but not much logic. There wasn't any burning issue under discussion. dis-cussion. The occasion demonstrated just plain oratory, and that's what it got; oratory of the most approved form the-kind that lines the silver-tongued silver-tongued purse with gold. It was cheap, too, in comparison com-parison with the preceding part of the lecture, for the words flowed freer and faster, and there were more of them in a given time. Then followed the anecdotal period, with the bland smile and the sly humor. It was the easy part of the- lecture all round. It' served the double purpose pur-pose of relieving the pressure and adding ten more simoleons to the silver-tongued purse. This was succeeded by a glowing tribute to the work of our educators. Of course, our educators could dispense with, glowing tributes if they were paid in proportion, but as they are not so paid, the tribute perhaps was not amiss, particularly as it afforded a handsome prof it to the contributor. This was the big feature of a big day at a big; Chautauqua. It gives rise to the thought that perhaps per-haps the people place a disproportionate value upon the attractions. Certainly the Chautauqua is not a bad or a useless institution, but certainly some of its most advertised features are as nearly useless use-less as a great man's work can be. One of the lesser lights of the Chautauqua circuit cir-cuit recently attained some notoriety by putting forward the bedbug as a blessing to humankind. warning us of unsanitary surroundings. Of course, that view of the bedbug is new, but not true. The presence of the bedbug does not imply conditions inimical to human well-being outside of the bug itself. But it is about as profitable a subject for summer education work as many of the greater lights expound. The New York Times comments rather caustically caus-tically upon the shortcomings of the Chautauqua lectures, as follows: "In the summer months the amiable seekers for knowledge sit at the feet of wisdom. From the baccalaureate bac-calaureate sermons of June to the last of the Old Home Week or Chautauqua assembly meetings of late August the follies that beset mankind and corrode cor-rode communities are denounced. The folly of government, gov-ernment, taxation, learning, reading, the folly of war, the folly of peace, the folly of all traditions and sacred beliefs are so eloquently expounded that mere man wonders how he may dwell on the transformed trans-formed earth of the future. The country girl of ancient legend, in a week's visit to Chicago, heard lectures by Robert Ingersoll, Ignatius Donnelly, and Mme. Jenness-Miller, and lamented the loss of her God, her Shakespeare, and her most intimate garments. gar-ments. But those were teachers of a primitive and modern era. The same girl in the course of a single sin-gle summer's listening and reading now would be convinced that unless every existing system can be abolished human society must perish." We are passing through a transition period of progress and intellectual freedom, maybe, but there is an agonizing amount of piffle and wind involved in the process. The people evidently enjoy it, or they wouldn't pay the price. At the same time, it is strongly suspected that the professional Chautauqua Chau-tauqua lecturers draw their crowds more on reputation reputa-tion and through curiosity than by reason of the messages they have to deliver. There is plenty of room to get back to a safe and sane Chautauqua in an educational way, but if that fails it can easily be made a high-class amusement amuse-ment resort. |