THE PAGEANT
"GRANDFATHER," cried Roger as he sat down to dinner one day, "do you remember that when we were in the trolley coming here from Westfield you promised that some time you would tell us about Celoron?"
"I forgot all about it, son. Shall I tell you now?"
"You won't have to now. There's going to be a pageant of the history of Chautauqua Lake and we'll learn the whole thing from that. There'll be historical scenes, and Francis Wilson, the actor, will wind it up with a real play. He's going to bring his company with him from New York."
"Who told you about it?" asked Ethel Brown. "The lady who is to direct the whole thing came to the Girls' Club this morning and explained it to us and picked out the girls she wants to take part."
"I met the Director and he told me," replied Roger. "He's going to be La Salle himself, and the Director of the Summer Schools is to be another of those old chaps—Brule, I think his name was; and the Institution Organist is to take the part of Celoron."
"What are you going to be?" asked Mrs. Emerson.
"An Indian brave."
"I'm going to be an Indian boy," piped up Dicky."The lady came to the Boys' Club, too, this morning."
"You'll have to put soot on your hair, kid," teased Roger, "and brown your speaking countenance."
"So shall I," said Helen. "I'm to be a squaw. A lot of girls from the Vacation Club are to be squaws. It will be awfully good fun except the browning up. They say that if you put vaseline on your face first the stuff comes off without any trouble."
"I hope it does," Ethel Brown wished. "I'm to be an Indian girl."
"I especially hope it does," continued Helen, "because I have to be a lady of the French Court later on and I'd hate to have my Indian color stay with me!"
"Everybody is accounted for except Ethel Blue. What are you going to do?" asked Mrs. Morton, smiling at her niece.
"I'm a Flower Sprite and so is Dorothy."
"You can wear your own complexion, then."
"I don't believe sprites ever have hair like mine."
"You can't prove that they don't," declared Roger, smartly. "The pageant is going to be the grandest thing of the sort that Chautauqua ever had. There are to be lots of grown people in it, and the choir and the orchestra are to provide the music and there's to be a minuet—"
"Didn't I take my first lesson to-day!" exclaimed Helen. "My knees are almost out of commission from that courtesy!"
"They wanted me to learn that, too; hand on your heart business for the men, and prance around like an ostrich in a zoo trying to look over the fence! I told them learning the Indian War Dance was all I was equal to."
"It's more in your style," commented Helen drily.
"It seems a good opportunity to learn both. You and Helen might get up a minuet when your club has some sort of party next winter," suggested Mrs. Morton.
"That's so," agreed Helen; "and Margaret and James are both going to learn it, and it will be a lot easier to drill the new ones if four of us know it already."
"All right," Roger accepted the proposal promptly. "I'll tell them after dinner that they can order one of those white monkey wigs for me, too."
"You won't look any sillier than you will as a red Indian," urged Helen.
"Roger would like to have us think that he'd rather appear as a child of nature than a child of art," smiled his grandmother.
"So I would," insisted Roger; "but the main thing is to do what will help most, like a true member of the United Service Club in good and regular standing."
Ethel Blue applauded.
"That suits you, does it, kid?" and Roger grinned cheerfully at the club's founder. "Are all of you going to rehearse this afternoon? They say that when you run up into a bunch of people anywhereon the grounds for the next week it will be a squad of pageant performers rehearsing something."
"It looks to me as if it would be a tight squeeze to get it ready in that time," observed grandfather.
"The lady who is to direct the pageant comes from Chicago and she has only this spare time in all the summer."
"Some of the parts are all prepared," said Ethel Blue.
"How do you know?"
"Dorothy told me."
Dorothy sang in the Children's Choir and kept up with the musical activities of Chautauqua more than the Mortons, who were not especially musical.
"Dorothy says that all the music has been ready for some time, so that the singers and players will need just one rehearsal to fit them in right with the other parts of the performance."
"And one of the Vacation Club girls told me," said Helen, "that the elaborate costumes for the ladies and gentlemen of the French Court were to be sent from New York and Chicago, so that only the simple things will have to be made here."
"The Flower Sprites are to wear floating slips of white cheese cloth," said Ethel Blue. "I think I can make mine myself."
"I know I can make my Indian clothes," said Ethel Brown, "because they are going to have patterns at the Girls' Club this afternoon and some one to show us how and we'll all make them together."
"The Vacation girls who are to be squaws are going down there this afternoon, too," Helen said.
"I'll walk with you if you'll wait till I find my sewing bag."
"How are the sewing lessons coming on?" asked Mrs. Emerson.
"The best ever, Grandmother. I can make a pretty good buttonhole already and by next week I'll be able to fill Mother's order for middies for the Ethels."
"Perhaps your career will prove to be the humble one of sewing," guessed grandmother slyly.
"I don't know that it is so very humble," defended Helen stoutly. "It's one of the most useful occupations there is if you just look at the domestic side of it, and it can be developed into a fine art if you want to go into embroidery. And my teacher says that dressmaking is a fine art, too, when you are designing dresses and not merely turning them out as coverings for the human frame."
Grandmother laughed.
"The factories will turn out the coverings for us, but I can see that your teacher means the adapting of a dress to the style of the wearer."
"She says that a dress ought to be suitable for the purpose for which it is intended—"
"That is, that there should be a sharp distinction between a school dress and a dancing school dress or, for a woman, between an afternoon dress and a dinner dress."
"Yes. The designer ought to study the use to which the dress is to be put and then plan it accordingly. Then she ought to make it suit the person who is to wear it."
"That point seems to be forgotten nowadays when grandmothers and mothers and daughters all wear the same ready-made dresses. The only difference in them is the size."
"They ought to be suitable for the age of the wearer and for her size and shape. If you put a tall woman's dress on a short, fat woman she looks foolish. The lines of the costume ought to bring out the good points of the wearer's figure and make you forget her bad points."
"That means that your mother ought to wear long, flowing lines because she is short and I can wear a tunic if I want to because I am so tall and thin that I can afford to have a few inches seemingly cut off me."
"Then there's coloring. I can wear almost any color because I'm rather indefinite; I just have to be particular about getting the right shade. But there are certain colors that Margaret can't wear at all on account of her auburn hair—"
"And certain color schemes that she can work out splendidly just because of her auburn hair."
"Doesn't she look pretty in that all brown suit of hers? And she's got a dress of a queer shade of yellow that is just exactly right with her hair and brown eyes. When she wears all those browns and yellows she looks like Autumn."
"We'll see you coming out as Madame Hélène and presiding over a big New York dressmaking establishment," smiled Mrs. Emerson.
"I don't believe you will; but I do think there's plenty of opportunity for a real artist in designingdresses, and I wish more girls went into it instead of into teaching."
"Teaching and sewing used to be the only occupations that were thought to be suitable for women when I was young."
"That was drudgery sewing—making men's shirts and doing a lot of finger sewing that can be done by the machine now in the wink of an eye. But the sewing that is worth while cultivating now is the kind that can't be done by the machine but by the fingers of an artist. Embroidery and specialized dressmaking like that we've been talking about—those are the kinds of sewing that make you a craftswoman and an artist and not a drudge."
"You've stowed away all that your teacher has told you, I see."
"She did tell me most of that, but some of it I thought out and then asked her about. You see, since that time when I told Mother I wanted to pay my board—"
"I'm afraid you hurt your mother's feelings then."
"Oh, Granny dear, do you really think so? I didn't mean to, but I couldn't seem to make anybody understand until I said that," Helen paused an instant disconsolately. "Any way, since that time I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do. I want to go to college, but I don't want to teach or be a nurse or a doctor. Margaret says she's going to be a newspaper woman or be on a magazine or something of that sort. But I seem to be hard to suit."
"It's a long time yet before you have to decide."
"I know it is, but if I decide pretty soon I can make all my college work help me toward what I am going to do afterwards."
"That would be an advantage."
"The trouble is that I like all the homey occupations; I'd like to be the best housekeeper in the world."
"That's a modest wish! However, housekeeping is a science in these days of organizing ideas and knowledge, and if you want to keep house on a large scale it would be perfectly possible for you to learn about sanitation and ventilation and so on at college and then find a position as housekeeper for some charitable institution."
"Or be a sort of teaching housekeeper connected with a settlement. I really should like that. If you don't mind I wish you and Mother would visit the School of Mothercraft that is in a cottage half way up the hill to the Post Office. I was passing it yesterday and I went in, and, interesting!—well, I should say it was!"
"What do they teach—domestic science?"
"Not the same kind that other schools teach. They teach just what a mother ought to know to run her house properly and to bring up her children properly. They have babies there and the girls who are studying take care of them just as if they were responsible for them. They learn how to feed them to make them grow, and they learn—Oh, it's the best kind of domestic science you ever knew anything about!"
Helen was quite breathless when she stopped.
"Your mother and I will surely go in the next time we go up the hill."
"The school is in New York in the winter, so we can go to see it there sometimes—and I think—I really think, Granny, that I've found what I want."
"I hope you have, dear. It's an interesting something that you've found, at any rate. I'm afraid the Ethels didn't wait for you. They went on when they saw us talking so earnestly."
"Never mind. I'm glad I told you. You see, I told Margaret and she didn't think much of it. Just housekeeping seemed too small for her. But I think it's natural and interesting and gives you lots of opportunities. If you don't have a family of your own to look after you can help out some other woman who has one that she doesn't know how to manage, or I—I really think I'd like to run an orphan asylum and be a mother to several hundred chicks at once."
"If you don't hurry you won't learn how to make Indian dresses for them."
"They're easy," laughed Helen. "I expect to finish mine this afternoon and make Roger's to-morrow afternoon and then help on any others that are lying about to be attended to. Margaret and I told our sewing teacher about the United Service Club and she said that she could give us a chance to help with these costumes. There won't be much self-sacrifice in it, for she's going to superintend it all so it will be almost like having another sewing lesson."
"It seems to me she is qualifying to become a member herself if she is giving her time in the afternoons to helping out with all these costumes."
"I come across people every day who are just like that, dear Gran. Chautauqua is the greatest place in the world, I believe, for co-operation and helpfulness."
"Helpfulness and kindliness and loyalty make up the 'Chautauqua spirit.' You've probably discovered that that is a very real thing."
"It's what makes everybody go about speaking to people they'd just stare at at home."
"And finding out that they're interesting after all."
Over her sewing for several afternoons to come Helen thought many times of her conversation with her grandmother and she was keenly delighted when Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton went to the School of Mothercraft and found themselves as pleased with its purposes and its way of carrying them out as Helen herself had been.
"We think we are making a new occupation for women out of her oldest occupation," smiled the head of the school. "We are organizing women's natural abilities and the duties that have been hers time out of mind in a modern way that will fit her to be a good mother and housekeeper in her own household or some other woman's, or to teach homecraft to students just as we are doing here. We've already had more applications than we have been able to fill for Mothercraft teachers to go to the West."
Meanwhile, as Roger had predicted, every part ofthe grounds was "infested," as he described it, with groups of people rehearsing for the pageant. In the hall of the School of Physical Education the minuet was being practiced whenever the gymnastic classes left the floor free for an hour; the reader with the Water Sprites and Flower Sprites and the bold representatives of the Wind and the Sun foregathered in the largest room of the School of Expression; Indian men and boys stamped and grunted in the Boys' Club, while the Girls' Club was the scene of the squaws' Dance of Grief. La Salle and Brule and Celoron spent an anxious life warily dodging the people who wanted to capture them for rehearsals, and only submitted to having their measurements taken on condition that they should not be asked to try on their costumes until the day of the performance. It was Helen and Margaret and their classmates who were making them but they were so absorbed in doing all these extra matters in addition to their regular club tasks and pleasures that they felt it would only add one more thrill if at this last-minute trying-on all the costumes should be proved misfits and have to be made over in one day!
Nothing of the sort happened, however, though there were dress rehearsals at seven o'clock in the morning of the appointed day, when early risers saw braves in full war paint flocking to the lake front, with a tread not as stealthy as it would be at night when boots should be exchanged for moccasins.
The scenes were staged on a large raft anchored in the lake before the hotel and girt with low bushes so that it looked like an island. The observers assembledon the lawn that sloped from the hotel to the water, and spread along the pebbly beach. Those in front brought camp chairs or sat cross-legged on the ground and those behind looked over their heads. Strong lights were thrown on the improvised island from electric lights with reflectors. Mr. and Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Morton were so fortunate as to secure comfortable and convenient positions.
The three scenes of the First Part represented myths of the Indians who long ago used to live about Chautauqua Lake. The Spirit of the Lake appeared in a canoe drawn by invisible power. As she landed upon the island the Flower Sprites greeted her with singing.
"Can you make out Ethel Blue?" asked Mr. Emerson, peering through his glasses.
"It seems to me she is the next to the end in the front row," replied Mrs. Morton. "That certainly is Dorothy on the end."
Very charming they looked with their flowing white robes and their garlands, and very manly were the lovers, Wind and Sun, who wooed the Lake Spirit to remain on the island. Their wooing was vain, however, for the Spirit made them understand that she was to give her love only to a new spirit yet to come, Mankind.
The next scene illustrated one of the meanings of the word "Chautauqua"—"The place of easy death." An Indian princess, stooping to drink from the lake, was drawn down into its depths.
The origin in the lake of the fish called the muscallongewhose size and spirit make its capture a triumph for fishermen was the subject of the third scene, in which Indian braves fishing near the island were the central figures.
The presentation of actual historical facts began with the Second Part.
"I rather suspect," said Mr. Emerson amusedly, "that our young people are going to learn more history from this performance than I should have been able to tell them."
"Helen has been reading about the explorers in the library in the College. I imagine she has her eye on another history prize next winter."
"Here is what the program says is going to happen. Let me read it to you before the scene begins and then we won't have to bother our heads about the story and we can try to pick out our children."
"PART II.—1610-1615. SCENES OFEARLY ERIE OCCUPATION
"Three Erie scouts are seen exploring the country with a view of settlement. After satisfying themselves that the Island is safe and advantageous they depart, soon returning with their whole tribe. Then follows an historical reproduction of an Indian village. Tents are set up, fires lighted, fishing and swimming indulged in. The children weave baskets and play games. All is peaceful, until an Iroquois scouting party, passing near, shoots the chief of the Eries. Instant confusion reigns. The braves seize their tomahawks and pursue the enemy in canoes. The medicine man attends the woundedchief, the squaws moan in grief, and upon the return of the successful Eries with their dead and prisoners, the young braves of the tribe indulge in a war dance. As the tribe work themselves up into a frenzy and bloodshed and torture seem imminent, the outburst is quelled and the attention of the Indians is diverted by the coming of Étienne Brule.
"Brule was a young Frenchman who, in 1615, carried a message of peace from Samuel Champlain, in Canada, to the Andastes Indians in Pennsylvania."
All the young Mortons except Ethel Blue took part in this scene. Roger was one of the three scouts, and so was conspicuous enough to be easily picked out by his relatives on shore. It was not so easy to discover Helen and Margaret Hancock in the group of sorrowing squaws.
"They would be apt to be together; I believe they're both at the right," guessed Mrs. Emerson.
There were so many Indian children rolling around on the ground and playing with the flowers and the dogs that Dicky was indistinguishable until the war dance with its shuffle and stamp and muffled shout excited him. James and Roger were especially ferocious in appearance and in behavior and Dicky found himself so entranced with his brother's spirited acting that he himself added a touch that caused a roar of laughter from the spectators on the shore.
"Do look at thatdarlingchild!" cried one after another, and the mother of the darling child tried, to look unconscious while she was as amused as any one.
"Do you see?" exclaimed a voice directly behind Mr. Emerson. "He's following one of the braves about. He's imitating every motion he makes. Did you ever see such miniature ferocity!"
"He's a pocket edition."
"He's the most delightful creature I've seen in many moons," said another, and Dicky, as unconscious as a little animal, stamped and shuffled and shouted and enjoyed himself to the utmost. It was evident that to him the coming of Étienne Brule was a sore disappointment.
Brule's approach was heralded by the arrival of a single canoe paddled by Indians who told that a white man was on his way. Then came three canoes bearing Brule and his Huron companions. Theyoungman's calm air soothed the Indians on the island and they invited him to land and to smoke the pipe of peace. He told his errand, gave them presents, ate with them, and went on his way.
A period of 55 years was supposed to pass between this scene and the next.
"That will be long enough for Helen and Margaret to change their dresses," smiled Mrs. Emerson.
Again the island represented an Erie camp, and again the coming of a white man was reported, but unlike his predecessor La Salle arrived in state. He was in a large canoe which bore the banner of France and he was escorted by six canoes filled with ladies and gentlemen of France. Landing on the island the "Little Father" claimed the land "with all the countries, lake and streams adjacent thereto" in thename of the "Most High, Mighty and Redoubtable Monarch, Louis the Fifteenth, most Christian King of France and Navarre."
After an exchange of gifts the French ladies and gentlemen entertained the Indians by dancing the minuet. This innovation in the wilderness was received with approval by the red men.
The Hancocks and Helen and Roger were easily distinguishable in the dance, and Ethel Blue, who had found her way to her aunt's side, together with Dorothy, who was not able to find her mother in the crowd, were delighted over their elegance and grace.
"Ethel and I have almost learned it watching them practice," she whispered, "so if we really did do it in the Club next winter we'd only have to train two boys."
Even longer than between scenes one and two was the lapse of time between scenes two and three. It was 79 years after La Salle's expedition that Bienville de Celoron, escorted by Roger and James, who had changed again into Indian costume, and a large retinue of other Indians and of Frenchmen arrived at the island.
"They were six days, history says, in making the portage from Lake Erie which we make on the trolley in a little over an hour," explained Mr. Emerson.
"They had to cut the forest as they travelled, I suppose," said his wife.
"And carry 23 canoes and food and travelling equipment for 270 people."
"It's no wonder they are languid," laughed Mrs.Morton as a disembarking youth moved so slowly as nearly to overset his craft.
"Celoron has the French banner like La Salle," cried Ethel Blue.
"He, too, is taking possession of the country for the king. See, the priest is taking the latitude and longitude of the new land."
"What are they doing now? Roger is digging a hole."
"Celoron buried lead plates in various places along his route. The purpose of his expedition was inscribed on them. Probably Roger is preparing to bury one of them here."
This proved to be the case. When the hole was ready the plate was placed in it with due ceremony and then Celoron made a formal announcement of the claim of the King of France, and this section of the pageant was ended.
"Oh, I'd like to see it all again," sighed Ethel Blue, looking about for Ethel Brown as the party moved with the crowd up the hill to the Amphitheatre.
Helen sat and looked and laughed and wept a tear or two as the story of "The Little Father of the Wilderness" came to its pathetic, triumphant end. Yet through it all her heart was light because the days of the pageant with all their hurry and labor had brought her a glimpse of the future, a glimpse of a work that might be hers when she was free to choose—a glimpse of a work that would help others as well as herself and that would mean a career and yet the life of home.
THINK HELP!
ETHEL BROWN'S head had been turned by the praise she received after the fire. So many people complimented her on her coolness and daring that she began to think that she had done something extraordinary. Her feeling was increased by Ethel Blue's attitude of humiliation over her own terror on that occasion. She told her cousin frankly that she thought she had been perfectly wonderful and Ethel Brown could see that Ethel Blue had never forgotten that she herself made but a poor showing in the emergency. She did not stop to think that Ethel Blue was a far more nervous girl than she, and that it was entirely natural for her to do without thinking what required a distinct effort on the part of Ethel Blue.
As a result of holding this extremely good opinion of herself, Ethel Brown's manner had become so condescending that Mrs. Morton was obliged to call her attention to it. It was a painful enlightenment for Ethel Brown. She loved Ethel Blue as if she were a sister, and she never consciously would have been unkind to her; yet not only had she been behaving in a way that would not help the more delicate girl to better her failing but she was becoming not an agreeable young person to have about.
"Oh, Mother," she sobbed, "I must be just awful! What can I do? Tell me what to do!"
"The very first thing to do is to houseclean your mind."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You must first rid your mind of the idea that you are a remarkable young woman. You did your duty well, but there is nothing so astonishing in doing one's duty that a person need dwell on it forever after. Do your duty as a matter of course and then forget that you have done it and go on to the next duty."
"But it's exciting to think that you've done something very well."
"If you keep up excitement a long time you get very tired of it. If you follow my suggestion you have a comfortable feeling all the time. My process is just like housecleaning a room; before you clean the walls and floor you remove the furniture. When the bare room is fresh once more you move in the articles that you want there for use or adornment."
"Clean out bad thoughts and put in—"
"Only such thoughts as you are going to find valuable. For instance, after you have cleaned out of your mind the idea that you are very superior to Ethel Blue you ought to fill your mind with thoughts of helpfulness for her. You must think of all the good points she has; think how gentle she is and truthful and how brave she is about taking blame when she deserves it. You never find Ethel Blue failing to admit her responsibility for accidents ormistakes even when it takes a good deal of moral courage to do it."
Ethel Brown flushed. She remembered times when, according to her, accidents had happened without any human assistance.
"You must give Ethel Blue a feeling that you believe in her physical courage as well as her moral courage. You must always think of her as brave and when you talk with her on any such subjects you must take it for granted that she is brave. It is natural for a person to try to live up to the opinion that other people hold of him."
"That is true, I believe," said Ethel thoughtfully. "Is that why you said 'Dicky is quite old enough to do that errand for me' yesterday after I had said, 'Dicky, you're such a baby, you'll never remember that'?"
"It was. If you treat Dicky as a baby he'll stay a baby long after he ought to. He's not a baby now just because Roger has always treated him as a companion and Helen has let him help her when he could. Don't you remember that Roger went to the Boys' Club with Dicky for three or four days after he entered? That was to see how Dicky behaved. He didn't say to Dicky, 'You're just a baby so I'm going to see whether you act like a baby.' If he had said that Dicky probably would have behaved like the baby he was told he was. But Roger told Dicky that no babies were allowed in the Boys' Club, and the result was that Dicky stood on his own feet and met the other youngsters as boy to boy and notas if they were real boys and he was just a baby there on sufferance."
"I never thought before that we had any influence on other people like that."
"Once I knew a girl who was rather slow in speech. It gave people an impression that she was not very bright, and they began to treat her as if she were stupid."
"Wasn't she really?"
"She had a good mind. But after a while people outside of her family took up the family's attitude of constantly under-rating everything she said and did. The result was that she lost all confidence in herself. She believed that if older people in whom she had faith thought she was stupid she must be stupid; and she was really becoming stupid."
"What happened?"
"Some one suggested that she go to a certain boarding school. There no one knew of this family attitude toward her and she was treated just like all the other girls. It gave her self-confidence and as she made one success after another in school she developed in every way like a flower in the sunshine."
"I'm going to try to help Ethel Blue if I can; and I guess you're right about being more comfortable with a house-cleaned mind; I feel better already, somehow."
"You'll feel better all the time. Now this coming week I want you to see if you can't be of special help to your grandmother. It's Recognition Week and your grandfather and I will be busy with the graduatingclass every day so we can't go about with Grandmother as much as we usually do. She will miss it if she doesn't have a companion."
"I'll remember. I'll go whenever she wants me."
"You may have to go with her sometimes when you'd rather go somewhere with the girls."
"I'll do it. When we got up the Service Club we were all telling why it would be good for us and I said then that I liked to do things for people just for selfish reasons."
"You'll be a Service Club member of the right sort when you do kindnesses that you don't like to do."
"So far all the services that the Club has performed have been things that were fun. We haven't been tried out yet."
"Here's your chance, then. There are teas for the Dickens Class on Friday and Saturday afternoons so you must be on call then while Grandfather and I are away. On Saturday evening there is a large reception at the hotel for all the C. L. S. C. people and Helen is to help serve the lemonade, so you and Ethel Blue will have to stay at home with Dicky."
"What happens on Sunday?"
"Grandmother will march with her own class, the 1908's, and sit with them in the Amphitheatre to listen to the Baccalaureate sermon. In the afternoon at the C. L. S. C. Vesper Service Bishop Vincent is to give a special address to the graduates. There will be room for others so Grandmother will be there and will not need you, but you'd better gohome with her after the Song Service in the evening, for Grandfather and I will go from the Amphitheatre to the Hall of Philosophy where the Vigil of the Class of '14 is to be held."
"The graduates are busy just about every minute, aren't they?"
"Not on Monday; that day is quite an ordinary Chautauqua day; but on Tuesday the class holds its annual breakfast. At that hour Grandmother won't want you especially. In the evening she will be receiving with her own class in their room in Alumni Hall so you will be free to take a table in the Hall of Philosophy and help serve the ice cream."
"Margaret is trying to arrange it so that all the Service Club girls can have tables near each other, and the boys are going to hang around and be ready to carry the heaviest trays."
"Wednesday is Recognition Day and Grandmother will be occupied all day, so you need not be disturbed about her."
"I'll look in the C. L. S. C. column in theDailyevery morning, just as Miss Kimball said that Grandmother ought to do, and then I'll ask her what her plans are."
RECOGNITION WEEK
ALTHOUGH the young people had but a small part in the proceedings of Recognition week, they took a vivid interest in all the festivities in which Mr. Emerson and Mrs. Morton took part, and they never failed to notice the rose-bedecked men and women whose numbers increased every day.
"Everybody who has ever read the Chautauqua Course seems to be wearing some sort of C. L. S. C. badge," said Ethel Blue at the table on Saturday evening.
"Only those who have graduated," explained Mrs. Emerson, "wear garnet badges like mine. The 1914's are wearing their class flower, the English rose, and the new class just forming has an olive green bow."
"Wouldn't it be fun if all the 1914 class members from all over the world could be here to graduate!"
"What a flock there would be!"
"How manywillbe here?"
"About a hundred and fifty or two hundred. That's a small fraction of the class but they come from so many different places that they are fairly representative of the whole class."
"The rooms were crowded at the reception yesterday afternoon and this afternoon and every trolley is bringing more."
In honor of the 1914 class Helen wore a rose-covered dress at the C. L. S. C. reception at the hotel in the evening. She carried dozens of trays of lemonade and was a tired girl when the chimes, belated for the occasion, at last rang out their warning. With the rest of the family she was ready in plenty of time, however, for an early start to see the C. L. S. C. procession march into the Amphitheatre for the Baccalaureate sermon. The Hancocks and Dorothy and her mother took their places in the auditorium to see the classes march in, but Roger and Helen and the Ethels drifted along beside the troop of Readers, discovering Mrs. Emerson in the class of 1908 and Mrs. Morton and her father and Dr. Hancock with the Dickensians.
In the afternoon the young people followed again, this time to the Hall of Philosophy where they stood on the edge and heard the Chancellor address words of inspiration and comfort to the graduates. Once more they stood at a distance when night brought the hour for the Vigil of the Class of '14. Athenian Lights flared about the Hall and flung tree shadows and the bending shapes of men and women against the black earth. Under the classic roof of the temple gathered the classmates met here at Chautauqua after four years of work done separately. Here they united in thoughts of the good the Past had brought and the Happiness that the future had in store.
"Why do they call it a Vigil?" asked Ethel Blue.
Ethel Brown had gone home with her grandmother but her cousin could not resist the call of a name that sounded mysterious to her, and she had come with Helen and Roger.
"Didn't you ever read about the young squires watching over their armor on the night before they received the honor of knighthood?" inquired Helen, who was the "family authority on history and antiquities," according to Roger. "They were left alone in the chapel of the palace where the ceremony was to take place, and there they prayed that they might live worthy lives and do no wrong and always help the poor and the distressed and always honor women."
"We think we are serious nowadays but I don't believe there are many fellows who think as seriously as that about their life work," observed Roger.
The young people had no part in the joys of the 1914 Class breakfast and "frivol" beyond laughing uproariously at the account of it which they received later from the elders who were there. In the evening of Tuesday, however, the Club came out in force. At that time the whole interest of the grounds was centred around Alumni Hall. The building itself was ablaze with light, every class receiving in its own room except the Dickens Class, which had so many representatives that it made use of the large room at the top of the house.
Outside, the grounds between Alumni Hall and the Hall of Philosophy were bright with colored lanterns. In the Hall the band played the jolliest of music in one corner and the remainder of thespace was occupied by small tables crowded with people.
It was here that the United Service Club proved its usefulness. As long as there was any one to wait on its members ran to and fro carrying trays and making change, and when there were no more guests they themselves fell to and consumed all that was left.
"I never object to eating ice cream for a Veranda Fund or any other reason," confessed James solemnly and Roger nodded a grave assent.
Before they went on duty at the Hall, the Club proceeded in a body to pay their respects to the graduating class. There were so many 1914's that they extended all around the large room and before them an unending line of people passed, shaking hands and offering congratulations.
Mrs. Morton stood between her father and Dr. Hancock before a bust of Bishop Vincent that gazed benevolently at the procession as it wound past the corner. The children claimed her as a "sweet girl graduate" and Roger greeted his grandfather as if he were only an older student in his own school.
"You youngsters needn't be feeling so humorous," ejaculated Dr. Hancock. "The C. L. S. C. will catch you at some time in your life if it has to wait until you are seventy, so you might as well read the Course as soon as you are out of school, and get it out of the way."
Behind the Mortons and Hancocks came Dorothy, her thin little face beaming with delight at the meeting that was coming.
"This is my mother, Mrs. Morton. Mother, this is Ethel Brown's mother and Ethel Blue's aunt."
The hands of the two women met in a long clasp, and they gazed into each other's eyes with instant liking.
"You have been kindness itself to my little girl," murmured Mrs. Smith.
"We can never forget her efficiency and helpfulness when Father was ill," returned Mrs. Morton; "and, if you'll allow me to say so, my mother, Mrs. Emerson, is a great admirer of yours."
"Have I met your mother?"
"You've been teaching her to make wonderful embroideries."
"IsthatMrs. Emerson your mother? I've grown very fond of her in her visits to the Arcade veranda."
"We must know each other better, if you will," smiled Mrs. Morton as the mother and daughter passed on to greet others.
"Dorothy looks so much like the Ethels that it startles me sometimes," remarked Mr. Emerson, looking after them before some one else claimed his hand.
"Girls of that age all wear their hair in the same fashion so they look like those paper dolls that we used to make in strings out of one piece of paper and put over the electric lights in the nursery."
"Perhaps it is the hair, but their features certainly are alike."
"Poor little Dorothy has a wistful expression that our children don't have, I am glad to say. I'm afraid she and her mother have had a hard time."
"I'm sure we must have shaken hands with at least a hundred thousand Chautauquans," groaned Dr. Hancock; "don't you think we might go over to the Hall of Philosophy and get the United Service Club to minister to our inner men?"
"I believe we've done our duty now; the crowd seems to be lessening; let's escape," and the two gentlemen escorted Mrs. Morton under the lanterns to the fire-lit temple where the members of the United Service Club hailed them, installed them at tables, and did their best to refresh them.
"Will you put my arm in a splint, Doctor?" asked Mr. Emerson, rubbing his shoulder ruefully.
"If you'll do mine. We'll go about like wounded twins!"
At six o'clock the next morning Dicky was stirring.
"Helen, get out my white thuit, pleathe, pleathe, pleathe," he pleaded impatiently.
"Your white suit? What for?" asked Helen drowsily. "This isn't Sunday."
"It's Recognition Day. Don't you remember? Grandfather and Mother are going to graduate. I'm in the Boyth Guard of Honor. Pleathe hurry."
The Ethels were not much later than Dicky in their preparations, for they were to help the young ladies who arranged the baskets and made the wreaths for the Flower Girls. The Mortons were too tall to join the ranks themselves, and they were envious of Dorothy, whose lesser height admitted her to the band, although this would be her last year.
It was a busy scene when the girls reached thetop of the hill beside the Post Office. Huge hampers of flowers lay beneath a table of planks stretched on trestles. Around it were grouped a dozen of the girls of the Vacation Club weaving wreaths for the heads of the little girls who soon began to arrive, and filling small baskets for them to carry. Some of the children were so small that their nurses had to come with them. They were put first in the long line of twos, while Dorothy and Della Watkins, who were the tallest of all, were the very last. Every girl had a white dress and they made a charming picture which drew a crowd of grown-ups to watch them.
Near by was the Boys' Guard of Honor, Dicky among them. Their uniform was a white suit and black stockings, and Helen and one or two other daughters of members of the 1914 Class were pinning on with a rose their shoulder sashes of Eton blue, the class color. Each boy carried a white pennant lettered in blue, DICKENS. They were a fine, manly looking lot of youngsters and they, too, drew compliments from the onlookers. Roger was marshaling them.
These groups were far from being the only people on the square. Banner boys were bringing the standards from Alumni Hall and setting them up as a rallying point for the C. L. S. C. classes. James Hancock carried the flag of a class whose representatives all happened to be women and not strong enough to lift the standard with its heavy pole. Tom Watkins carried the banner of Grandmother Morton's class, the 1908's, because hismother belonged to it. Mrs. Emerson did not march with the 1908's because she was to pass through the Golden Gate after the graduating class.
Back and forth went the Institution band, escorting one division and another of the mustering throng. All the undergraduates wore oak leaves to distinguish them from the graduates. The hoot of an owl rose from a group of 1913's, who, because they were the Athene Class, had taken the sacred bird of the goddess of wisdom for their emblem. Other classes were choosing cheer leaders and practicing their yells with greater or less success.
"The year numbers on these banners don't give you much idea of the ages of the people under it!" laughed Tom Watkins to Helen as she passed him.
"There's a 20-year old graduate in 1914 and a 78-year old," smiled Helen. "Where are the 1914's?" she asked, looking about her.
"They don't march with the rest; they gather at the Golden Gate at the lower end of St. Paul's Grove," explained Tom. "The best thing for you to do if you want to see all the different parts of the procession is to watch the start-off here and then rush down the hill to the Chancellor's cottage and see him fall into the line with the Marshal of the Day as his escort. Then go to the Grove and see the class pass through the Gate and up the steps of the Hall of Philosophy, and then hang around the outskirts until they come out and march to the Amphitheatre for the address."
Helen followed Tom's advice, waving her hand to Dorothy and Della among the Flower Girls, kodakingDicky in the Guard of Honor, and standing with the Hancocks while her mother and grandmother and Dr. Hancock, followed in a later group by Mrs. Emerson, passed through the Gate. The class walked between the Flower Girls strewing blossoms under their feet, beneath the arches symbolizing History, Literature, Science and Faith, between the lines of the choir singing a "Hail" of welcome, and up the steps at whose top waited the Chancellor.
Once in the Hall the service of Recognition followed; the tale of the historic C. L. S. C. banner was related; five mosaic tablets laid in the flooring were dedicated, and then the lines re-formed and started to the Amphitheatre. The Boys' Guard of Honor preceded the 1914's and repeated their yell.