me the
center of many activities. It was called "The Children's Temple," built
through the generous gift of President Lewis Miller, in the general plan
of his Sunday School Hall at Akron, Ohio, a central assembly room with
folding doors opening or closing a number of classrooms around it. For
many years it was the home of the Children's Class, under Rev. B. T.
Vincent and Frank Beard, which grew to an attendance of three hundred
daily. They wore badges of membership, passed examinations upon a
systematic course, and received diplomas. Soon an Intermediate
Department became necessary for those who had completed the children's
course, and this also grew into a large body of members and graduates.

[Illustration: The Chautauqua Book-Store]

A host of events on this great Chautauqua season of 1878 must be omitted
from this too long chapter in our story.

CHAPTER IX

CHAUTAUQUA ALL THE YEAR

DURING those early years the Chautauqua sessions were strenuous weeks to
both Miller and Vincent. Mr. Miller brought to Chautauqua for a number
of seasons his normal class of young people from the Akron Sunday
School, requiring them to attend the Chautauqua normal class and to take
its examination. He acted also as Superintendent of the Assembly Sunday
School, which was like organizing a new school of fifteen hundred
members every Sunday, on account of the constant coming and going of
students and teachers. But Mr. Miller's time and thoughts were so
constantly taken up with secular details, leasing lots, cutting down
trees, and setting up tents, settling disputes with lot holders and
ticket holders, and a thousand and one business matters great and
small--especially after successive purchases had more than doubled the
territory of the Assembly,--that he was able to take part in but few of
its exercises. One out of many perplexing situations may be taken as a
specimen. In one purchase was included a small tract on the lake-shore
outside the original camp ground, where some families from a distance
had purchased holdings and built small cottages, being independent both
of the camp-meeting and the Assembly. Some members of this colony
claimed the right of way to go in and out of the Assembly at all times,
Sundays as well as week-days, to attend lectures and classes without
purchasing tickets. Others in the older parts of the ground under
camp-meeting leases declared themselves beyond the jurisdiction of new
rules made by the A