d roof
supported by steel columns standing around the building, so that from
every seat was an unobstructed view of the platform. The choir-gallery
was enlarged to provide seats for five hundred. The platform was brought
further into the hall, making room for an orchestra. The seats were more
comfortable, and could now hold without crowding fifty-six hundred
people. A few years later, the old organ gave place to a greater and
better one, the gift of the Massey family of Toronto, a memorial of
their father, the late Hart A. Massey, one of the early Trustees of the
Assembly. Under the choir-loft and on either side of the organ, rooms
were arranged for offices and classes in the Department of Music.

During the previous season, 1892, a Men's Club had been organized and
had found temporary quarters. It now possessed a home on the shore of
the Lake, beside Palestine Park. In its rooms were games of various
sorts, cards, however, being still under the ban at Chautauqua.[2]
Newspapers and periodicals, shower-baths, and an out-of-door parlor on
the roof, very pleasant except on the days when the lake flies invaded
it. The Men's Club building had formerly been the power house of the
electrical plant, but one who had known it of old would scarcely
recognize it as reconstructed, enlarged, and decorated. To make a place
for the dynamo of the electric system, an encroachment had been made
upon Palestine Park; a cave had been dug under Mount Lebanon, and the
dynamo installed within its walls. The age of King Hiram of Tyre, who
cut the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple, and the age of Edison,
inventor of the electric light, were thus brought into incongruous
juxtaposition. A chimney funnel on the summit of Mount Lebanon, it must
be confessed, seemed out of place, and the Valley of Coele-Syria,
between Lebanon and Hermon, was entirely obliterated. Bible students
might shake their heads disapprovingly, but even sacred archaeology must
give way to the demands of civilization.

An improvement less obvious to the eye, but more essential to health,
was the installation of a complete sewer system. As the sewage is not
allowed to taint the water of the lake, it is carried by pipes to a
disposal plant at the lower end of the ground and chemically purified.
The water rendered as clear as crystal is then permitted to run into the
lake, while the sludge is pressed by machinery into cakes used as
fertilizer. An artesian well on high ground s