and and he met sixty or more
audiences each summer; 240,000 people inoculated
with insurgency by one man.

Occasionally an audience finds that the lecture is not what was looked
for. Some years ago a Western Assembly engaged Senator La Follette, and
from the list of his subjects chose "The World's Greatest Tragedy,"
expecting a sensational attack upon the greed of capitalists. A great
crowd assembled to see "Senator Bob jump on the trusts." He gave his
well-known literary lecture on _Hamlet_, a critical appreciation,
without a word on current affairs. The crowd sat, first puzzled, then
baffled, and at last went away dejected.

A newspaper of wide circulation, _The Christian Science Monitor_, said:

By far the most active and keenly interested
voters of the country, with their leaders,
forceful in shaping progressive legislation, have
come during the last decade from States where this
Chautauqua method of cultivation of the adult
population has been most steadily used, and the
end is not yet, since now the system is being
organized in a thorough-going way never known
before. Public men, educators, artists, authors,
pioneers in discovery of unknown lands or of
secrets of nature, who get the ear of this huge
audience season after season, come nearer to the
heart of the nation and observe its ways of
living better than by any other method.

The old mother Chautauqua by the Lake would not like to be held
responsible for all the utterances under the tents of her ten thousand
daughters. For that matter, she would not endorse everything spoken upon
her own platform in the Amphitheater, where "free speech" is the motto
and the most contradictory opinions are presented. But she must
recognize that her daughters have wielded a mighty power in forming the
political and moral convictions of the nation.

The bell which rang at Fair Point on August 4, 1874, to open the first
Assembly, might be compared to "The shot heard 'round the world" from
Concord Bridge in 1775, for in answer to its call ten thousand
Chautauquas have arisen on the American Continent. The question might be
asked, Why have none of the ten thousand rivaled the first, the original
Chautauqua?

Many of these opened with a far better outfit of external
accommodations, with more money expended upon their