name Assembly, the exact order of exercises, and the
closed ground on Sunday, there was another startling departure from
camp-meeting usages--a gate fee. The overhead expenses of a camp meeting
were comparatively light. Those were not the days when famous
evangelists like Sam Jones and popular preachers such as DeWitt Talmage
received two hundred dollars for a Sunday sermon. Board and keep were
the rewards of the ministers, and the "keep" was a bunk in the
preachers' tent. The needed funds were raised by collections, which
though nominally "voluntary" were often obtained under high-pressure
methods. But the Assembly, with well-known lecturers, teachers of
recognized ability, and the necessary nation-wide advertising to awaken
interest in a new movement would of necessity be expensive. How should
the requisite dollars by the thousand be raised? The two heads of the
Assembly resolved to dispense with the collections, and have a gate fee
for all comers. Fortunately the Fair Point grounds readily lent
themselves to this plan, for they were already surrounded on three sides
by a high picket-fence, and only the small boys knew where the pickets
were loose, and they didn't tell.

[Illustration: The Old Guest House. "The Ark"]

[Illustration: Old Children's Temple]

The Sunday closing and the entrance charge raised a storm of indignation
all around the lake. The steamboat owners--in those days there were no
steamer corporations; each boat big or little, was owned by its
captain--the steamboat owners saw plainly that Sunday would be a "lost
day" to them if the gates were closed; and the thousands of visitors to
the camp meeting who had squeezed out a dime, or even a penny, when the
basket went around, bitterly complained outside the gates at a quarter
for daily admission, half of what they had cheerfully handed over when
the annual circus came to town. During the first Assembly in 1874, the
gatekeepers needed all their patience and politeness to restrain some
irate visitors from coming to blows over the infringement of their right
to free entrance upon the Fair Point Camp Ground. There were holders of
leases upon lots who expected free entrance for themselves and their
families--and "family" was stretched to include visitors. Then there
were the preachers who could not comprehend why _they_ should buy a
ticket for entrance to the holy ground! The financial and restrictive
regulations were left largely to Lewis Miller, who pos