that any had got
down here yet!"

Now I really wish I had a photograph of that gathering of people to put
right in here, on this page! Many of them would have looked much better
at this point than they did after four hours of patient waiting. How
that crowd did fidget and fix and change position, as far as it was
possible to change, when there was not an inch of unoccupied space. How
they talked and laughed and sang and grumbled and yawned, and sang
again!

It _was_ a tedious waiting. It had its irresistibly comic side. There
were those among the Chautauqua girls who could see the comic side of
things with very little trouble. The material out of which they made
some of their fun might have appeared very meager to orderly, decorous
people. But they made it.

What infinite sport they got out of the fidgety lady before them, who
could not get herself and her three children seated to her mind! Those
ladies who labored so industriously in order that the nation's flags,
draping the stand, should float gracefully over the nation's chief, were
an almost inexhaustible source of amusement to our girls.

"Look!" said Eurie, "that arrangement doesn't suit; some of the stars
are hidden; see them twitch it; it will be down! Now that one has it
looped just to her fancy. No! I declare, there it comes down again! The
other one twitched it this time; they are not of the same mind. Girls,
do look! It is fun to watch them; they work as though the interests of
this meeting all turned on a right arrangement of that flag."

By this time the attention of the girls was engaged, and the number of
witty remarks that were made at the expense of those flags would no
doubt have disconcerted the earnest workers thereat could they have
heard them.

The hours waned, and the president did not arrive. The waiters essayed
to sing, but to lead such an army of people was a difficult task,
especially when there was no one to lead. Such singing!

"We came out ahead, anyhow!" said Flossy, stopping to laugh.

Five or six thousand people had finished their verse, while five or six
thousand in the rear were in the third line of it.

"We need Mr. Bliss or Mr. Sherwin or _somebody_," said Ruth. "What a
pity that they have all gone, and Dr. Tourjee hasn't come! I thought he
was to be here."

Presently came a singer to their rescue. The girls did not know who he
was, but he led well, and the singing became decidedly enjoyable.
Suddenly he disappeared,