Chautauqua is the habit of impromptu eating
in the open air. Every one invites you to go upon a picnic. You take a
steamer to some point upon the lake, or take a trolley to a wild and deep
ravine known by the somewhat unpoetic name of the Hog's Back; and then
everybody sits around and eats sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and
considers the occasion a debauch. This formality resembles great good
fun,--especially as there are girls who laugh, and play, and threaten to
disconcert you on the morrow when you solemnly arise to lecture on the
Religion of Emerson. But picnic-baskets out of doors are rather hard on
the digestion.

Perhaps I should record also, as a curious experience, that I was required
to appear as one of the guests of honor at a large reception. This meant
that I had to stand in line, with certain other marionettes, and shake
hands with an apparently endless procession of people who were themselves
as bored as were the guests of honor. I determined then and there that I
should never run for President,--not even in response to an irresistible
appeal from the populace. I had never suspected before that there could be
so many hands without the touch of nature in them. I shook hands
mechanically, chatting all the while with a humorous and human woman who
stood next to me in the line of the attacked--until suddenly I felt the
sensitive and tender grasp of a sure-enough hand, reminding me of friends
and one or two women it has been a holiness to know. My attention was
attracted by the thrill. I turned swiftly--and I looked upon a little bent
old woman who was blind. She had a voice, too, for she spoke to me ...
and,--well, I was very glad that I went to that reception.

And many other matters I remember fondly,--a certain lonely hill at
sunset, whence you looked over wide water to distant dream-enchanted
shores; the urbanity and humor of the wise directors of the Institution;
the manner of many young students who discerned an unadmitted sanctity
beneath the smiling conversations of those summer hours; my own last
lecture, on "The Importance of Enjoying Life"; the people who walked with
me to the station and whom I was sorry to leave; and the oddly-minded
student behind the desk of the hotel; and an old man from Kentucky who
cared about Walt Whitman after I had talked about his ministrations in the
army hospitals; and the trees, and the reverberating organ, and, beneath a
benison of midnight peace, the hushed moon