CHAPTER I

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“God’s prophets of the Beautiful these poets are.”

For three centuries England has luxuriated in a succession of regal poets, wearing, not hereditary crowns, but laurel wreaths bestowed by royal hands in virtue of the loyalty rather than the melody of their stanzas. Two centuries earlier Edward III. indulged Chaucer, the “Father of English Poetry,” in his harmless aspiration to enjoy the title of laureate, and the honor skipped along with irregular movement until Queen Elizabeth wreathed the brow of Spenser in laurel, giving the position such dignity that succeeding monarchs considered it an indispensable luxury to have a rhymer in the royal household to honor the birthday of king and queen, princes and princesses with an ode, graceful, polished, fervent.

The idea of poet laureate is not of English birth, but comes with other literary sentiments from Grecian days, the custom being to enliven the great musical contests by publicly crowning the successful poet. Rome in the days of the empire adopted the custom, adding to the formality and grace of the occasion. Germany revived the long neglected courtesy in the twelfth century, and was the _first to christen the crowned bard_ “_Laureate_.”

The French had special poets for the rhythmic praises of the imperial household, but from prejudice or neglect did not adopt the German title, while the Spaniards had both the poets and the title, but lacked the favor of the goddess of song. The Saxons, from their earliest days, were lovers of music, though content with a low order of song. For centuries the minstrels were the favorites with the unalloyed Saxon race. Not until the eleventh century, when William the Conqueror grafted the Norman blood into the sturdy Saxon veins, was there call for a higher order of song than the minstrel furnished. As the two nations intermingled their habits and social customs, as the languages blended the strength of the one with the grace of the other for three centuries, the people were prepared in mind and heart, in thought and sentiment, to appreciate a national poet, and after nine centuries without a poet or a language out of which poetry could be woven, they found themselves suddenly possessed with a poet of highest order and a language melodious in its every accent.

The splendor of chivalry had reached its height, and the magnificent court of Edward III. brought to a climax the progressive spirit of the Plantagenets, and the series of victories that initiated his reign exalted the pride of the nation and brought it to a degree of patriotic order that must voice itself in a national poet. For such an hour was Geoffrey Chaucer sent, a poetic genius, whose birth and associations calculated to make the art in his hands chivalric.

His name—Chaussier—of Norman birth, anglicised itself gracefully into Chaucer, indicative of the ease with which, reciprocally, he translated the legends of Saxon life in a new language, the poetic.

Born in London, possibly educated at Cambridge, probably a child of wealth, a page in the service of a noble lady, a soldier of the king, a prisoner in French hands, and ransomed by his king, all before he was twenty, it is easy to see that he ingratiated himself early into a variety of experiences from which a poet can profitably draw. In his young manhood, following the adventures of youth, he was in the service of the king as valet of the chamber. He served as comptroller of customs, and negotiated delicate personal matters for the king at home and in foreign courts, was employed on important embassies open and secret, even negotiating for the marriage of the Prince of Wales in France.

Upon one of these foreign missions he witnessed tourneys, grand receptions and magnificent displays, of such a character that he was possessed with a desire to see his own country follow suit, and as an initiative step aspired at being himself crowned poet laureate to the king, in which he was humored by Edward III., who allowed him also £100 as an annual allowance. The succeeding king, Richard II., the last of the Plantagenets, confirmed him in the position and secured to him its financial reward.

This first laureate purples the horizon of English literature, but so faint is the flush of dawn that it is impossible to fix the year of his birth, which may have been as early as 1328, and may have been as late as 1345. To understand the circumstances under which he wrote we must consider the England in which he lived, and for which he wrote. It was no more thickly settled than the state of Vermont, the entire population being only about the same as that of Missouri. The city of London then had no more than Lynn, Portland, Omaha, or Somerville—35,000. It had been larger, but had suffered from the great plagues. But this must not mislead us, for, notwithstanding her diminutive size, England was the most powerful nation of western Europe, and three nations of historic prominence were suppliants for her favor. The nation was wealthy, and the middle classes appreciated and demanded increased financial, political and social privileges. It was this first hope and purpose of the people that ripened the nation for its poet.

Cæsar set foot on British soil fourteen centuries earlier; the Saxons made permanent abode nine centuries before his day; Alfred the Great glorified the Saxon Heptarchy five centuries before the poet sang; and what wonder that he who created the very language that could be poetic should aspire for the first laurel wreath?

For nearly a thousand years there had been no poetry in the Saxon life, there had never been on British soil. Beauty and harmony were missing in their speech and deeds. The history they had made was devoid of sentiment, hence the almost universal disinclination to read the history of those years. As soon as there was sentiment in their life it was poetized.

Chaucer was merely a beautifier of thought. He originated little, he glorified whatever he voiced. He breathed life into the _thought_ and _language_ of the people, making them living souls, the Adam and Eve of English life. It is too much to ask that the primal poet who has to create language, create thought also. He did for the language of England what no other man was ever privileged to do for any nation. He took the chaotic speech and gave it beauty and rhythmic symmetry. He took foreign thought and made a home dress in which to clothe it. He took a language that foreigners despised, and of which the countrymen were ashamed, and christened it into the triune of strength, beauty and melody, so that it promises to be the universal tongue. He made a language that has the elements of perpetual youth, such as is possessed by no words but the Saxon’s.

In speaking of Chaucer as the initial laureate, it is with full knowledge that a century earlier, before there was a poet worthy the name, Henry III., of Magna Charta fame, had a “Versificator Regis,” whom he allowed £100 per year, but since it is impossible to find his name, or a line he ever wrote, it has not seemed wise to discount the honor so justly due him who wrote the first classic English verse.

After Chaucer there was no inheritor of his wreath for nearly a century, when, in the reign of Edward IV., who died 1485, John Kay was laureate, but he left no verse to show whether or not he adorned his position.

The growth of the custom into dignity and permanence was through the universities. Each of the large classic institutions had the established degree of poet laureate bestowed upon those who graduated with honors from the courses in grammar, rhetoric and versification. It was a requisite for all graduates who presented themselves for this honorable degree, to write a hundred creditable Latin verses on the glory of the university—though sometimes another subject was assigned. Upon graduation, and the acceptance of the Latin verses, he was publicly crowned with a wreath of laurel, and styled “poeta laureatus.” If he was ever selected by the king to rhyme his praise he might style himself the “king’s humble poet laureate.”

John Skelton is the first whom we know to have taken all these honors. He was a graduate of Cambridge in 1484, and nine years later was wreathed poet laureate of Oxford, and soon after of Lauvain, and in 1504, twenty years from graduation, Cambridge gave him the same honorary title and wreath. He also won the regal versifier’s crown, writing a poem when Henry VII.’s eldest son, Prince Arthur, was created Prince of Wales, and Latin verses when the infant Prince Henry (VIII.) was created Duke of York in 1494. Skelton is spoken of by his contemporaries as a special light and ornament to British literature.

Bernard André, of whom nothing is known except that he was a tutor of Prince Arthur, was poet laureate.

It was left to popular Queen Bess, among the many good things of her fickle reign, to establish the rank of regal laureate by conferring the laurel upon Edmund Spenser, since whom there has been no vacancy except when Cromwell took the poetry out of high life in England. Her reign is justly famed for its abundance of literary, poetic and dramatic talent. It was then that for the first time “Men of Letters” were a prominent feature in national life, and in that galaxy of artists the most brilliant star was her poet laureate.

Edmund Spenser was a charity boy, struggling for all his opportunities, supported at school by a benevolent Londoner, Robert Newell, but despite circumstances he was head boy. While a grammar school boy his benefactor died, and in the list of funeral expenses, still extant, is an item of two yards of cloth given Edmund Spenser to make a gown, that he might attend the funeral. This was the boyhood of the author of the “Faerie Queen.” There were multitudes in England whose parents, rolling in wealth, urged their children to study, but it was left for a charity student to lead his age and rank as one of the five great poets of the English tongue.

Pope Pius V. attempted to bring recreant England under the sway of the Church of Rome, and issued a bull of deposition against Elizabeth, attempting to enforce it by rebellion in the counties of the north. But he underestimated the grit and popularity of the queen, in whose interest the nation rose as one man. It was in the fervor of this patriotic ardor that Spenser published his first poems, awaking a sense of expectancy in the public mind, which he gratified later with his matchless glorification of Queen Bess in the “Faerie Queen.”

In the Elizabethan days even a poet of Spenser’s genius, whom the nation ardently admired, could not hope to live by poetic writing. In our own day Longfellow received from a weekly paper $4,000, or $20 a line, for his “Hanging of the Crane,” but Spenser’s pen could not have produced poems fast enough to have guaranteed him a living. Substantial favors from the royal court were indispensable unless he turned his mind and hand to other employments. Queen Elizabeth made it her established policy to encourage literature by special bequests, and Sir Philip Sidney, her confidential counselor, proposed an award to Spenser’s loyalty and genius, and she instructed Lord Cecil of the treasury to give him £100, but he remonstrated that it was too much for such indulgence as poetry, whereupon she permitted him to give what was reasonable, and consequently he gave nothing which measured his value of verse. Spenser’s need was so great that he was forced to remind the queen of her neglect, which he did in these lines:

“I was promised on a time, To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season I received nor rhyme nor reason.”

This spicy reminder brought him his £100, and Lord Cecil a sharp expression of her dissatisfaction. He was eventually given an estate—Kilcolman Castle—of three thousand acres, in Ireland. He was also laureated, with a pension of £50. When circumstances at last favored his enjoyment of peace, that had been denied him from childhood, he fell on evil times. Tyrone, a bold and crafty Irish chieftain, rose in rebellion, attacking Kilcolman Castle so unexpectedly that the poet and his wife barely escaped with their lives, after their infant child had perished in the cruel flames. He was now forty-six years of age, and a grief-stricken, broken-hearted mourner for his castle, library and babe, he went to London in poverty, and before his friends realized that he was in the metropolis, this great bard, Queen Bess’s laureate, died of starvation, in a rude, comfortless room, on a cold day, without a friend to minister to his necessities. After death, honors innumerable were paid to his memory.

Thus lived and died the first who wore the laurel in the royal household of that long line that has graced the court circle for three hundred years. Of the poets who have worn the wreath in sunshine and shadow under the Tudors, Stuarts and Brunswicks, a second article will treat.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

COMMON SENSE IN THE AMERICAN KITCHEN.

BY LAURA LORAINE.

The great middle class of American society to which, perhaps, most of us belong, contains an unsolved element, a puzzling factor, a something for which, so far, we have found no satisfactory niche. We have more girls than we know what to do with. In every town we find them bright, loving, energetic, ambitious, but sphereless. They are not needed at home, and there are no husbands available, for whom they can make homes; their needs are many and the parental purse is half empty; their energies are boundless, and they have no channel in which to turn them. What can they do? It is a sorely perplexing question. They might copy, but the business men of all the towns from the lakes to the Gulf will tell you there are twenty copyists for every position; they might teach, but school teachers overrun every community; there are more seamstresses than seams; more clerks than counters, more bookkeepers than desks.

A bright, stylish, well informed and popular girl lately applied at the office of a friend of mine, asking for “anything at all. I’ll make the fires, sweep the floors, run errands, do any kind of work to earn a little money. I have tried everywhere, but there are no positions of any kind vacant.”

Another young girl, an excellent musician, inquiring for work, said: “I have been given an ordinary musical education, but I can’t use it here. No one needs a music teacher or organist of my medium ability. If I had $2,000 to fit myself to be a superior teacher there would be no trouble about a position; but see there,” pointing to a shabby glove, “that is absolutely my best pair of gloves, and one _must_ have clothes.” But these are common remarks, painfully common.

A gentleman who employs a large number of girls, remarked in my hearing recently: “One of my hardest trials is to listen to the pathetic stories of girls who come to me for work. Many of them are from good families, often moving in my own circle. They need something to do, and the positions which they are fitted to fill are overflowing. I can not give them work, and to refuse them seems cruel. There ought to be some way for such girls.”

But there is in this same class of society a second problem equally puzzling—the troublesome kitchen question, which haunts so many of those women who manage their own households and employ girls for “general housework.” They find it almost impossible to fill these positions with the proper kind of help. For such work they need willing, strong, reliable, lady-like girls; girls who will appreciate the importance of the domestic machinery, and who will be able not only to keep up the fire, but keep the cogs all greased and smoothly running. They need those who will take pleasure in the beauty of the home and the health of the family, who will be, in short, helpmates and supports to them, burdened as they are with social duties, care of children, and the sometimes unfathomable question of making the two ends meet. They need such helpers, but alas, not one in a thousand possesses such. There is one way to satisfy the want. It is to make the plus of our first problem satisfy the minus of the second. To so adjust matters that the thousands of girls waiting for work or dying under the strain of their poorly paid sewing, or of their weary days on their feet at the counter may take up the general housework in the thousands of homes where they are needed.

By many, such a solution is declared “out of the question.” The girls themselves flatly settle it by declaring they’ll starve first; the housekeepers give it little encouragement. It is generally conceded that it might be a good thing, but that “it is not practical.” But why not practical? Why is starvation preferable? Why can not the housekeepers adopt the plan? What objections are to be urged against such work by the girls themselves? They can earn more—we have no hesitation in saying that, for look at the figures in the case. Let us suppose that a girl has obtained a position as a copyist or clerk; she will receive $1.00 per day in our average towns—not more; and in nearly all cases absence, whether from sickness, trouble or a holiday, will be deducted; however, as employers differ in this particular, let us suppose that she have regular work, her yearly receipts will be in a year of 365 days, deducting fifty-two Sabbaths, $313. Of this, $4.00 per week at least will be spent for board, fire, lights and washing; she has a balance of $105. Put her in the school room at the ordinary salary of the primary teacher, $400, she will have a balance of $192, if her board be rated as above at $4.00 per week. Now this same girl in the kitchen doing general housework would have no difficulty in securing $3.00 per week. Her cash balance at the end of the year would be her entire wages, $156; $51 more than the girl at the counter, $36 less than the school teacher, but think of the difference in the expenses of the last two. A girl doing general housework needs no work dress the year round save calico. In this she will be becomingly and appropriately dressed. A teacher must, a large part of the year, dress in wool, a goods at least five times as expensive. She has a large item for the wear and tear of wraps, hats, gloves, and rubbers, and another for stationery and books. It is not unfair to say that an economical and industrious girl earning $3.00 per week at housework can more easily lay up $50 in a year and dress better on the street and for church than the school teacher on $400 per year. It is not a question of money. There is, if anything, a cash balance in favor of the housework.

Is it then the work which makes such places so undesirable? Housework is undeniably hard. There is much of what we call drudgery about it. There is scrubbing, and washing and ironing, but the drudgery of housework does not last the week through. There is but one washday in a week. Done faithfully and with spirit, it leaves in ordinary households a frequent hour for sewing or chatting, one or two afternoons of each week, and almost invariably every evening. More leisure, we honestly believe, than either a clerk, seamstress or teacher finds. It is healthy. Compare the effects upon the constitution, of housework and of those employments which keep the worker sitting or standing most of the day. Go over your list of acquaintances in kitchens, school rooms, shops, and at desks, and you will find that though the housework may make grimy hands, it leaves the spring in the step, that though it may tire the body it does not stretch the nerves, that it is followed by a good appetite and sound sleep, where too often the other pursuits exhaust the nerves, depress the spirits, and wear out the girls.

And it is certainly respectable work. Were the kitchen of a duchess vacant her ladyship would only be honored if she bravely broiled her own steak and washed up her dishes.

No one will say the work degrades. But though it is honorable, healthy, and pays, yet strangely enough the girl feels that she can not be anybody if she undertake it, and the world believes she has forfeited her position when she does. Strange anomaly, that what is respectable in the mistress of the house should unfit her maid for social standing. Yet there are reasons for it, and one weighty reason is the popular opinion of housework—the feeling that it is belittling drudgery, that it requires simply muscles and no brains, that it unfits a woman for intellectual pursuits and for the finer accomplishments. If this be true, then girls are wise to shrink from such work, for mere drudgery is of all things the most benumbing to one’s facility, and can not but degrade one in the end. But this is not true. Housework is a profession. Cooking is a fine art. Upon the skill and wisdom with which the daily work of a home is done depends the comfort, health and happiness largely of a family. The woman who manages your kitchen has it in her power to make perpetual discord in your home if she has not brains to manage your work; she can ruin your digestion if she does not understand the preparation of food and its effects in the human system; she can make a barn of your rooms if she has not artistic taste. The idea that the person who is to cook and serve your meals need have only big muscles and stout hands is totally false; she must be educated to her profession, must respect it and take pleasure in it, if she is to be a success.

Gradually the importance of household arts is becoming evident to the best educated women. The home and its duties have become subjects for serious study of late years, and to-day there is hardly a topic on which so much is being written. Schools of cookery are becoming prominent features of our larger cities. They are patronized by our first ladies. Their teachers receive salaries equal to the best of our high school teachers and are everywhere received as ladies. Neither going to a cooking school nor teaching in a cooking school unfits woman for society; yet she does the same kind of work there as she would in a kitchen. The difference is just here: The cooking school pupil mixes her bread with brains and salts her potatoes with wits, and the brains and wits make a profession of what we have been pleased heretofore to call drudgery. It is the lack of this seasoning that has outlawed kitchen work. It is not the bread and potatoes. Why should we not have girls who are superior housekeepers, who are known as rising young cooks? Why should not ambition and skill be respected and rewarded in this profession as well as in any other? No reason, certainly, but the poor one that the girls have not been able to feel yet, that cooking and housework are really important; that though housekeepers have begun to study the subjects, the ideas are yet in the abstract and have not yet reached the kitchen. It is, however, we may be sure, but a question of time. Housework will be honored as it deserves, and the girls who undertake this labor will feel that they are doing as elevating and as intellectual work, certainly, as they would do at the counter, copying desk or sewing table.

But however much girls may respect housework, and however thoroughly they may prepare for it, our problems can never be solved by them alone. The kitchen millennium is largely in the hands of the housekeeper. There must be a radical change in her opinion of the position, and in her treatment of her help. When reform in the treatment of help is suggested, a woman usually asks: “Do you mean that I ought to make my girl one of my family? that she should sit at my table?” The ordinary opinion is that this is the pivotal point in the discussion, and that in order to reform, the mistress must make a friend of her maid. It seems to me that this is a great mistake, and does not touch the vital point at all. It touches a social relation; while the relation between mistress and maid is purely a business one. A girl enters a house to do certain duties, not to be a part of the family. She does her work, to be sure, within the dwelling, but because she works there is no more a reason why she should become a companion than there is reason for the clerk, bookkeeper, tailor or dress-maker of the family becoming a companion. Not that she is not so good—she is often better; not that she is less a lady—she is often more—but simply because her relations with the housekeeper are business relations, and in the family circle it is very undesirable that these duties should be obtruded. To make her a part of the family and one of your friends, her whole social life must be changed. She has different views, different surroundings, different friends, from the lady of the house. Either the two different sets must be amalgamated in order that a social relation may exist, or mistress or maid must one of them give up her friends. A ridiculous idea, and one as undesirable to the one as to the other. The girl has no idea of being companion to the lady; when she complains of not being invited into the parlor, and to the table, it is generally because she feels that in some way, still does not understand exactly how, she is not respected as she deserves to be.

But, some one says, supposing the girl be one of our own set or from among our friends, what then? I have seen daughters in certain families doing the work, and I never saw any trouble about adjustment of relations. If the girl be your friend, then treat her as your friend, of course, and take her into the “inner courts.” But, as would generally be the case, if she be a stranger the relation is purely a business one, and what you owe to any one with whom you do business you owe her. But you do not owe it to her to make her a part of your family circle unless both you and she wish it.

It is a disagreeable fact that very many well bred women practice a system of “bossism” in their kitchens. They look upon their help as a necessary evil, a human machine, which by daily orders and scoldings they are to keep in running order. A vital mistake, for the girl who does your work is and ought to be regarded as holding an important position in your domestic economy. She is doing as honorable and necessary work in carrying out your directions as you in giving them. She sustains a relation as much to be respected as does a confidential clerk to your husband. Now, on this ground you owe her unfailing courtesy—a pleasant good morning, such as any well bred person will give to every one they meet, and kindly appreciation of her work and wants. This courtesy is oftenest wanting in giving directions. If she is to do the work, then it is due her that you plan with her, that you together talk over things. If her plans are better than yours, acknowledge it and give her her share of praise. If possible, inspire her with the feeling that this is “our” work, not merely “my work” that she is doing. When personal interest is inspired, almost invariably a home-like air will spring up in the kitchen. The girl who presides loses that belittling, humiliating feeling that she is only a drudge, and grows to know her real importance, to respect herself and her business, while the woman at the helm grows light hearted as she recognizes what a stanch, reliable support she has in this department of her home. Working together is the only successful plan for employer and _employé_.

Another just cause of complaint is the too common practice of making a girl extra work. She deserves consideration in this respect. If the breakfast hour is at eight o’clock, it is a breach of etiquette on the part of the family to stretch it out until nine. The duties of the day demand that certain work of the kitchen be done at certain times. “A woman’s work is never done” is in some households accepted as a natural law. No one hesitates to ask an extra service of the kitchen girl, or to interrupt her labors. No one thinks to apologize if they hinder her regular work, or to even give a reason for asking a troublesome service at a busy time in the day. Is it strange that girls refuse to undertake kitchen work, when they know by observation that thoughtful consideration and courtesy will be denied them by the family? When a girl keeps books, clerks, or teaches, her rights are recognized. She is as a rule treated like a lady. Her hours are respected; until housekeepers learn this first duty of the employer to the _employé_, it will not be strange if the better class of girls shun the work, however much they may need something to do.

There is a general impression—perhaps it would be true to say that it is a fact—that the comfort and surroundings of a girl are treated as matters of no importance. No special care is taken that her kitchen be homelike and airy, and her bedroom cheery. It is a most deplorable fact that in many households more attention is given to the stables than the kitchen, but it _is_ a fact. The kitchen is the household laboratory. It is imperatively necessary that it be sunny and cheery, but how many times it is dark and dingy, poorly furnished, and uncomfortably arranged. The girl who finds her home in the house of another deserves further, a pleasant room, which shall be hers and hers alone. It ought to be neatly furnished, comfortably lighted and heated, and is it purely sentimental to say that she should have a rocking chair, a sewing table, a book rack and pictures? No, no. It is simple humanity to make her surroundings beautiful. The same nature is in her as in you; not only has she your taste, but a similar social nature; and beside pleasant surroundings she ought to have some provision made for her company. A pleasant room in which to entertain them, and time to give to them without being disturbed. I know a family in which the girl is allowed occasionally to have her friends to tea or to invite a friend to spend Sabbath with her. It is understood that this company never interfere with the work, and so perfectly do the mistress and maid work together that there is never any friction resulting from this—to most women—unendurable liberty. On the contrary, a higher value is put by the girl on her position. She respects the place which she sees her mistress respects, and grows more and more of a lady as she sees that she is treated in all respects like one. In this same home no Christmas ever goes by without a present to the girl as much as to any other member of the family. A little token is always brought her after a trip. In a word, she is valued, and the appreciation of the family proves it to her.

It is not in the home only that a barrier exists which makes proud girls shrink from this work which otherwise they would willingly do. It is a queer comment on our breeding to say that two thirds of American ladies will not recognize on the street the girls who do their kitchen work. Absurd! Of course it is, and it is purely a _parvenu_ trick. The queen of England herself would blush at such a breach of both common sense and good breeding. No _lady_ will pass on the street any one she may know without recognition, least of all will she pass a faithful, devoted servant, with whom she is associated in daily work. And if it may chance that both are members of one church, then by all means their relation should be cordial and natural. The footing of the church is one of common brotherhood, and no matter what work one may do, for consistency’s sake, if for no other reason, there should be an equal position.

Would any girl needing work and competent to do housework hesitate to take a place where she knew she would be respected, cared for and honestly dealt with by the lady of the house? You say though she were fairly treated in her place she would be despised without. I must differ with you. The girl who would have the sterling independence and pluck to adopt housekeeping as a profession, and who would go into the kitchen of a lady who was willing to honor and uphold her in her course would not be despised. On the contrary, her very independence would raise her in value. The loss of social position entailed by doing housework is purely fancied. Under the conditions which I have enumerated there could be no loss of social standing. The fact that almost invariably kitchen girls have little position does not prove that the kitchen and its work deprive them of it. Many of the girls (not all, let us be thankful for it!) doing housework in America are foreigners, ignorant, stupid, and too often unprincipled. They are unfit for the work they do. They are hard to deal with. They care nothing for the interests of the house. They cast a stigma on the work. But the fact that work of so much importance is being dragged down is a strong reason for its rescue by large-minded women and sensible, independent girls. It is, in truth, a pioneer’s field of infinite possibilities. A field which, redeemed and possessed, will solve two of the perplexities of the women of the day—what shall we do with these strong, good girls of ours, and how shall we save our kitchens out of the hands of the vandals?

CHAUTAUQUANS AT HOME.

BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

After the grand review—dress parade, oratory, music, flags, and fireworks—comes the common, everyday routine—plow, pen, needle and nursery. Farewell to the holiday! All hail to the working day! Between the two there is a vast difference; and both are good.

There is a difference between the peal of morning bells rolling over lake and through forest trees, with the warble of wild wood birds, waking one up to a day of music and eloquence, Sunday clothes and good society, and the gruff call or dissonant bell ring of somebody whose business it is to tell you to be up and at it, at once and for all day, whether you feel like it or not.

There is a difference between sitting down to a breakfast that was prepared for you by servants, and getting up to build a fire and boil a kettle and broil a steak, and wait for all the household to come down and in, and get through, and give you a chance to do something else before a half dozen other things claim your time and thought, and thus make way for a dozen and one additional things that fill up the unprinted program of your own domestic or official “assembly” at home.

There is a difference between a precious Bible reading at eight o’clock, with all the sweetest texts in the book put into lines or clusters or circles like gems in royal treasure plate, and the care of a “mussed up” table, a pile of soiled dishes, or a naughty, nervous, or afflicted child.

There is a difference between one of “dear brother” Adam’s devotional conferences at nine o’clock, with the fresh experiences of many hearts (who for the time forget crying children and crowded kitchen) full of joy and peace and triumph, with the ingenious interpretations of old, or difficult, or out-of-the-way texts, with the sweet and fervent prayers that sound as if heaven were near and not afar off, and as if all the people one saw filling the Amphitheater were saints of God who had left the “exceeding glory” for an hour to give Chautauqua a taste of the celestial life—there is, I say, a difference between all this and the sweeping and dusting, the stewing and sweating, the clerking and teaching, the hammering and plowing—and all the rest of the indoor and outdoor exercises that usurp the blessed nine o’clock devotional conference hour, for which at home no bell rings, and to which no organ or solo welcomes.

There is a difference between the eleven o’clock lecture about life, science and philosophy, full of wit and wisdom, and the planning and toiling for a dinner in which something will scorch or spoil, and concerning which peevish and fault finding words are sure to be spoken by one or more who ought to be, but are not, considerate and sympathetic.

There is a difference between a two o’clock afternoon concert of gifted voices, stringed instruments, and organs, and an aching head and quivering nerves, where rest is refused you, and the hard, straining, dragging work _must_ go on, whether you like or loathe it.

There is a difference between the four o’clock “specialties,” full of help and instruction, and the insipid, fashionable call that wastes your time, disturbs your conscience, and makes you wish “society” to the dogs.

There is a difference between the precious five o’clock Round-Table or vesper hour, with its free conversations (like a family chat) about simple things connected with our beloved Circle, with its broad thoughts, its sweet friendships, its holy prayers, its soothing and uplifting “Day is dying in the West,” when the sunlight seems like a veritable revelation of the Shekinah, and the air is vibrant with divinest sympathies—there _is_ a difference between the Chautauqua five o’clock and the average five o’clock at home, in field, in street, in shop.

There is a difference between a Chautauqua evening of lectures, songs, burlesque, boat ride, camp-fire, reception, illuminated fleet and gorgeous fireworks, and the weariness of a routine life evening—the physical energy gone, the children out of sorts, misunderstandings in home, neighborhood or church, the prospect of a sleepless night, and of an enervating and irritating to-morrow.

A difference, to be sure, but then remember that these every-days should be glorified by the Chautauqua days. And remember that they test the sentiments enkindled and resolutions formed in the pleasurable excitements, devotional services, splendid processions and great audiences of the more favored season.

Fellow-students, let the charm of the Chautauqua days be felt through all the intervening days. By strong resolve put high thoughts, tender sympathies, devout aspirations, unwearying patience, into the most unsentimental, uncomfortable and vexatious experiences and emergencies of home and business life, and thus diminish the difference in real value between Chautauqua and other days.

BISHOP WARREN TO THE CLASS OF 1884.

It was a great disappointment to the class of ’84 that no word of greeting came to them on Commencement Day, this year, from the beloved “Chautauqua Bishop,” Counselor H. W. Warren. The mail was the miscreant, however. The letter did not reach Chautauqua on time, although sent promptly. Graduates of ’84, as indeed all members of the C. L. S. C., will be glad to read his cordial words:

“_Beloved graduates of the C. L. S. C., Class of 1884_:—I heartily congratulate you on the fact that you have mounted four rounds of the ladder of wisdom that stands on the earth, but reaches into the infinite heavens. It has taken a year to each step, and the number of the rounds is beyond our arithmetic.

“I congratulate you that you are intimately associated with one of the greatest intellectual movements of this or any age. It is great in the range of studies, in the unprecedented number of thousands pursuing them, and especially great in the eminently Christian standpoint from which all these studies are viewed.

“No discovery, theory or science in this age can escape being viewed from the Christian standpoint. This universe was made by and for Christ, its king, and nothing that opposes him shall prosper. Hence, you are on the right foundation, one that is everlasting. Build thereon, not gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, whereby you suffer loss, but build that which shall abide the fire that consumes the world.

“You have not come to this position by ways painful and humiliating, for wisdom’s ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. What a discovery for a world of misery—paths of pleasantness to possession of glory and power. This comes of keeping our heavenly Father in the midst.

“When the famous translator of the Bible into English promised to make the boy who followed the plow in England know more of God’s Word than certain famous prelates of his time, he showed that he knew where all great uplifts of humanity must begin, not with the well-to-do and content, but with those who had crying needs and high aspirations. So in this lifting up of nature into seen harmonies and revelation, till ‘We study the Word and the works of God’ with equal sense of their divine origin. The movement must begin with them full of ambition, and continue till many who follow the plan know more of the blessed harmony than others who are learned only in things of material nature. In this great work ‘Do not be discouraged.’

“I heartily congratulate the classes of 1882 and 1883 on such a worthy addition to their numbers.

“Let us all go forward, fearing no threatened night, expecting an occasional eclipse, to show us more stars than we should ever find by day, and looking beyond cry out:

“Joy, joy, to see on every shore Where my eternal growth shall be God’s sunrise bright’ning on before, More light, more life, more love for me.

“Yours truly,

HENRY W. WARREN, Counselor.

“PACIFIC SHORE, August 13, 1884.”

OUTLINE OF REQUIRED READINGS.

NOVEMBER, 1884.

_First Week_ (ending November 8).—1. “Art of Speech,” from