Local Chatauquas

1916

Going to Chautauqua formerly meant taking a railroad trip to western New York. Now it may mean taking a street car to a grove somewhere in the town's outlying district, and returning home for supper. People originally had to go to Chautauqua; now Chautauqua has been brought to them.

The most casual reader of small town newspapers is struck by the number of Chautauquas either now in progress or preparing to open their seasons in various localities. Chautauqua week is a real event, social as well as educational. It brings the small community into touch with the great throbbing world of ideas. It is an education and an inspiration — as fine an example of university extension practice as can be found.

The original Chautauqua was established more than forty years ago on the banks of the lake whose name it took. For years that was all the Chautaqua there was. The influence of its sessions reached out through the publications of the organization and through its visitors but in no other way. Relatively few people, of course, could afford the time or the money to bring themselves into personal contact with it.

Now, however, some 200 Chautauqua assemblies exist in various parts of the country, each contributing to the education and upbuilding of its community through the course of lectures, sermons and other cultural offerings. Men recognized far and wide for their eminence in various fields of thought and activity make the rounds of these small Chautaquas, discussing politics, sociology, economies and the sciences and bringing their thousands of hearers into touch with the latest thought in many directions.

The Chautauqua and the county fair are valuable agencies of progress, through which much has been accomplished and more is to be expected. — Cleveland Plain Dealer.


A Convincing Argument

Policeman — What are you standing 'ere for?
Loafer — Nuffink.
Policeman — Well, just move on. If everybody was to stand in one place, how would the rest get past? — Tit-Bits.

A "Loafer's Paradise" – In Honolulu They Do Next to Nothing

1878

The Ohio State Journal publishes a letter from Gen. Comly, in which Honolulu is sketched with a free-and-easy hand, as a loafer's paradise.

The natives, he writes, are the most careless, improvident, laughter-loving people in the world. They have no winter to lay by for — even the proverbial rainy day needs nothing there; so they dance and sing, and deck themselves with garlands all the day long. Men go here with great garlands of the loveliest flowers and green leaves hanging in festoons, around the neck and shoulders, down the body, around the hat — everywhere.

These men are not the fops and loafers of the race, but the hard-working fellows — the herdsmen, the hackmen, even the draymen go about adorned in the most exquisite taste, with flowers and leaves wreathed into forms of beauty which come to an American like a revelation in art. They have no wealth — nothing that would satisfy an American — but they are always laughing, singing, playing jews-harps or making floral wreaths. The Hawaiian knows that there will never be a winter's day to provide for, and that it will always be the same — yesterday, to-day and forever.


American Lighthouses

The history of the illuminating of lighthouses is an interesting one, says the New York Evening Post, and the improvements that have been made from year to year in the manner of lighting these beacons on our coast have been in keeping with the growth of an ever-extending shipping interest.

Before 1789 the expense of keeping up the few lighthouses then standing was borne by the States in which the lights were placed. In 1791 the first lighthouse erected by the Federal government was lighted. At that time, including the new one, there were but nine lights on the whole American coast. During the following nine years the number was increased to sixteen. In 1822 there were seventy lights in all, and in 1838 two hundred and thirty-eight, including lightboats. In 1875 there were nine hundred and twenty-five lighthouses and twenty-three lightships; four hundred and eighteen of the number being on the Atlantic coast.