Dr. Vincent’s masterpiece, as I always thought, came in 1878 when he laid before his Chautauquans a plan which had been long simmering in his never quiet mind. He did this in the finest of what we call inspirational talks that I ever heard—at least it stirred me so deeply that I have never forgotten the face of the orator nor, more important, the upturned faces of his hearers. He announced a scheme for a four-year course of home reading under the direction of the Chautauqua management adapted to men and women who had missed a college education, but who felt a deep desire for knowledge and were willing to adopt any practical plan which would give them a college outlook. It was to be called the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. Now this does not sound exciting; but as a matter of fact it was deeply exciting, for the speaker was pouring out his heart. He had never had a college education; he had never ceased to feel the lack of what he believed it would have given him. He had struggled to make up for his loss by persistent, systematic daily reading and study. Establishing the habit as a boy, he had never abandoned it. It had given him deep satisfaction, supplied, he thought, the college outlook. He believed there were thousands of men and women in the United States, scores, possibly hundreds, in his audience, who had been forced, as he had been, to sacrifice their early ambitions for education. They had hidden the hunger in their hearts where at times it still gnawed. He was offering them the same help he had found, and confidently, glowingly, he outlined the course of home reading which Dr. John H. Finley has so aptly named the American Adult Education Pioneer. The uplifted faces all about me told the story, particularly the faces of the women of thirty or more. Women of that generation had had their natural desire for knowledge intensified by the Woman’s Rights movement, in which the strongest plank had been a demand for the opportunity for higher education. These women were now beyond the day when they could go to college, but here was something which they saw intuitively was practical. The immediacy of their response was in a degree accounted for by their devotion to Dr. Vincent. I suppose most of the women who frequented Chautauqua were more or less in love with him, the worship a man of overflowing sentiment receives from the benches, but most of his audience would have preferred to die rather than reveal their secret passion. Well, it was a great emotional experience with large and immediate practical results, for, before the summer session was over, eight thousand people had joined the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.