DR. VINCENT: I am glad to hear it; but you remember when an objection was made two years ago to the “requiring” of a local, modern book like the “Hall in the Grove,” I said in a general way we did not require it, but we preferred it. I will tell you why the “Hall in the Grove” was written. It is my old story of the _esprit du corps_. The college provides for this by its surroundings—the old buildings, the old elms, the old campus, the class songs, the memorial days, the pleasant memories, the struggles and rivalries in recitation, the sports, the diploma, the honor, the _prestige_ in the world outside, the relative standing of “our” college and the other colleges. All these things create in the student the _esprit du corps_ which makes him glad to say, “I belong to this or that college.” See the working of this spirit in a college boat-race. Take these old dignified and pious editors of religious papers, who have not been in a boat, unless to cross to Europe, for twenty-five years. Let old Wesleyan row with Cornell, and Harvard, and Yale, and Brown, you will find the old Baptist editor, or the old Methodist editor, who opposes all that sort of thing, close up an editorial on the modern follies in college, “Nevertheless, we were somewhat glad when we read that Wesleyan stood so well in that race.” [Laughter.] That is the spirit which characterizes the college life. There is educating power in it. It is a good thing for a boy to have it, and for a man to keep it. Now, we of the C. L. S. C can have nothing of this kind unless we construct it or grow it in our own way. So we have “Our Hall”—the Hall of Philosophy. Look at it by moon-light, or in the morning, or with its eager crowds at the vesper hour. The other evening a lady said, “There is something very fascinating about this Hall.” Then here are our St. Paul’s Grove; our path-way from the gate to the steps. Do you remember on Commencement Day the flowers strewn by those little darlings, who only knew that they were doing a beautiful thing, and did not see how far down it went into your hearts? Then there are our Athenian Watch-fires and our songs that excel for poetry and inspiration all the songs that were ever written for any educational society on earth (I am proud of our Chautauqua songs and our Chautauqua poetess, Miss Lathbury),—all these things help to create the spirit of Chautauqua. Pansy has given in her “Four Girls at Chautauqua,” and especially in the story of “The Hall in the Grove,” a true interpretation of Chautauqua and in a delightful way has shown the effects of the movement on society. All these things tend to give an _esprit du corps_ to the C. L. S. C., and when you carry your diploma and remember your march from gate to goal the other day, you say, “I was present at the graduation of the class of ’82, and I shall go there as often as I can.” What the vision and the experience do for us who come here “The Hall in the Grove” will to some extent do for those who