The wisdom of the men who have devised this plan is apparent to any observer. The proportion of those who are able to reap the advantages of a college education is small, and of these there are two distinctly marked classes. First, are those who, from choice and natural taste, with means to gratify that taste, seek a higher education, giving to the pursuit an earnest and untiring devotion. From this class come the scholars, professors and specialists of the hour. Second, are those who are put within the sphere of college training by external influences, and who are carried to the completion of their prescribed duties only under authority. Outside of the small number embraced in these two classes is the vast multitude of our citizens—elderly men, in active life, who look backward with regret to the unimproved opportunities of early days; middle aged men, longing to drink at the fountain of eternal youth which sends forth its delightsome streams through the fields of knowledge; young men, with aspirations and throbbings of conscious power if only opportunity can be found to give their endowments play; boys on farms, behind counters and in shops, who look with half concealed envy at their more fortunate play-fellows of the earlier years, who are in school, academy or college, while for them, daily toil with scanty remuneration is the price of support for daily life; matrons sighing over life’s burdens, and mourning over the fate which has shut to them the doors of education; young women, whose fingers, guided by a gifted brain, might have wrought marvels in art if only they had been taught how; and who long even yet to know—only to know. Of all such the world is full, and they can not go to college. Again must “Mahomet go to the mountain.” As they can not go to the university, say the incorporators of this Chautauqua University, the university shall go to them. We will make a people’s university which shall cover the widest possible scheme of study. We will make it eclectic, so that each seeker for knowledge can work in lines best suited to his own endowments. We will make it possible for the man who has been taken out of his college course before its completion, to finish it to his own satisfaction, in his own way, and in the station where Providence has placed him. We will enter every open door with our fireside college. We will make no restriction as to age or sex. We will make no limitation as to the time occupied in the completion of the work which we demand. We will make a Universal University.