Another scheme launched this year met with the same fate;--The Chautauqua School of Theology. It was thought that many ministers who had not received a theological education would avail themselves of an opportunity to obtain it while in the pastorate. This was to be not a course of reading, but of close study, under qualified instruction in each department, with examinations, a diploma, and a degree. But it required more thorough study and much larger fees than a mere course of reading, and those who needed it most were often the poorest paid in their profession. It did not receive the support needful for its success, it had no endowment, and after an experiment extending through a number of years, it was reluctantly abandoned. Some of us have believed that if the Chautauqua Correspondence School of Theology could have found friends to give it even a moderate endowment, it might have supplied an education needed by a multitude of ministers. [Illustration: Unitarian Headquarters] [Illustration: Episcopal Chapel] The Hotel Athenæum was opened in 1881 and speedily filled with guests. It aided in bringing to Chautauqua a new constituency and also spurred the cottage boarding-houses to improve their accommodations and their fare. From the beginning the waiters and other helpers at the Hotel, and also in the cottages, have been mostly young people seeking to obtain higher education, and paying their way at Chautauqua by service. I remember one morning finding a Hebrew book on my breakfast table. One meets unaccustomed things at Chautauqua, but I was quite sure the _menu_ was not in that language. I called the attention of the young man who brought in the breakfast to the book. He told me that he was studying Hebrew with Dr. Harper, and from time to time we had some conversation concerning his college work. Twenty years afterward I met a prominent Methodist minister at a Conference, who said to me, "Don't you remember me, Dr. Hurlbut? I used to wait on your table at Chautauqua and we talked together about Hebrew." That minister was a member of several General Conferences and some years ago was made one of the Bishops in his church. Mrs. Ida B. Cole, the Executive Secretary of the C. L. S. C., is responsible for the following: A woman once said, "Chautauqua cured me of being a snob, for I found that my waitress was a senior in a college, the chambermaid had specialized in Greek, the porter taught languages in a high school, and the bell-boy, to whom I had been giving nickel tips, was the son of a wealthy family in my own State who wanted a job to prove his prowess." There are a few, however, who do not take kindly to the democratic life of Chautauqua. I was seated at one of the hotel tables with a well-known clergyman from England, whose sermons of a highly spiritual type are widely read in America; and I remarked: "Perhaps it may interest you to know that all the waiters in this hotel are college-students."