The letter closed with a friendly request that he would read the book without a strong prejudice against it, and some hearty sympathetic sentences which Dr. Vincent knew how to write. For a year we heard nothing of the man; we concluded that he had been offended at the requirement and had left the Circle. We were surprised when at last another letter came from him stating that he had read the book, at first unwillingly, but later with deep interest; also that association with believers in the Circle had shown them, not as he had supposed, narrow and bigoted, but broad in their views. He had seen in them a mystic something which he desired; he had sought and found it. "To-day," he wrote, "I have united with the Presbyterian Church, and this evening I led the Christian Endeavor meeting." Dr. Hale told of a man who had been formerly a pupil and youth in his church, who was suffering from nervous prostration, and lay down in a shack in an out-of-the-way place in Florida, almost ready to die. His eyes were drawn to the orange-colored cover of a magazine which he had never seen before, _The Chautauquan_. He opened it at random and began to read. "Are you a child of God? Are you a partaker of the divine nature? If you are, work with God! Don't give up working with God!" It seemed to him like a voice from heaven. On that moment he said to himself, "I will not die, but live!" He began to read the magazine and followed it by reading the books to which the magazine made reference. They opened before him a new field of thought and made of him a new man. He told this story to Dr. Hale in his own church and said: "I am here because of that orange-covered _Chautauquan_ which I found lying under the bench in that old cabin." It is possible, nay, it is certain, that the Chautauqua Circle, by being not a church society, but a secular organization permeated by the Christian spirit, has exercised an influence all the stronger to promote an intelligent, broad-minded Christianity. [Illustration: South Ravine, Near Children's Playground] [Illustration: Muscallonge] [Illustration: Bathhouse and Jacob Bolin Gymnasium] Everyone active in Chautauqua work through a series of years could narrate many stories like the above, and doubtless some more remarkable; but I have given only a few out of many that could be recalled out of an experience with the C. L. S. C. through more than forty years. As I have looked upon the representatives of the graduating class in the Hall of Philosophy, I have often wished that I might know some of the life-stories of those who, often through difficulties unknown, have carried the course through to completion. An eminent minister wrote to me recently as follows: