WE have looked at the spot chosen for this new movement, and we have become somewhat acquainted with its two leaders. Let us now look at its foundations, and note the principles upon which it was based. We shall at once perceive that the original plans of the Fair Point Assembly were very narrow in comparison with those of Chautauqua to-day. Yet those aims were of such a nature, like a Gothic Church, as would readily lend themselves to enlargement on many sides, and only add to the unique beauty of the structure. In this chapter we are not undertaking to set forth the Chautauqua Idea, as it is now realized--for everybody, everywhere, and in every department of knowledge, inspired by a Christian faith. Whatever may have been in the mind of either founder, this wide-reaching aim was not in those early days made known. Both Miller and Vincent were interested in education, and each of them felt his own lack of college training, but during the first three or four years of Chautauqua's history all its aims were in the line of religious education through the Sunday School. We are not to look for the traits of its later development, in those primal days. Ours is the story of an evolution, and not a philosophical treatise. The first assembly on Chautauqua Lake was held under the sanction and direction of the governing Sunday School Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by resolution of the Board in New York at its meeting in October, 1873, in response to a request from the executive committee of the Chautauqua Lake Camp Ground Association, and upon the recommendation of Dr. Vincent, whose official title was Corresponding Secretary of the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Normal Committee of the Union was charged with the oversight of the projected meetings; Lewis Miller was appointed President, and John H. Vincent, Superintendent of Instruction. Although held upon a camp ground and inheriting some of the camp-meeting opportunities, the gathering was planned to be unlike a camp meeting in its essential features, and to reach a constituency outside that of the camp ground. Its name was a new one, "The Assembly," and its sphere was announced to be that of the Sunday School. There was to be a definite and carefully prepared program of a distinctly educational cast, with no opening for spontaneous, go-as-you-please meetings to be started at any moment. This was arranged to keep a quietus on both the religious enthusiast and the wandering Sunday School orator who expected to make a speech on every occasion. On my first visit to Fair Point--which was not in '74 but in '75--I found a prominent Sunday School talker from my own State, grip-sack in hand, leaving the ground. He explained, "This is no place for me. They have a cut-and-dried program, and a fellow can't get a word in anywhere. I'm going home. Give me the convention where a man can speak if he wants to."