In most of the camp meetings, but not in all, Sunday was the great day, a picnic on a vast scale, bringing hundreds of stages, carryalls, and wagons from all quarters, special excursion trains loaded with visitors, fleets of boats on the lake or river, if the ground could be reached by water route. No doubt some good was wrought. Under the spell of a stirring preacher some were turned from sin to righteousness. But much harm was also done, in the emptying of churches for miles around, the bringing together of a horde of people intent on pleasure, and utter confusion taking the place of a sabbath-quiet which should reign on a ground consecrated to worship. Against this desecration of the holy day, Miller and Vincent set themselves firmly. As a condition of accepting the invitation of the Camp Meeting Association to hold the proposed Assembly at Fair Point, the gates were to be absolutely closed against all visitors on Sunday; and notice was posted that no boats would be allowed to land on that day at the Fair Point pier. In those early days everybody came to Fair Point by boat. There was indeed a back-door entrance on land for teams and foot passengers; but few entered through it. In these modern days of electricity, now that the lake is girdled with trolley lines, and a hundred automobiles stand parked outside the gates, the back door has become the front door, and the steamboats are comparatively forsaken. In addition to the name Assembly, the exact order of exercises, and the closed ground on Sunday, there was another startling departure from camp-meeting usages--a gate fee. The overhead expenses of a camp meeting were comparatively light. Those were not the days when famous evangelists like Sam Jones and popular preachers such as DeWitt Talmage received two hundred dollars for a Sunday sermon. Board and keep were the rewards of the ministers, and the "keep" was a bunk in the preachers' tent. The needed funds were raised by collections, which though nominally "voluntary" were often obtained under high-pressure methods. But the Assembly, with well-known lecturers, teachers of recognized ability, and the necessary nation-wide advertising to awaken interest in a new movement would of necessity be expensive. How should the requisite dollars by the thousand be raised? The two heads of the Assembly resolved to dispense with the collections, and have a gate fee for all comers. Fortunately the Fair Point grounds readily lent themselves to this plan, for they were already surrounded on three sides by a high picket-fence, and only the small boys knew where the pickets were loose, and they didn't tell. [Illustration: The Old Guest House. "The Ark"] [Illustration: Old Children's Temple]