To at least one pilgrim the Assembly of 1875 was monumental, for it marked an epoch in his life. That was the writer of this volume, who in that year made his first visit to Chautauqua. (The general reader who has no interest in personal reminiscences may omit this paragraph.) He traveled by the Erie Railroad, and that evening for the first time in his life saw a berth made up in a sleeping-car, and crawled into it. If in his dreams that night, a vision could have flashed upon his inward eye of what that journey was to bring to him in the coming years, he might have deemed it an Arabian Night's dream. For that visit to Chautauqua, not suddenly but in the after years, changed the entire course of his career. It sent him to Chautauqua thus far for forty-six successive seasons, and perhaps may round him out in a semi-centennial. It took him out of a parsonage, and made him an itinerant on a continent-wide scale. It put him into Dr. Vincent's office as an assistant, and later in his chair as his successor. It dropped him down through the years at Chautauqua assemblies in almost half of the States of this Union. On Tuesday morning, August 3, 1875, I left the train at Jamestown, rode across the city, and embarked in a steamer for a voyage up the lake. As we slowly wound our way through the Outlet--it was on the old steamer _Jamestown_ which was never an ocean-greyhound--I felt like an explorer in some unknown river. Over the old pier at Fair Point was the sign, "National S. S. Assembly," and beneath it I stepped ashore on what seemed almost a holy ground, for my first walk was through Palestine Park. On Friday, August 6th, I gave a normal lesson, the first in my life, with fear and trembling. It was on "the city of Jerusalem," and I had practiced on the map until I thought that I could draw it without a copy. But, alas, one of the class must needs come to the blackboard and set my askew diagram in the right relations. Twenty years afterward, at an assembly in Kansas, an old lady spoke to me after a lesson, "I saw you teach your first lesson at Chautauqua. You said that you had never taught a normal class before, and I thought it was the solemn truth. You've improved since then!"