One departure from camp-meeting customs at once wrought a change in the aspect of Chautauqua and greatly promoted its growth. We have noted the fact that in the earlier years no householder or tent-dweller was to receive boarders, and all except those who cooked at home ate in a common dining-hall. After the third Assembly, this restriction was removed and anyone could provide rooms and board upon paying a certain percentage of receipts to the management. The visitors who came in 1877 missed, but not in sorrow, the dingy old Dining-Hall, which had been torn down. But everywhere boarding houses had sprung up as by magic, and cottages had suddenly bulged out with new additions, while signs of "Rooms and Board" greeted the visitants everywhere. In fact, so eager were the landlords for their prey, that runners thronged the wharf to inform new arrivals of desirable homes, and one met these agents even at the station in Mayville. There was an announcement of the Palace Hotel, the abode of luxurious aristocracy. The seeker after its lordly accommodations found a frame building, tent-covered and tent-partitioned into small rooms for guests. But even this was an improvement upon the rows of cots in the big second story of the old lodging house, where fifty people slept in one room, sometimes with the rain dripping upon them through a leaky roof. Year by year the boarding cottages grew in number, in size, and in comfort. Fain would we name some of these hostelries, whose patrons return to them season after season, but we dare not begin the catalogue, lest by an omission we should offend some beloved landlady and her guests. In a few years the Palace Hotel, half-house and half-tent, gave place to the Hotel Athenæum, on the same site, whose wide balcony looks out upon the lake, and whose tower has been a home for some choice spirits. The writer knows this for he has dwelt beside them. [Illustration: Old Hall of Philosophy] [Illustration: The Golden Gate Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, Dr. J. H. Vincent, Lyman Abbott, Bishop H. W. Warren] On the extreme southwestern limit of the old camp ground was a ravine, unoccupied until 1877. On the slopes of this valley the declivity was cleared and terraced, seats--this time with backs--were arranged upon its sides; toward the lake it was somewhat banked up to form a place for the speakers' platform. Over it was spread the tent, formerly known as "the pavilion," brought from the hill beside Vincent Avenue. This was the nucleus out of which grew in after years the famous Chautauqua Amphitheater. At first it was used only on rainy days, but after a year or two gradually took the place of the out-of-doors Auditorium.