Near the book-store on the hill stands a small gothic, steep-roofed building, now a flower-shop. It was built just before the Assembly of 1877 as a church for the benefit of those who lived through the year at Chautauqua, numbering at that time about two hundred people. The old chapel was the first permanent public building erected at Chautauqua and still standing. The program of '77 began with a council of Reform and Church Congress, from Saturday, August 4th to Tuesday, August 7th. Anthony Comstock, that fearless warrior in the cause of righteousness, whose face showed the scars of conflict, who arrested more corrupters of youth, and destroyed more vile books, papers, and pictures than any other social worker, was one of the leading speakers. He reported at that time the arrest of 257 dealers in obscene literature and the destruction of over twenty tons of their publications. There is evil enough in this generation, but there would have been more if Anthony Comstock had not lived in the last generation. Another reformer of that epoch was Francis Murphy, who had been a barkeeper, but became a worker for temperance. His blue ribbon badge was worn by untold thousands of reformed drunkards. He had a power almost marvelous of freeing men from the chain of appetite. I was present once at a meeting in New York where from the platform I looked upon a churchful of men, more than three hundred in number, whose faces showed that the "pleasures of sin" are the merest mockery; and after his address a multitude came forward to sign Mr. Murphy's pledge and put on his blue ribbon. At Chautauqua Mr. Murphy made no appeal to victims of the drink habit, for they were not there to hear him, but he _did_ appeal, and most powerfully, in their behalf, to the Christian assemblage before him. Another figure on the platform was that of John B. Gough,--we do not call him a voice, for not only his tongue, but face, hands, feet, even his coat-tails, were eloquent. No words can do justice to this peerless orator in the cause of reform. These were the three mighty men of the council, but the report shows twice as many names almost as distinguished. On the evening of Tuesday, August 7th, came the regular opening of the Assembly proper, in the Auditorium on the Point. The report of attendance was far above that of any former opening day. Dr. Vincent presided and conducted the responsive service of former years--the same opening sentences and songs used every year since the first Assembly in 1874. We find fifteen names on the list of the speakers on that evening, representing many churches, many States, and at least two lands outside our own.