But we must change the mood if I am to speak again of what amused me in the pagan days of my initiation at Chautauqua. Life, for instance, at the ginger-bread hotel amused me oddly. To one who lives in a metropolis throughout the working months, the map of eating at Chautauqua seems incongruous. Dinner is served in the middle of the day, at an hour when one is hardly encouraged to the thought of luncheon; and at six P.M. a sort of breakfast is set forth, which is denominated _Supper_. This Supper consists of fruit, followed by buckwheat cakes, followed by meat or eggs; and to eat one's way through it induces a curious sense of standing on one's head. After two days I discovered a remedy for this undesired dizziness. I turned the _menu_ upside down, and ordered a meal in the reverse order. The Supper itself was a success; but the waitress (who, in the winter, teaches school in Texas) disapproved of what she deemed my frivolous proceeding. Her eyes took on an inward look beneath the pedagogical eye-glasses; and there was a distinct furrowing of her forehead. Thereafter I did not dare to overturn the _menu_, but ate my way heroically backward. After all, our prandial prejudices are merely the result of custom. There is no real reason why stewed prunes should not be eaten at three A.M. But this philosophical reflection reminds me that there is no such hour at Chautauqua. At ten P.M. a carol of sweet chimes is rung from the Italian _campanile_; and at that hour all good Chautauquans go to bed. If you are by profession (let us say) a writer, and are accustomed to be alive at midnight, you will find the witching hours sad. Vainly you will seek companionship, and will be reduced at last to reading the base-ball reports in the newspapers of Cleveland, Ohio. At the Athenaeum you are passed about, from meal to meal, like a one-card draw at poker. The hotel is haunted by Old Chautauquans, who vie with each other to receive you with traditional cordiality. The head-waitress steers you for luncheon (I mean Dinner) to one table, for Supper to another, and so on around the room from day to day. The process reminds you a little of the procedure at a progressive euchre party. At each meal you meet a new company of Old Chautauquans, and are expected to converse: but many (indeed most) of these people are humanly refreshing, and the experience is not so wearing as it sounds.