The president was coming!  So, apparently, was the rest of the world!  Oh, the throngs and throngs that continually arrived!  It of itself was a rare and never-to-be-forgotten novelty to those who had never in their lives before seen such a vast army of human beings gathered into a small space, and all perfectly quiet and correct, and even courteous in their deportment.

“Where are the drunken men?” said Marion, looking around curiously on the constantly increasing throng.  “We always read of them as being in great crowds.”

“Yes, and the people who swear,” added Eurie.  “I haven’t heard an oath this morning, and I have roamed around everywhere.  I must say Chautauqua will bear off the palm for getting together a most respectable-looking, well-behaved ‘rabble!’ That is what I overheard a sour-looking old gentleman, who doesn’t approve of having a president—­or of letting him come to a religious meeting, I don’t know which—­say would rush in to-day.  It certainly is a remarkably orderly ‘rush.’  Girls, look at Dr. Vincent!  I declare, Chautauqua has paid, just to watch him!  He ought to be the president himself.  I mean to vote for him when female suffrage comes in.  Or a king!  Wouldn’t he make a grand king?  How he would enjoy ordering the subjects and enforcing his laws!”

“All of which he seems able to do now,” Marion said.  “I don’t believe he would thank you for a vote.  His realm is large enough, and he seems to have willing subjects.”

“He has go-ahead-a-tive-ness.”  Eurie said.  “What is the proper word for that, school-ma’am?  Executive ability, that’s it.  Those are splendid words, and they ought to be added to his name.  I tell you what, girls, I wish we could cut him up into seven men, and take him home with us.  Seven first-class men made out of him and distributed through the towns about us would make a new order of things.”

All this was being said while they were scrambling with the rest of the world down to the auditorium to secure seats, for the grand afternoon had arrived, and people had been advised to be “in their seats as soon after one o’clock as they could make it convenient.”

“How soon will that be, I wonder?” Marion said, quoting this sentence from Dr. Vincent’s advice given in the morning, and holding up her watch to show that it was five minutes of one.

“It looks to me as though those deluded beings who arrive here at one o’clock will have several hours of patient waiting before they will make it convenient to secure seats.  Just stand a minute, girls, and look!  It is worth seeing.  Away back, just as far as I can see, there is nothing but heads!  The aisles are full, and space between the seats, and the office is full, and the people are just pouring down from the hill in a continuous stream.  To look that way you wouldn’t think that any had got down here yet!”

Now I really wish I had a photograph of that gathering of people to put right in here, on this page!  Many of them would have looked much better at this point than they did after four hours of patient waiting.  How that crowd did fidget and fix and change position, as far as it was possible to change, when there was not an inch of unoccupied space.  How they talked and laughed and sang and grumbled and yawned, and sang again!