Besides the permanent Mother Chautauqua, in New York, there are, all over these States, commercial Chautauqua companies which send out to every smallest town troupes of lecturers and “entertainers” to give a week of culture under canvas.  Living in Minneapolis, Carol had never encountered the ambulant Chautauqua, and the announcement of its coming to Gopher Prairie gave her hope that others might be doing the vague things which she had attempted.  She pictured a condensed university course brought to the people.  Mornings when she came in from the lake with Kennicott she saw placards in every shop-window, and strung on a cord across Main Street, a line of pennants alternately worded “The Boland Chautauqua coming!” and “A solid week of inspiration and enjoyment!” But she was disappointed when she saw the program.  It did not seem to be a tabloid university; it did not seem to be any kind of a university; it seemed to be a combination of vaudeville performance Y. M. C. A. lecture, and the graduation exercises of an elocution class.

She took her doubt to Kennicott.  He insisted, “Well, maybe it won’t be so awful darn intellectual, the way you and I might like it, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing.”  Vida Sherwin added, “They have some splendid speakers.  If the people don’t carry off so much actual information, they do get a lot of new ideas, and that’s what counts.”

During the Chautauqua Carol attended three evening meetings, two afternoon meetings, and one in the morning.  She was impressed by the audience:  the sallow women in skirts and blouses, eager to be made to think, the men in vests and shirt-sleeves, eager to be allowed to laugh, and the wriggling children, eager to sneak away.  She liked the plain benches, the portable stage under its red marquee, the great tent over all, shadowy above strings of incandescent bulbs at night and by day casting an amber radiance on the patient crowd.  The scent of dust and trampled grass and sun-baked wood gave her an illusion of Syrian caravans; she forgot the speakers while she listened to noises outside the tent:  two farmers talking hoarsely, a wagon creaking down Main Street, the crow of a rooster.  She was content.  But it was the contentment of the lost hunter stopping to rest.

For from the Chautauqua itself she got nothing but wind and chaff and heavy laughter, the laughter of yokels at old jokes, a mirthless and primitive sound like the cries of beasts on a farm.

These were the several instructors in the condensed university’s seven-day course: 

Nine lecturers, four of them ex-ministers, and one an ex-congressman, all of them delivering “inspirational addresses.”  The only facts or opinions which Carol derived from them were:  Lincoln was a celebrated president of the United States, but in his youth extremely poor.  James J. Hill was the best-known railroad-man of the West, and in his youth extremely poor.  Honesty and courtesy in business are preferable to boorishness and exposed trickery, but this is not to be taken personally, since all persons in Gopher Prairie are known to be honest and courteous.  London is a large city.  A distinguished statesman once taught Sunday School.