Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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This Chautauqua Movement had grown out of a Methodist camp meeting held annually at Fair Point on the pleasant lake which in my childhood had been the terminus of our most ambitious all-day excursions. The president of this Association by 1870 was a man justly respected in all that part of the world for his good deeds, as well as his business acumen—Lewis Miller, a manufacturer of Akron, Ohio. Mr. Miller was to be known nationally as the father-in-law of Thomas Edison, but old-time Chautauquans put it the other way: “Edison is Lewis Miller’s son-in-law.” That was enough recommendation for Edison in their minds.

Lewis Miller’s interest in Chautauqua went beyond the annual camp meeting. He saw the opportunity to build up there a summer home where parents could give their children healthy out-of-door amusement, protection from the evil ways of the unregenerate, and sound modern instruction in the Bible. Sympathy with this program induced a half-dozen families in the Titusville Methodist Church to join in the purchase of a lot on the outskirts of the grounds and start a Titusville settlement—a cottage with a mess hall and a few rooms—tents serving as sleeping quarters for extras. Father joined the colony soon after we moved to Titusville. We had a tent and a flat-bottomed boat.