How far the name and idea of Chautauqua have since
spread there is no saying, but it was the last of our national
inventions which I should have expected to find in Aberystwyth,
though Welsh culture was reasonably in its line, and the
Eisteddfod was not out of keeping with the summer conferences
held beside our lovely up-State lake. The British Chautauqua, as
I saw it, was a group of people from all parts of the United
Kingdom joined in the pursuit of improvement and enjoyment, and
they were now here on one of their summer outings. They had been
invited to a gentleman's place not far from Aberystwyth to view
as indubitable a remnant of the Holy Grail as now exists, and it
was my very good fortune through the kind offices of that friend
of ours to be invited with them.
It was a blamelessly rainless afternoon, of a sort commoner on
the western Welsh coast than on other shores of the "rainy
isles," but not too common even there; and we drove out of the
town through the prettiest country of hillside fields and valleys
opening to the sea, on a road that was fairly dusty in the hot
sun.
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