The Madison Daily Leader

THE CHAUTAUQUA.
The Editor of the Bryant Herald Appreciated Its Beauties.
Bryant Herald, 6: Down in Lake county, just east of the splendid little city of Madison, is an earthly paradise for the city weary man or woman who long for rest and quietness. This place is known as the Chautauqua, and is admirably situated on the banks of the beautiful Lake Madison. Here will be found another example of Dakota enterprise, for the magnificent buildings and the well-laid streets and parks of the Chautauqua seem to have sprung up in a single night, or as a typical westerner would put it, "growed while you waited."

This beautiful spot is not altogether a place to rest the weary body, but a place where the mind may be refreshed, new things learned, in fact a summer school where both mind and body receive new life, where the most ignorant can learn and the most feeble gain strength. Taking the motor line from the city to the lake, you pass through the gates of the walls surrounding Chautauquaville, and unless you are an extraordinary mortal, astonishment will cause you to stop for a moment and gaze at the magnificent buildings and grounds before you. Looking across the well-kept grounds you see the auditorium, admirably situated on a slight elevation, which is a grand structure with a seating capacity of 3,000 people. Turning toward the lake on your right the view of that splendid sheet of water is almost cut off from where you stand by the Grand View hotel, a fine specimen of architecture, and rising as it does above the lake is a magnificent building, one upon which the inhabitants of the Chautauqua grounds, an intelligent, cultured, sober and happy people, whose greatest pleasure is to show the summer visitors over the grounds and picture to them the splendid future of the Lake Madison Chautauqua, point to with pride. The view of the lake from the verandas of this hotel is beautiful. The attractiveness is greatly enhanced by beautiful sail and row boats and the steamer "City of Madison" playing gracefully over its surface.

Hundreds of tents in which people from far and near are camping, dot the grounds. The writer was present on the seventeenth and eighteenth days, and as a rule camping for that length of time is sweetness pretty well drawn out, but there seemed to be no abatement in the interest shown and each day finds as large a crowd as on the preceding one. The programme throughout has been a delightful one. Never before has such an intellectual treat been afforded a Dakota public at so small a cost to the individual.

The grounds are skillfully laid out in avenues and boulevards, skirted by walks for the use of pedestrians. Hundreds of lots have already been sold and the managers are kept busy closing contracts with those who desire to secure permanent quarters in this charming place.

Financially the Chautauqua has been a success, and the bountiful harvest this year will insure a larger patronage next, so all things considered the Lake Madison Chautauqua can be voted a most successful affair, and we congratulate the people of Madison on their good fortune of having this great enterprise on the shores of their beautiful lake.