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TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



growing in the parks of London. In other cities the people must often 

 go miles to visit their parks. In Paris you find them within a few blocks. 

 And amid all the glories of this great city of picture galleries, palaces 

 and arts nothing seemed to me more charming than the groups of children 

 seen everywhere playing in safety on the gravel-walks and grass-plots, 

 amid flowers and under shady trees, where the birds answered with their 

 songs to the laughter of the children below. In Paris, if a child is run 

 over in the streets it is the parent that is arrested and not the driver. 

 The city has provided so abundantly its parks and ^|g^-grounds that a 

 child has no business to be found playing in the streets. 



In the great problem of city building, a problem growing daily more 

 important under our modern civilization, which is gathering so large a 

 proportion of people into these great centers of trade and manufacture 

 and life, Paris, it seems to me, has contributed most of all towards a wise 

 and healthful solution. In the provisions made for education, for instruc- 

 tion in arts, in her free galleries, libraries and schools of design, in the 

 numerous courses of lectures given without charge by the most eminent 

 scholars and orators, in the collections for illustrating the arts in all their 

 departments, in the magnificent sewers and abundant water supply, used 

 without stint, not simply in private houses, but in the daily washing of 

 public streets, and in the innumerable parks scattered everywhere through 

 the city, one finds provisions such as no other city in the world, in ancient 

 or modern times, ever provided for the intelligence, health and happiness 

 of her population. 



And now, ladies and gentlemen, permit me to turn to my practical 

 conclusions. I have always honored this Society for the contributions it 

 has made to the fruitfulness of our orchards and the beauty of our grounds; 

 but there is much yet to be done, and I know not to whom to turn if not 

 to the horticulturists of the State, whose talents and whose tastes so fit 

 them for this public service. To you I submit the question. If we will 

 consent to forego somewhat of the expense of our private flower gardens, 

 and the citizens of our towns and villages will contribute more to the 

 planting and beautifying of our public parks and street sides, filling them 

 with parterres of flowers, with beautiful shrubbery and foliage plants, and 

 the fine ornamentation which we seek at so much expense for our private 

 grounds, shall we not be more than repaid by the larger measure of beauty 

 open to each one of us, and by the sight of the poor, and the children of 

 the poor, who will stroll along the nicely-kept walks, sit content under 

 the shadow of the trees and gaze with a great swelling delight upon 

 masses of flowers hitherto unknown to their vision? What if into the 

 villages of our prairie States we could import some of these fashions of 

 Paris, and by the improvement of our public parks could cultivate the 

 taste of our people, and fill with a rarer and purer beauty the general life 

 of the land. 



General and hearty applause followed the close of this eloquent 

 address. 



