584 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



more willing and liberal attention than our public squares and parks; 

 although these, too, are generally far from what they ought to be. We 

 have given more attention to the cities of the dead than to the cities 

 of the living. One of my generous correspondents generously tells 

 me in reply to my inquiry in reference to city parks, "We have no parks, 

 but we have two nice grave yards!" It is also singular to learn that in 

 a great many places the cemetery is used by the people as a park! Is not 

 this a commentary upon our sociologic method, upon our carelessness and 

 neglect of the interests of our people? The people need the park; they 

 instinctively seek it — must have it, but in a great many of our cities, 

 probably in all where the cemetery is contiguous to the town — there being 

 no park provided, the people, the plain people, mind you, betake them- 

 selves to God's acre, and stroll back and forth among the tombstones and 

 monumental marbles. This seems particularly the case, naturally enough, 

 on Sundays. Sixteen of our larger cities report the cemetery made use 

 of as a park, often to the great detriment of the cemetery, its paths, its 

 lots, its shubbery, and, I regret to say, sometimes to the defacement of its 

 marbles. I believe it will be found always the case where no park is pro- 

 vided for the people; if the cemetery is near by they will betake them- 

 selves thither and the incongruity of the habit will be never noted. How- 

 ever, on the other hand, one correspondent answers my query as to use of 

 cemeteries as parks by this somewhat disdainful statement: "No. Cheer- 

 ful people who like to read the inscriptions on tombstones do not live 

 in this town." I learn also that "Cemetery Park down at Centerville 

 is not used as a cemetery." All this is suggestive. The fact is the ceme- 

 tery should indeed be laid out as a park, but after all it should be a ceme- 

 tery-park, the tranquil, peaceful dwelling place, resting place of our be- 

 loved dead. The cemetery should be a park, but the park should not be a 

 cemetery. 



Brethren, does not this situation demand immediate and serious 

 thought? It is all well enough to build churches for people that their 

 religious longings may be satisfied or at least appeased; it is well to 

 endow colleges and universities that means of intellectual satisfaction 

 may be accessible on every side; it is well to spend millions in libraries 

 that means may be bad for popular entertainment; but shall we neglect 

 all provision to meet that instinct of all our people, an instinct which con- 

 fessedly means so much to our mental and moral soundness, that instinct 

 which ever impels them to escape their houses, their shops, their dark- 

 ened, smoke-stained streets, to go forth under the open sky, to the pure 

 air, the refreshing greenness and coolness of the grass and trees, the 

 beauty of God's pure and clean natural world! How long shall it be said 

 of this prosperous and wealthy commonwealth that her weary sons and 

 daughters of toil if they go forth to recreation — re-creation — mark you — 

 must betake themselves to the cemetery? It is enough to breed anarchists 

 and suicides, the situation as we see it now. 



Another suggestive fact has come to light in this direct examination of 

 our problem, and that is that in at least six instances the effort for city 

 and park improvement has fallen to the hands of the women of the city. 



