PART II. EARLY EXPERIENCES 

 THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO HIS LATER CAREER 



CHAPTER I 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PASSAGES 



Of the early influences and experiences which con- 

 tributed to Mr. Olmsted's unconscious preparation for his 

 later professional practice, we have fortunately a con- 

 siderable record. Towards the close of the seventies, when 

 he was harried beyond measure by the New York politicians, 

 he set down some fragmentary autobiographical notes as 

 the first part of an intended book reviewing American social 

 and political conditions. 



In a little prefatory note, he says : 



... I offer a small contribution of individual experi- 

 ence towards the history of the latter half of the first century 

 of the American republic, — the period in which the work of 

 the railroad, the electric telegraph, the ocean steamship, the 

 Darwinian hypothesis, and of Universal suffrage began; in 

 which what is called the temperance reformation and the 

 abolition of slavery have occurred; in which millions of 

 people have been concentrating at New York, Philadelphia, 

 Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and San 

 Francisco, while rural neighborhoods in New England, Vir- 

 ginia, the Carolinas and Georgia have been rapidly losing 

 population and still more rapidly losing various forms of 

 wealth and worth. 



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