CHAPTER III 



STUDY AND READING 



Again in the nineties, when Mr. Olmsted was thinking 

 over and analyzing his early experiences in their effect on his 

 subsequent professional work, there is a letter to an old 

 friend, a lady, which shows especially his turn of mind in 

 youth and some of his self -chosen readings : 



I am thinking that of all the young men you know, I was 

 the least likely to do what I have, and that you cannot know 

 or guess in what way I was led to it. Nor can you know 

 what is most prominently in my mind when I refer to these 

 doings. I need not conceal from you that I am sure that the 

 result of what I have done is to be of much more consequence 

 than any one else but myself supposes. As I travel, I see 

 traces of influences spreading from it that no one else would 

 detect, which if given any attention by others, would be 

 attributed to "fashion." There are, scattered through the 

 country, seventeen large pubHc parks, many more smaller 

 ones, many more public or semi-public works, upon which, 

 with sympathetic partners or pupils, I have been engaged. 

 After we have left them, they have, in the majority of cases, 

 been more or less barbarously treated, yet as they stand, 

 with perhaps a single exception, they are a hundred years 

 ahead of any spontaneous pubHc demand, or of the demand 

 of any notable cultivated part of the people. And they are 

 having an educative effect perfectly manifest to me— a 

 manifestly civihzing effect. I see much indirect and un- 

 conscious following of them. It is strange how often I am 

 asked: "Where did you get that idea?" as if an original idea 



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