CHAPTER VII 



PLAYGROUNDS IN PARKS 



NOW that we have playgrounds in America, what are we going to do 

 with them ? Meaning, by that, liow are we to treat them in design? 

 An undesigned playground suggests too much the usual spectacle of 

 vacant lot, and an over-designed playground is like a children's play- 

 room furnished in gilt or mahogany in which the child is too ill at ease 

 to play or will commit damage if he does. 



When playgrounds first appeared in our midst they entered like a 

 lamb, and were turned to graze in some park corner. Now, behold! 

 they have become as a raging lion, and are about to devour the entire 

 park areas. Not that everyone is not in favour of giving the children a 

 place in which to play, but their bedlam is a bit disturbing to one seek- 

 ing rest and quiet in a park, and then again, one doesn't want an entire 

 house converted into a nursery. On shipboard the children are con- 

 fined to certain decks, unless accompanied by their parents, with the 

 exception of German steamship lines on which the passengers confine 

 themselves to their staterooms, — ^and use more discretion in selecting 

 passage the next time. 



PLAYGROUNDS ENDANGER PARKS 



In Washington, a temporary grant was given for the location of 

 a wading pool and some few pieces of playground apparatus in one of 

 the old established parks ; and in an incredibly short time, the appear- 

 ance of that entire park became as though the seventh year had 

 arrived, — the grass disappeared, and the walk lines multiplied, and 

 the flowering shrubs acquired queer mutilated shapes. The park 

 superintendent, after several Samaritan attempts at resuscitation, went 

 by on the other side with face averted, and devoted himself the more 

 assiduously to the other parks in his care. It may be accepted as 



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