OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



very clear sense of their wants in the matter 

 of a public park, but once supply them at- 

 tractively and accessibly, and they feel the ap- 

 positeness of the supply, and cling to it with as 

 much obstinacy as pride. 



We Americans have a way of shrinking 

 from prospective taxation, whatever the pur- 

 pose of it may be; but when once fairly sad- 

 dled with it, whether for the benefit of cor- 

 porations or monopolies or public improve- 

 ments, we bear it with a most admirable un- 

 flinchingness. The costs of public gardens or 

 parks, if well ordered, and not made the ve- 

 hicle of private peculation, are not such as 

 would create a remonstrance from the people of 

 any American city ; and the difficulty in the way 

 of establishment would lie not so much in a 

 general spirit or hostility to increased taxation, 

 (though that spirit, as I have hinted, has a 

 wonderful catlike watchfulness,) as in the pri- 

 vate jealousies that must be harmonized be- 

 fore any large real estate improvement is prac- 

 ticable. I defy any benevolent gentleman, in 

 a town of thirty thousand active, and news- 

 paper-reading inhabitants, to propose a scheme 

 for a public garden or park, upon a designated 

 spot of ground, without starting an angry buzz 

 of opposition from other equally benevolent 



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