LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS 



gentlemen, who see in it only a device to bring 

 about the rapid appreciation of property which 

 is not their own. The quick-sightedness with 

 which the philanthropists of one side of a 

 smallish city will detect flaws in the philan- 

 thropy of men living on the other side of a 

 smallish city, is indeed something marvellous. 

 Thus it happens that some brave and honest 

 project for park or water supply, or sewerage, 

 will welter for years in some slough of oppos- 

 ing doubts, all whose obstructing slime is made 

 up of such miserable, local jealousies as I 

 have hinted at. The same traces of satanic 

 influence belong, I think, to the philosophers 

 who make up our national Congress, so that 

 our best bits of legislation seem to come upon 

 us by accident, when our wisest legislators are 

 asleep, or tired, or — worse. 



In the days of our present civilization and 

 education, it is hardly to be doubted that the 

 majority of intelligent voters in any consider- 

 able town would declare for the utility of a 

 public park or garden ; but whether their wishes 

 can be made effective for the establishment of 

 such a result is another question, and one which 

 must drift into the arena of town politics — 

 where I leave it; proposing only to discuss 

 here some of the aims of such an endowment, 



207 



