OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



the laboring or the business man to compute, 

 as a mile and a half of ill-kept, old-fashioned 

 turnpike road. 



The truth is, that citizens of sleepy towns 

 in the interior are losing their reckoning about 

 distances; they have not been educated to 

 metropolitan estimates. The Wall Street man 

 sneers at two miles of walk before business; 

 your small broker of a country city, on the 

 other hand, advertises for a tenement "within 

 half a mile of the post-office." I never see 

 such an advertisement but I think some Rip 

 Van Winkle has just waked, and that his 

 friends should give him a combing and nurs- 

 ing. 



Ready accessibility is the true measure of 

 distance in our day, and a town park must be 

 easily accessible to all classes. It must be a 

 matter in which the humblest citizens can take 

 pride and comfort. Those cities which have 

 considerable open spaces in the shape of "com- 

 mon," "green," or "squares," scattered here 

 and there, are the last to wake to any need of 

 a park which shall give drives, and such 

 sources of diversion as belong legitimately to 

 a public park. The central commons and 

 greens may do very well in the early stages of 

 a city's growth, but there comes a time when 



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