ECHO LAKE, WACHUSETT MOUNTAIN STATE RESERVATION. 



(This lake and its shores now belong to the people of Massachusetts forever.) 



ARN 



NEV 



SUBURBAN AND MOUNTAIN PARKS IN 

 MASSACHUSETTS. 



BY EDWARD KIRK TITUS. 



TN the making of public parks, city 

 councils and legislatures have a fatal 

 gift for not .seeing things until after they 

 happen. The man with a long look into the 

 future, forecasting the possible ministry of 

 shore or hill to tired humanity, soon bumps 

 his head against aldermanic horizons. And 

 so the public, disorganized and unimagina- 

 tive, often loses it, birthright to the real- 

 estate promoter's keener foresight. 



Hence the tawdry metamorphosis of many 

 a marshy river bank or rocky hill, marked 

 by nature with flaming maple or frowning 

 cliff as land that ought to be common to all. 

 Hacked into streets and lots by the real- 

 estate speculator's mangling hand, they be- 

 come Greensward Terrace, or Sky Top Gar- 

 dens. In return for our heritage we are 

 graciously invited to a land sale with free 

 band concert and balloon ascension, permit- 

 ted, — plated spoons thrown in, — to buy a 

 fifty-foot lot for $200. Thus arises the 

 suburban slum. 



In Massachusetts there has been a story 

 with a better ending. It passes by Franklin 

 Park in Boston and many another urban 

 oasis, as not unlike the achievements of New 

 York or Philadelphia or Chicago. It tells 

 rather of a rare foresight that has included 

 in its scope suburban and country life, and 

 has. induced the people in their corporate, 

 capacity to seize for their own many a shore 

 and wildwood and hill, before the real-estate 

 speculator realized their value, -thus beating, 

 him on his own ground and at his own game, 

 and redeeming these beauty spots from abuses 

 of private ownership. 



Suburban life fifteen years ago, about Bos- 

 ton, as elsewhere, was crude. A . return to 

 nature, — vine-clad cottages, buttercup-starred 

 meadows, and all that, — had been expected 

 from the great migration that followed the 

 building of trolleys beyond city limits. But 

 the cold reality was commonly enough the 

 exchange of a well-paved street, with sub- 

 stantial brick houses and a park fifteen min- 



