5i 



richer than any other of the six parks whose beginnings we 

 celebrate to-day. It alone among them possesses a Wash- 

 ington mansion, it alone has a regiment of the Daughters of 

 the Revolution to keep guard over its historic treasures. This 

 west end of the Bronx has given our Bronx Society of Arts 

 and Sciences several of its most liberal helpers. They are 

 doing their full share in making up the fund which provides 

 the memorials for the six parks to-day. 



" There is a newspaper rumor going the rounds, which I 

 trust is without foundation. It declares that the people living 

 just west of this park, while they belong to Bronx Borough, 

 do not want to belong to Bronx County, but to be left in the 

 County of New York. They are attached, I suppose, to the 

 sheriff and judges down town, the Tweed Court House and 

 the Tombs. They remind me of the Scottish Guards in Sir 

 Walter Scott's romance ' Ouentin Durward/ who said : ' We 

 will be judged only by our ain Captain, we will be hanged 

 by Sandy Wilson, the auld marshal of our ain regiment, who 

 is as honest a man as ever tied a noose." 



" Being myself a Bronxite who had no special desire to 

 have Bronx County created in this time of high taxes, I vet 

 believe in Bronxites keeping together in the creation of a new 

 county, and in our obtaining our share of the City's funds, 

 before they put all the money into the rotund Court House 

 which, with the land it stands on, will cost us more than did 

 the Revolutionary War. 



"As I now proceed to dedicate this tablet, let me offer as 

 the final sentiment of this magnificent day: Bronxites for the 

 Bronx and for New York City too." 



Park Commissioner Walter G. Eliot, of the Borough of 

 Queens, accepted for the City in the following eloquent words : 



" This is an auspicious and significant moment. We have 

 paused in our daily work for a brief time to pay a gentle 

 tribute of respect to those who, sacrificing far more than we 

 have, left us this Park as a souvenir of their unselfish devo- 

 tion to the greatest and noblest of all work, the uplift of hu- 



