irO riEST COUXTY PARK SYSTEM 



course as commissioner were gratifying. In The Daily 

 Advertiser, the same day of Mr. Bramhall's appointment, 

 the following statements appeared in an interview with 

 Commissioners Shepard and Peck at the Park Board rooms 

 that afternoon of April 21 : "Mr. Shepard said that Mr. 

 Kelsey had been a faithful member of the commission ; that 

 he had attended almost every meeting, and that he was an 

 enthusiastic worker." 



"Mr. Peck here added a few words in praise of Mr. Kel- 

 sey, saying that the retiring member had been keenly alive 

 to his duties.^' 



My non-appointment was, however, to myself a great 

 relief. For nearly three years I had given a large 

 part of my time and interest to the inception and for- 

 mulative plans of the enterprise. The first year with the 

 preliminary or original Park Commission, as may be in- 

 ferred from the first three chapters of this volume, the work, 

 though arduous, and at times confining, was treated as re- 

 creation, and was for the most part a pleasure. The two 

 years^ service in the second commission were indeed stren- 

 uous years, filled with forebodings, doubts and uncertain- 

 ties, and, as one who reads these records of the events as 

 they occurred at the time, can readily appreciate, were years 

 of conflict in my earnest endeavor to hold on the lines of its 

 original conception, to the best of my ability, this great 

 enterprise, founded as it was upon an ideal of what a park 

 enterprise should be, and for which I was willing to devote 

 every effort and time to have carried out to the best practi- 

 cal result. If this were possible, I believed that the de- 

 velopment of this ideal would be a constant pleasure, benefit 

 and growing delight to the people of Essex County ; and to 

 myself an unfailing source of satisfaction in the results ob- 

 tained. It was only after my retirement from the active 

 work of the commission in 1897 that I better appreciated 

 these conditions and what the effort had been. 



But almost im^mediately, and continuing as it were from 

 the very day of the expiration of my term of office, and 

 growing out of the conditions then existing, arose another 



