PARK AND CEMETERY. 
164 
“FRAGMENTS.”* 
We go to the park for recreation and whatever in- 
fluences us while there may be considered a part of it. 
A park should be measured not by its number of acres, 
not by its boundaries, but by its features and power to 
influence. 
If one walks on Seaside Park in Bridgeport it is the 
waters beyond him with the passing vessels and the dim 
shore of Long Island in the far distance that influences 
him more than the long narrow strip of land, however 
well it may be kept. As one stands on Castle Craig in 
Hubbard Park and sees the steamers passing in the 
sound, then turns to see Mt. Tom and Holyoke in the 
noith, while in the east is the broad Connecticut valley 
bounded by the Bol.on Hills with the Hills of Berk- 
shire in the west, and overhead is the sky, ever changing 
yet ever beautiful, and below him the city of Meriden, 
one is filled with the grandeur of the scene, and, is not 
all this as much a part of Hubbard Park as Merrimen’s 
and Crystal Lakes which nestle at the foot of the preci- 
pice, within its boundaries? 
A landscape picture is a feature which may produce 
an inspiration or cause an influence. It may be a whole 
city filled with houses and streets, if overlooked and 
seen en masse, or a hillside covered for miles with tree 
growth, or a valley with its many farms, or it may be a 
little seat in a nooky place, a spring under a tree, a bit 
of walk by the brookside or a vista amongst the trees. 
There are persons whose very presence is a benedic- 
tion, who seem a personification of the 23d Psalm, so 
there are landscapes equally as restful, pleasing and 
helpful. 
To the listener it is not necessary to know how to 
spell or even to know the letters, in order to understand 
the story told, or to appreciate its meaning, but he who 
writes must know these and more, and we, who as park 
superintendents, are interpreters and writers of nature’s 
secret that others may read more clearly, must know 
the alphabet. 
The spelling out of a landscape by the means of this 
alphabet will produce many surprises for we begin by 
finding the most striking, the most picturesque as being 
of the greatest interest, but we end by learning that the 
most common things may be the most beautiful. After 
we have learned these letters we will know that a bed of 
scarlet geraniums in the middle of a lawn has no more 
meaning than a drop of red ink on the page of a letter, 
both are blots. 
ALPHABET. 
As the landscape painter has mastered the beautiful 
in nature more thoroughly than others it is welt to fol- 
low his alphabet, for he is obliged to analyze his land- 
scape. A photograph may be taken without analysis, 
but a painting never. It has pleased me to rearrange 
his alphabet into six groups, viz; Lines, surfaces, co'or, 
composition, life and music; each deserving a chapter 
to itself, so th%t here only the barest outline can be 
given, s 
*A Paper read at tha Third Annual Meeting of New England Association of 
Park Superintendents, Worcester, Mass,, July, 1900. By G, A. Parker, Superin- 
tendent of Keney Park, Hartford, Conn. 
Lines . — The first thing to be desired in the study of 
lines in landscape is to upset and revise all previous 
suppositions and definitions of what a line is. We 
must see nature as she appears en masse and not what we 
know she is in detail. This is difficult to those who 
have the construction of grounds. In nature straight 
and mathematical lines do not exist. Broken lines may 
appear straight, and st’^aight lines crooked^ — parallel 
lines do meet, and the jumble, contradictions and un- 
reasonable things which exist seem impossible to the 
logical engineering man. With nature all things are 
possible, like a woman, she will most unconcernedly 
contradict herself and go off in all sorts of vagaries, and 
yet with it all becoming more and more beautiful. 
That which is usually known as lines are but masses 
of color against other colors, and lines are bjt objects 
so related as to give direction and appear as a line 
only from one point of sight. 
Lines have depth and width without definite bound- 
aries with colors varying in tone and value and alto- 
gether differs so much from what is ordinarily known as 
a line that one could almost say there are no such 
things as lines in landscape, and yet the surface beneath 
and the air above are full of them. 
The continuous line with the smooth surface renders 
nature rigid, statuesque, immovable, what she never is. 
They center attention upon the external form, so that 
the internal spirit, the deeper, nobler, truer part of her 
lacks interpretation. Nature is but known by such 
qualities as color, transparencies and shadow inequali- 
ties. 
In the designing of plans, and the developing of 
work, lines, angles and points must be used, but used as 
suggestions and directions, and not to decide the abso- 
lute form. They many limes mislead as well as lead 
aright, — the eye is the final test. 
Our education as to lines is a great hindrance to our 
receiving into our minds what our eyes tell us as to ihe 
forms, surface and texture. 
Surfaces . — Surfaces are to be considered in two 
ways: First; The substance and form of which the 
surface is the outside appearance, and secondly, its tex- 
ture. In substance it may be earth or rock or water; 
in form it may be convex, concave, incline, flat or per- 
pendicular; it may be broken or with long sweeps, it 
may only include the small front yard, or extend over 
miles of country. It is too large a subject to be con 
sidered here tonight, but I would like to refer more fully 
as to texture. In passing I would say that planting 
ought never to conceal the form of the earth; in one 
sense they hide the earth, in another way they best le- 
veal it and make its meaning more clear. The feeling 
should be that the ground with all its variation was 
there, though hidden, yet revealed by the plants, any 
planting that deforms or reforms the ground has in it an 
element of imperfectness. 
Textures. — In external appearance it is by texture 
that landsrapes are peculiarly different from all other 
arts; but for texture, color, light and shades and aerial 
perspective, every scene would be but a silhouette. 
