42 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
nigh usurped the prerogatives of the occasion. With 
the cemetery in the very height of vernal beauty, with 
grass at its greenest and foliage and flowers at their 
loveliest, Memorial Day comes at a time when hu- 
manitv is greedy to absorb all that nature out oi 
doors ofifers to stimulate its better attributes, and to 
encourage and educate it to appreciate all that is 
created for its benefit. Thus inspired the mind is 
prone to venerate, and the buried soldiers wdio fought 
and died for the benefit of their fellow-men receive a 
benediction in the more perfect devotion to the cause 
of decorating their graves on the day officially set 
apart for the purpose. In its best sense it is for this 
that the cemeterv superintendent puts forth his best 
efforts in spring, and wdiile the crowds of visitors 
to his grounds give him much further care and labor 
to repair damages, it is a labor of love in that it is 
a factor of the highest development of true patriot- 
ism. 
c4MERICc4N PARK 
AND OUTDOOR 
ART ASSOCIATION. 
The fifth annual meeting 
of the American Park 
and (Jutdoor Art Asso- 
ciation. to be held in Milwaukee, Wis., June 
26-28 next, the preliminarv program of which 
is given in another column, promises to be 
of great interest and should invite a large attend- 
ance. Milwaukee is a wide-awake city and a good 
entertainer, and has a park system worth.y of the 
name, and as the papers to be presented and the re- 
ports to be submitted are of unusual import, it is 
safe to predict mutual advantage to both city and 
association. The headquarters will be at the Hotel 
Pfister. The work of the association is rapidly as- 
suming breadth and among the papers to be read is 
one bv Mrs. Basil Holmes, Hon. Sec. of the Metro- 
politan Public Gardens Association of London, Eng- 
land, on “The Open Space Movement in England." 
The report of the chairman of the committee on local 
improvement, IMrs. Erances Copley Seavey, on il- 
lage Improvement in the United States and Other 
Countries," wall be of great importance, while the 
committee reports g'enerally deal with matters of 
immediate public interest and are in the hands of 
competent men. Not by any means the least im- 
portant feature of the meeting will be the part taken 
bv the Woman's Auxiliary of the association, under 
the presidencv of Mrs. Herman J. Hall, of Chicago. 
Through the Woman’s Auxiliary, women through- 
out the countrv interested in the promotion of out- 
door art are eligible to membership in the associa- 
tion, and thus co-operation in the family or the com- 
munitv to promote the improvement of home and 
local surroundings is aided and encouraged. Un- 
questionably this association, comparatively young 
as it is. has exerted a vast amount of educational in- 
fluence, while an active participation in movements 
calculated to encourage reform and correct abuses in 
the interest of municipal and landscape embellish- 
ment is a matter of course as opportunities present 
themselves for successful accomplishment. The Mil- 
waukee meeting must be no exception to the record 
that much good has resulted to the municipality for- 
tunate enough to be honored by a convention of this 
association. 
AN IMPORTANT The report of Mr. C. R. 
8TATI0NAL TRUST. Ashbee to the members of 
the council and the e.xecutive committee of the Na- 
tional Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Nat- 
ural Beauty, England, and to the. members of the 
committee in Washington, on his recent trip to the 
United States to make known the historic and aes- 
thetic side of the work of the National Trust in Eng- 
land has recently been issued by that body. It is 
a most interesting document and should be gratify- 
ing to the -well-wdshers of the cause on both sides of 
the Atlantic. ]\Ir. Ashbee’s trip consumed three 
months, in the course of which he addressed some 50 
or 6d meetings in the leading cities of the countrv 
east of the Mississippi. In his lectures he specifi- 
cally stated that his object was not to secure funds 
for English objects, but to endeavor to secure con- 
certed action in the “safeguarding of the historic as- 
sociations of the English-speaking people, as a 
whole, and the amenities of life which are constantly 
threatened by modern commercialism.’’ The report 
generally suggests that the object of his journey w^as 
attained, he having met with practical assurances of 
support as soon as the central committee at Wash- 
ing'ton, which has been organized, gets into working 
order, and this committee will keep in touch with the 
London Council, and will establish an American 
Council. While mainly descriptive of his efforts and 
work with the several American organizations with 
which he came in contact, the report is full of sug- 
gestions and the results of the journey directly show 
that our intelligent citizens realize that it is the duty 
of the times to preserve historic relics, natural objects 
of interest, places and things that shall minister to 
the educational and pleasurable requirements of the 
race. His descriptions of the numerous state organ- 
izations having similar aims, carries with it the sug- 
gestion that a flexible central body with state 
branches mighi; be more effective. There is 
much food for thought in this alone, a fed- 
eration of the leading state societies of the 
country working on any given improvement 
idea, would seem to promise greater effi- 
ciencv in results and with less cost and labor. It is 
to be hoped that an American National Trust will 
soon be actively at work securing for the English- 
speaking people the many interesting historical and 
beautiful objects that the L'^nited States affords. 
