The cook and a last helper of some unknown function carry our trunks
to the station. But it has now suddenly become a question whether we
shall go on the 12.20 or wait for the 5.20. It depends finally upon our
getting a last lunch at the restaurant of the bathing-beach. We ask,
limiting our demands to a clam chowder. We are answered that there
are still clams, but the man who knows how to make chowder is gone.
The restaurant family are going to lunch upon a ham bone, which is now
being scraped for them. We refuse to share it with many thanks, and
decide to go on the 12.20.
I have paid my last bill.
On the 10th of August a pomp of liveried menials met me as I alighted
from the train, and contended for the honor and profit of carrying my
umbrella into the hotel.
On the 17th of September I myself carry a heavy satchel in each hand
out through the echoing corridors down the wide veranda stairs to the
train, unattended by a single fee-taker.
The hotel is closed.
GLIMPSES OF CENTRAL PARK.
This morning, as I sat on a bench in one of the most frequented walks
of Central Park, I could almost have touched the sparrows on the sprays
about me; a squirrel, foraging for nuts, climbed on my knees, as if
to explore my pockets. Of course, there is a policeman at every turn
to see that no wrong is done these pretty creatures, and that no sort
of trespass is committed by any in the domain of all; but I like to
think that the security and immunity of the Park is proof of something
besides the vigilance of its guardians; that it is a hint of a growing
sense in Americans that what is common is the personal charge of every
one in the community.
As I turn from my page and look out upon it, I see the domes and
spires of its foliage beginning to feel the autumn and taking on the
wonderful sunset tints of the year in its decline; when I stray through
its pleasant paths, I feel the pathos of the tender October air;
but, better than these sensuous delights, in everything of it and in
it, I imagine a prophecy of the truer state which I believe America
is destined yet to see established. It cannot be that the countless
thousands who continually visit it, and share equally in its beauty,
can all come away insensible of the meaning of it; here and there some
one must ask himself, and then ask others, why the whole of life should
not be as generous and as just as this part of it; why he should not
have a country as palpably his own as the Central Park is, where his
ownership excludes the ownership of no other. Some workman out of work,
as he trudges aimlessly through its paths must wonder why the city
cannot minister to his need as well as his pleasure, and not hold aloof
from him till he is thrown a pauper on its fitful charities. If it can
give him this magnificent garden for his forced leisure, why cannot it
give him a shop where he can go in extremity, to earn his bread?
I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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