This afternoon we were lent a car, so I drove him, with Louise, to a part of Central Park that he has talked of for days. It was not the grassy part (the view of that green space was enjoyed very much. It was most gratifying and pleasing to the eye as we sped by luxuriously in our limousine!). I dropped him at the wooded hillside which is like the country. You can see no houses, just wooded slopes and streams and waterfalls and ponds. He took his submarine and his steamer with him, and I left him there. When he came home in the evening I asked him if he had enjoyed it. He said, “The park men wouldn’t let me sail my ships--but I did!” He went on to explain that whenever he put his ships in the water a whistle was blown. Finally he and Louise got under a bridge, and under cover succeeded in breaking the prohibition rule for some time. “Some day--,” and there was a gleam in Dick’s eye that was something more than just the naughty look of a mischievous boy--“someday when I am a man, I shall have a gun, and I shall shoot every man with a whistle.” “Oh, Dick,” I protested. “Yes I shall--I shall be a Revolutioner!” And that is surely the effect on the young of a prohibition that cannot be explained. Dick knows of no reason why he should not walk on the grass, nor sail his ships in the streams; what is grass for? Why is there a park at all? There is one pond in Central Park for children’s ships, and there is a playground for children’s balls. But one small pond and one dusty playground, what is that among so many children? In such a big park? On St. Patrick’s Day, Dick and I came back through the Park from the Metropolitan Museum, and the procession was still passing by. People might not even stand on a rocky eminence to look over the wall. A parkman stood there, whistle in mouth, proudly, defiantly, king of all he surveyed. Over the wall came the sound of the bands, and the marching feet, but only the park-keeper could see the procession. Big-eyed children stood there, open-mouthed, at the sound of the “Wearing of the Green.” Truly he was not an Irishman, that park-keeper. And now I feel sad, and rather anxious, as spring is coming. I have work that keeps me a while longer in the city. Should I send Dick to a boarding-school in the country, so that he may enjoy the spring? So that he should not have daily to endure the sight of green grass viewed from a narrow gravel path, a path in which he may not even dig, or build sand castles. Must I send him away so that he shall not grow into a law-breaker and a “Revolutioner”? What we really want to know, is: Who does the green grass grow for, in Central Park? MONDAY MARCH 28, 1921. Have spent the Easter week-end in bed. I slept almost on end for sixty-eight hours, mentally and physically perfectly exhausted. It was heaven being in bed, and I didn’t attempt to read nor write, or even think.