"Brooklyn has a park system of which she is proud to-day, and of which she will grow prouder. In Prospect Park she has a jewel, in the very heart of the community. In Forest Park she has a promise of great future development. That new park lies upon high ground overlooking a vast section of the borough and exhibiting to the eye the bay of Jamaica and the ocean beyond. Forest Park is richly endowed by nature, and it will in the days to come be in beauty above either Prospect or Central. Brooklyn has great driveways leading to the ocean along her harbor front and out into Long Island, and she has laid out many small parks and is still engaged upon that work. "In library matters Brooklyn to-day is well supplied. The system is most extensive and has been rapidly developed. It is another indication of what can be done when a department is decentralized. The Brooklyn Public Library is under the control of Brooklyn men. The board of estimate makes it an annual allowance. Andrew Carnegie gave to Brooklyn $1,600,000 for library construction. With that money twenty branch libraries are to be erected in time. Five are up; one is in operation. To-day there are over twenty branch libraries; most of them are in rented quarters, and they circulate over one million books a year among the people. "As another indication of the life of Brooklyn brief reference should be made to the Institute of Arts and Sciences, the great college of those beyond school years. It has been referred to as the intellectual bargain counter of Brooklyn. It offers at very moderate prices literary, historical, musical instruction and entertainment and lectures in all the sciences. It is well supported, and the city is building it a central building that will be the Mecca of the ambitious and the cultured. No other city in the land supports such an institution, and it is a great credit to us. "Brooklyn's spirit is due in a great measure to the nature of the press that caters to her. Her newspapers are intensely local in character. They give to her institutions such support as is not given to the institutions of any other city in the United States. It is this that has encouraged an intelligent and independent breadth of mind in Brooklyn. She keeps alive the old New England custom of a close watch over her government and of a constant discussion of all public questions. Englishmen are noted for their unremitting guard of their personal rights. They are not to be compared in this with Brooklynites who, in spite of a callous railroad system, still persist in demanding their rights.