I know that no word of mine can add to the force of this movement. I am neither great tax-payer nor eminent sanitarist. I cannot hope to equal others who have discussed the moral, aesthetic, sanitary, and economic phases of the question before us. But, happily, there is no need of such discussion now. The question of public parks has been submitted, in all its forms and probable effects, to the ablest, keenest, wisest, of our citizens; and there is but one answer. The answer is, that we need more out-door life than our sedentary race enjoys, and that public grounds, accessible to all, are not only desirable, but necessary to the moral and physical health of our crowded population. This is the verdict; and, granted this, there remain but two questions,--"Is this the time?" "Can we afford it?" To some, the present is never the time for any thing. Their motto seems to be, "Don't do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow, because you may not live till to-morrow, and then you won't have to do it at all." This principle has been acted upon by short-sighted Boston too long; and the result is a melancholy looking-back to the time when improvements could have been made for a tenth or a fifteenth of the present cost. We are told of our beautiful suburbs, as if they can be suburbs forever. Even now, they are but for the rich. Beware of trespassing in the fields and woods: they are private property. The roads seem to belong to blood-horses and their owners. If you wish to know the future, look at the past. Look back, you aged men, to the fields and gardens of Tremont and Boylston Streets. Look back, you younger men, to rambles through South Boston farms, and land at "South End" sold by the acre. Always comes the old conservative admonition, "Wait!"--yes, wait till the great sea-wall makes City Point of Castle Island,--wait till the now extended arms of Boston clasp Brookline to the bosom of the metropolis,--wait till private avarice and easy legislation, acting intermittently, deface the shore and basin of Charles River,--wait till the dense and ever growing population, bursting from its narrow bounds, spreads itself in streets laid out at random, over what you are pleased to call our suburbs,--wait, in short, till the inevitable happens, and where are your public parks? You may have them, even then, I grant you; but you will have them where _the people_ cannot reach them, and where the cost will be too great. Remember that our city growth is like the growth of all cities in the New World and the Old; and, if we want green places in the future Boston, we must seize them now.