The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The comprehensiveness of purpose and the variety of detail of the plan
far exceed those of any other park in the world, and have involved, and
continue to involve, a greater amount of study and invention than has
ever before been given to a park. A consideration of this should enforce
an unusually careful method of maintenance, both in the gardening and
police departments. Sweeping with a broom of brush-wood once a week is
well enough for a hovel; but the floors of a palace must needs be daily
waxed and polished, to justify their original cost. We are unused to
thorough gardening in this country. There are not in all the United
States a dozen lawns or grass-plots so well kept as the majority of
tradesmen's door-yards in England or Holland. Few of our citizens have
ever seen a really well-kept ground. During the last summer, much of the
Park was in a state of which the Superintendent professed himself to be
ashamed; but it caused not the slightest comment with the public, so far
as we heard. As nearly all men in office, who have not a personal taste
to satisfy, are well content, if they succeed in satisfying the public,
we fear the Superintendent will be forced to "economize" on the keeping
of the Park, as he was the past year, to a degree which will be as far
from true economy as the cleaning of mosaic floors with birch brooms.
The Park is laid out in a manner which assumes and requires cleanly and
orderly habits in those who use it; much of its good quality will be
lost, if it be not very neatly kept; and such negligence in the keeping
will tend to negligence in the using.
In the plan, there is taken for granted a generally good inclination, a
cleanly, temperate, orderly disposition, on the part of the public which
is to frequent the Park, and finally to be the governors of its keeping,
and a good, well-disposed, and well-disciplined police force, who would,
in spite of "the inabilities of a republic," adequately control the
cases exceptional to the assumed general good habits of that public,--at
the same time neglecting no precaution to facilitate the convenient
enforcement of the laws, and reduce the temptation to disorderly
practices to a minimum.
How thoroughly justified has been this confidence in the people, taking
into account the novelty of a good public ground, of cleanliness in our
public places, and indeed the novelty of the whole undertaking, we have
already intimated. How much the privileges of the Park in its present
incomplete condition are appreciated, and how generally the requirements
of order are satisfied, the following summary, compiled from the
Park-keeper's reports of the first summer's use after the roads of the
Lower Park were opened, will inadequately show.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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