If our environment helps make our character, then give us
more parks and quiet retreats among the hills, where from the
breezy uplands we get broader, clearer views.
What a contrast is here in this clean, well-kept American city
to European cities! There, ofttimes, we find narrow, crooked and
dirty streets, and what is worse thousands of children who never
knew the meaning of the word "home." Instead of filthy alleys
filled with smoke and foul smelling gases and profanity and
unclean jests from vagrant lips they should have, as the
children here, the benefits of grassy lawns, running brooks and
singing birds, the natural birthrights of every child. Oh! For
more great hearted men who are more considerate of the sorrows
and cares of others and less considerate of self, as that self
exists for others' good! We thought of the wonderful parks of
Antwerp, Belgium, where the land is so thickly populated, yet
where the love for the beautiful in Art and Nature is so
universal as to perpetuate these lovely parks, thus enriching
the lives of all who see them.
It is pitiful to see in the many smoky cities the little done
for this thirst for beauty, inherent in all. Even in the poorest
sections where many foreigners dwell one sees a broken pitcher
with its stunted geranium, a window box with ferns and vines or
a canary in a rude cage. As soon as a movement is on foot for
parks the seekers after gain will be there howling "the poor
must be fed!" Of course they must, but the body sometimes is the
least part of man that needs nourishment; the soul hungers and
thirsts for the beautiful.
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