After visiting a number of English public grounds and seeing what people here are accustomed to I feel that it will be hardly possible for us to bring our directors and our subordinates, if ourselves, to adopt & maintain a standard of neatness sufficiently advanced to save us from reproach. Neither public nor private grounds & places are ever kept in America nearly as finely as it is all but universal for them to be here, and what we might—certainly what Chicagoans might—regard as creditably clean and neat & well-ordered, would here be thought shabby, sluttish and neglected. We must, I think, sacrifice something of picturesqueness and beauty of outlines & of plant arrangement, in order to facilitate neatness of keeping. And we must urge liberality of outlay for keeping. Burnham cannot be too strongly impressed with the importance of working up to a higher standard of keeping than such an one as we are all likely from habit to be willing to regard as admirable.

In such retrospective musing review as I find myself occasionally taking from this distance of our Chicago general plan I am pretty well satisfied but I feel that everything depends on the elaboration of it yet to be made and upon the keeping. And as to elaboration my judgment runs in ways that seem contradictory; First the whole affair looks too much disturbed, busy, fragmentary, incoherent, abounding in objects, lacking breadth and consistency and dignified sedateness. And I ask myself: Is the island going to be a sufficient corrective of this? And: Is the Lake not too much detached from the main body of the affair to serve the purpose of a relief from the excessive crowding of incident? On the other hand, I am afraid of an unfurnished effect. The drift of my practical thought is that we should aim to secure where practicable undisturbed breadths of fine turf & give much study to obtain quiet, graceful modeling and delicate play of light and shade wherever we can have such breadths. That we must press for originality of design, invention, simplicity & elegance in the artificial objects scattered through the grounds. Here one sees a great deal of elegance especially in decorative planting but after a little is impressed with the constant adherence to a few aims and a consequent monotony—monotony of a large scale—monotony of style and of variety in the use of a few materials. That we are in danger of having too much similarity and repetition of terrace effects around the lagoons: ought there not to be a distinguished separate architectural and horticultural individuality of motive in the terrace fronts—the pedestals—of each of the great buildings; some higher, some lower; some heavier, some lighter; some simpler, some more broken and complicated? That we must make the most of the opportunity given us in the island to secure a refreshing contrast with other parts more especially [505]the opposite shores; contrast of continuity and breadth as well as of abundant, mustering profuseness of untrammeled nature. I think more than ever of the value of the island, and of the importance of using all possible original means of securing impervious, screening dense massive piles of foliage on its borders; with abundant variety of small detail in abject subordination to general effect. To accomplish what is wanted within a year there must be all possible crowding and infinite small intricacy. There cannot be enough of bull rush, adlumia, Madeira vine, catbriar, Virginia bower, brambles, sweet peas, Jimson weed, milk weed, the smaller western sunflowers and morning glories. There cannot be enough of plants in pots to be crowded in, revised & replaced.—Such means that I am more than ever impressed with the importance of this element of the design. It is a very fine track they have here but the way they all & everywhere run into it & the absence of any thing original or really natural in their made pleasure grounds is a lesson. I suppose that it was even more so in France—that is just the fashionable style was followed with adaptation to circumstances. We must make the most of our opportunity & ability to do something appropriate yet very different.

I am called off as I finish the sheet.

Yours faithfully,