The fact is that I have never had so long and deep a depression of spirits as the present and I know that I should do myself injustice if I wrote my uppermost mind on most subjects especially professional subjects. There are many complications of trouble upon me. Among them that is the action of the New York Park commission and my exceeding sorrow for the way they are treating Vaux, and the blow they are giving our profession. It does seem to me most unjust, most ungrateful, most unwise—I don’t know what to say. It is an official condemnation of Central Park. It is a verdict from the most important tribunal in the country against what I have most stood for & most cared for in all my life. It is a verdict in favor of that with which I have been most in contention—and of which contention I am wearied almost to death. And there are various circumstances all over the country crowding upon me all to the same effect. It all makes me shrink at the last moment from carrying out my plans for advancing my son Rick’s education for my profession. It is very difficult for me to avoid thinking that the profession as a profession & the art as an art is ruined.

Some of the incidents to which I allude are of Boston. In short, I feel that—But it is foolish I know to be talking about feelings. The only thing to say is that I am {in} no condition to take a healthy view of affairs.

Among the crowding misfortunes of the moment coming upon me with the general smash of the golden bowl this minor one about which you write comes in.

Pack Thomas is an estimable man. He has done an excellent work of a semi professional sort in reviewing & setting forth in a special report the folly of the ordinary ways of street planting as illustrated in Louisville. He is not the right man to do such work as you have asked of him. I did not know that you had asked it. (Had forgotten if I had ever known). I shd perhaps have taken a difft course if I had. I thought that the article was volunteered.

I would not hurt his feelings or snub him for anything. Perhaps the right thing would be to rewrite his article. You might do it. I don’t think that any of us could. We stand too near for a true perspective view.

I am sorry that I wrote to Cowan. I hope that you have not sent my letter or written him & yet I don’t know what else to suggest.

This is thus a formal apology to you. If I can recover from the dumps I am in I will try to write you again. I shall be very sorry to hurt Pack Thomas’s feelings. I want very much that you shd do what he wants. I am tempted to say that you had better publish his article with such variations as you may think best. Could you give it the form of a letter volunteered from Louisville, so as [844] {to} mitigate editorial responsibility? If only you could go there and make a personal review.

It seems to me a rather bad scrape but I know that I am very sick and unfit to advise about it. You must fairly understand the situation & I must trust you to apply common sense to it.

Yours Truly