Don’t overlook the article headed “The British Boston,” in this, Saturday, Evening’s Transcript. Observe the historic propriety of the term “Fens.” It’s too bad that people so generally call the place the Back Bay Park; it being no more park-like than it is orchard-like or corn-field-like. This was the reason that before the first stroke of work was done upon it, we had its name officially changed to that of the Fens; a term made familiar to me when visiting a gentleman who, after living some time in America, had bought an Estate in Lincolnshire. Otherwise, also, by a friend who spent a summer’s vacation with his family cruising in a sail boat in the Fens of Lincolnshire. (I have an English Dictionary of 1706, in which the signification of Fens is “Marsh or Boggy Ground”). The name Fens should preserve the fact that there are at this time hundreds of acres of land and water to which this term is perfectly appropriate, being descriptive of a natural condition which in the public pleasure ground that we have made has {been} attempted to be, to a small extent, preserved, partly as a matter of historical interest.

We are waiting for a good euphonious name of ancient origin, or perpetuating some historic circumstance, which we can propose as a substitute for “North End Park.”

But it is a real loss to Boston that the recreation ground which has been laboriously built on its fens should be called by the name it is. We have never recognized the term. In all our reports it is called The Fens. No better definition of the geographical character of the region as it has been, is, and will be, can be found than that signified by the name Fens.

Gilpin, the most exact writer in the English language on this class of subjects, defines a Fen as “a plashy inundation, formed in a flat, xxx of ambiguous texture, half water and half land.” Consider that our plan provides for a slight inundation of the marshy ground every tide and you will see the propriety of the term.

It will be a pity if this recreation ground shall continue to be called a park. It has not a single characteristic of a park. I have defined this historical meaning of the word park in an article under that head in the American Cyclopedia written more than thirty years ago.

Such inexactness of terms as this Boston usage illustrates is not favorable to good morals. It ought to be strenuously put down. It ranges with the usage of calling a piece of paper a dollar, leading people to forget that it is but the promise of a dollar.

I am waiting for you to supply me with names that can be applied to our new North end pleasure landing. There will be a bit of strand upon it. Perhaps Northstrand would do. But I feel sure that a good euphonious name, perpetuating a circumstance of some historical importance, could be turned up with sufficient research. I think that I have looked over pretty nearly every thing in print without success. A real antiquary would hit it in an hour, probably. I am a life member of the Boston Historical Society, I believe, but I know no one at its office and have never searched its records.

Yours Truly,