I believe I told you that the Brooklyn Park people adopted my suggestions generally and applied to the Legislature for improved en-trance & for certain preliminary powers that would enable them to apply next year for power to get the land wanted on the other side. They succeeded and I am now treating with them in Detail as to design. I ask $5000 for plan & $5000 per ann to commence at once and expenses to Europe this summer. The Plan is to be completed in Decr, then they are to use it to help them get the ground &c. All this, you see, gives easy time. They seem quiet inoffensive people—you know the prime mover, Stranahan perhaps. He has shown readiness to act now. I easily accept his excuses for not carrying out Viele’s plan.

Green keeps communicating with me, we meet in the street now. He cannot come to me, I cannot go to him. He is in a stew apparently, and would of course like to get me committed. I remind him of your withdrawal of resignation and its unsatisfactory result. I tell him we are out and are satisfied to remain so. My only object in communicating with him is to get information. He says he should be sorry if the present state of affairs should drift into an antagonism. I point out to him that the antagonism has existed for some time but that it has not been my policy to mention it. You see that the Commission must be in a queer state for [373]him, after the publication of my letter, to talk in this way. I tell him that I shall do nothing without consulting you.

I cannot of course tell how you are situated, or what risks you are inclined to take or whether you really want to go ahead, and give the public what they have a right to ask from a work of this kind, an organised system for supplying the demand it necessarily creates. At present all this is in a very defective state. The war has occupied the attention of the people and I suppose you know enough of human nature to be aware that nobody has begun to miss you much yet. If you were to walk down Broadway tomorrow, it would be all perfectly natural and your friends would be glad to see you. Nobody cares two straws for the mines in St. Francisco. As yet you are the representative man of the C.P. and not much else to New Yorkers, and very likely the majority of those who think of the matter at all suppose you still to be at work there. Most of the artists certainly till the last week or two thought that I was there as usual. You have taken so little pains to cultivate the art interest, that as yet of course you are personally somewhat unknown to your brother centurions. But all this is in good enough shape, as you can readily see.

In my proposition to the B.P.C., I did not—as I intended when I last wrote to you—distinctly say to them that I proposed to offer you the opportunity to combine in this matter as you offered me the opportunity to combine in the other. I had it in the draft, but Withers thought it better not to speak so decidedly and as it were to own the need, until sure of your willingness—in this he is right, for you can clearly see that when the link is once decidedly severed, it will be difficult to re-unite it & I shall have to make the best of my lonely position. At present, all is square and intelligible before the public and your park reputation is in a logical shape.

If I go on and do Brooklyn alone, well or ill, you suffer because the public naturally will say, if Olmsted really was the prime mover in the C.P. why is he not ready to go forward in the path that he started in. Moreover the C.P. slides into bad shape and I have either to take it or let it alone. I think I should have to let it alone but if I were to take it afresh, you of course would suffer. In this, as you see, all depends on your own present view of affairs. I have no end to gain but the advancement of the whole thing and its proper development. You I know want to manage the park. Of course you do, the artistic development requires it. I see that and have always seen it and never opposed you in any way. My position always was, do it first and manage it afterwards. If you want to be President of that old rattle trap C.P.C., why I suppose you could be it and live on the park till the end of your life, but you must have a plan of campaign.

The term Landscape Architect does not suit you, well I am sorry [374]for it. I think it is the art title. We want to set art ahead and make it command its position, administration, management, funds, commission, popularity and everything else—then we have a tangible something to stand on. As administration with art attached as a makeweight the thing is in wrong shape. My tie to you exclusive of personal attachment which does not influence me much in these days is an art tie. I recognise your ability and that you belong to that side, squarely and fairly. You have now a seven years reputation, long enough of course for anyone, and it remains to be seen whether you will use it or not. I shall not advise but, if when I return in the Fall you should happen to be here again disengaged and willing to devote a decade to Landscape art, why, there is the half of Brooklyn to begin on and all we can get besides but it must not be a pis aller. My position is that I have defended you from yourself and that “Olmsted & Vaux” is an institution that ought not to be a mere bubble to be blown away heedlessly. You see there is time to think things over. If you were here I suppose we could put in a good knock now but you are not and the chance may go by. Of course they will try and get some new man &c, but the apple of Sodom fair as it looks, is but an apple of Sodom, after all. Goodbye for today