If you will read the papers transmitted by the Department of Parks with its Estimates for 1875 to the Board of Apportionment, which includes one from me on the requirements of the parks, you will find in it I think all you need. You will see so far as Central Park is concerned that the estimates were regulated by a consideration of what has been expended on the park the present and of late years and the results obtained.

In largely reducing this estimate the Board of Apportionment says one of two things—either that this Department has paid an excessive price for what has been done heretofore or that too much has been done.

No doubt the Department does pay too much but it stands with all others in this respect & the Board of Apportionment does not I presume expect it to reduce wages, employ a better class of men, exact more from them or disregard the 8 hour law.

I assume, therefore, that the Board of Apportionment means that the standard of keeping on the parks has been of late too high.

There are certain items of which the expense might be saved with no injury to the ultimate value of the park—as those of keeping the skating [83] ground, providing music etc. But these on account of their popularity would be the last to be given up. The items on which expenditure will be saved are those by slighting which the development of the park will be arrested and thwarted, by which the tendency to make it an unsafe, immoral and unpleasant place of recreation for young women & children will be increased.

I can’t, while serving the Commissioners, publicly criticise them or furnish you the means to do so, but my report gives you a sufficient clue to my views on the question whether the present standard in the keeping of the park is an economical one—Supposing that you will not want to use my opinion, but to save you the trouble of studying what I have written enough to guess what I think, I tell you that I think the park is going to the devil and have grave doubt whether the undertaking to provide a rural recreation ground upon such a site in the midst of a city like this was not a mistake, was not doomed to failure because of the general ignorance of the conditions of success and the impossibility of getting proper care taken of it.

See what I have said about the masonry, and consider how roadwork, turf, drains will suffer if too little cared for year after year or unless kept with a liberal conservation. Take the more subtle & indescribable elemnts such as bits of fern or ivy in just the right quantity & quality in a particular niche. Consider what vermin & insects do if they once get well the upper hand of a garden in a private place.

The Park can easily become a nuisance and curse to the city.

What is needed from year to year to prevent it is not to be hastily determined by men not constantly watching it and familiar with the conditions on which success or failure depends. There is no Board that should be distrusted less than the Park Board but you will find that the Board of Apportionment has made a larger proportioned reduction on the park board’s estimates than on those of any other department.

I say nothing of the Westchester question which is not on my beat.

As to the “mule,” you are quite right in what you have said of his quarrel with Van Nort and its effects. When you treat him or depend on him otherwise than as on a bucker you will not have to wait long to learn your error.