I am sorry not to have seen you on my visit last Saturday to Mayville. I could not fix the time for my going there until after meeting the Park Commissioners at Buffalo the night before and you doubtless received my telegram too late.

As I gave my professional opinion with reference to the land which I examined and on those points on which I was consulted to the Revd Mr Miller and the other gentlemen interested whom I had the pleasure of seeing at Mayville I propose to write to you at this time personally and confidentially, having occasion to say some things which courtesy would hardly permit me to address to them on account of the connection which they have had with the Fair Point Camp, or so called “park” of Palestine. It appeared to me that they [152] regarded the proposed enterprise at Leets Point as one of similar character, hoping only for an improvement upon it. Also that, though in a certain qualified way, perhaps, but still positively, they regarded it—the Fair Point affair—with admiration.

I am far from doing so. Passing the arrangmnts for public worship which are, at least, thoroughly respectable, and the model of Palestine, which for a temporary exhibition designed to interest, instruct and please Sunday School children was a good notion though carried out in a slovenly and im-provident way, not good for the education of anybody, there was nothing in the place, except the damaged natural features, that struck me at all agreeably while there was much that made me indignant.

When land is sold as it has been there, it is with a view to its occupation as a place of healthful summer recreation. Whoever has been led to buy land at Fair Point on that assumption has been swindled. The swindle is the more wicked that there is a pretence of organization by intelligent and educated men at its back, which is miserable quackery. Worse still, that there is a pretense of a religious motive, which is cant of the meanest and most despicable sort.

If you think I speak hastily, please consider that the main difference between a camp, village or city of a pagan and barbrous and of a Christian and enlightened people is that in the latter the results of experience and study are better applied to guard against the degrading and sickening influences which the lodging of great numbers of persons in close contiguity invariably tends to induce.

I have travelled nearly around the world and have fared with many tribes and nations but I have never before seen a place at which people had lodged in anything like the numbers they have at Fair Point—or as it has been deliberately intended by the managing of it that they should, for months together, in which the most firmly established laws of health and laws of morality for communities were so set at defiance as they appear to have been there.

Not doubting that there had been a certain degree of good motive in its origin and managment, I must think it in the last degree disgraceful to the intelligence of our country that 6000 people could have been found willing to live and expose their families to the danger of such arrangmnts. The wealth of the State of New York would not induce me to trust mine at Fair Point for a week.

It is a well known rule that the influence of such a manner of living affects men insidiously, silently and slowly, or that it shows itself at intervals in tempest-like bursts of pestilence. Hence it is not at all surprising that the danger has not made itself felt, but I would stake all the reputation I have earned on the prediction that if no radical change of arrangment is made at Fair Point and it shall continue to be resorted to as it has been or by half or quarter the number of people, it will, after a few years, become notorious as the place [153] where hundreds have taken the seed of untimely death, and that it is not the worst to be feared from it.

It is needless to add that I will have nothing to do with the preparation of anything of a similar character.

But I have asked myself to what is the immediate popularity of such a place as Fair Point due? I suppose it is mainly and primarily to the opportunity which it is supposed to offer for a long summer relief from ordinary conditions of business and of household care; for gaining health by change of air, and for gratifying the gregarious, social and devotional inclinations of human nature at comparatively small cost. Except as to the devotional elemnt Fair Point has been expected to serve people of moderate means and simple tastes and habits in place of Saratoga, Long Branch or Newport. In respect to the devotional element, as a prolonged and improved camp-meeting.

If this is the explanation of the crowds that remained for weeks at Fair Point last summer, the success of such miserable arrangements demonstrates the existence of a real public need of such urgency that in all probability the full and legitimate development of it has not yet begun to be witnessed. It is a case of demand undeveloped because of undeveloped supply. The demand jumps to meet the first weak pretence of supply.

I call it—the whole arrangement at Fair Point—a pretence because it will surely supply disease, not health, and as to the devotional element, the history of our race everywhere demonstrates that Godliness and cleanliness are in close contiguity and that there is such a thing as the material washing away of many sinful propensities as well as the typical washing away of sin. Fair Point will breed moral degredation as surely as a carcass will breed maggots.

An honest, well studied, substantial undertaking to satisfy this public want would be an honorable and beneficient enterprise, as well carried out it doubtless would be a perfectly sound commercial one.

Among the essential conditions of permanent and secure success in such an enterprise would be:

1st   ample means and inoffensive methods of removing and disposing of wastes and filth of all kinds.

2d   ample and convenient water supply.

3d   Elements of attraction which would give promise by their character that the place would increase in beauty, comfort and popularity from year to year and not such as bear conspicuous seeds of dreary decay, shabbyness and delapidation, of disease, degredation and death.

What is wanted is, in fact, a summer city. No civilized family lives voluntarily in a city which lacks the two first provisions. No summer city will be long endurable without them. The elements which make places attractive as summer residences the world over, (aside from the social ones, which are not to be directly supplied like articles of merchandize) are trees, shrubs & flowers, with ample means of taking the air and enjoying prospects.

[154]

(Consider for a moment what nearly half the houses at Fair Point are in these respects. The windows of one look into those of another, the exhaled air and all the gaseous wastes of one drift directly into another, the slops of one soak under the sills of another. There is no foliage to be seen except overhead, where it serves to shut out the most important requirement for the preservation of health under such circumstances—the disinfecting and prophylactic influence of direct sunlight.)

The providing of the three conditions I have named must go far before those for public worship and social recreations. (If anything is an insult and abomination to the Lord, who has established the laws of health and of the preservation of decency and given us intelligence to understand them if we will, it must be public worship under such conditions as have been established at Fair Point). With them must come highways, not the false promises of highways of the map of Fair Point. To get these things there would be required not only the general Plan which I might furnish but a man of some degree of practical knowledge, experience and skill in such business to plan and determine the details and direct and superintend their execution.

Of course it is a problem how to realize these conditions in a manner consistent with the purpose of providing what is required at a sufficiently low price to the purchasers and tenants, a problem the proper solution of which requires ingenuity and special study.

I need not add that a much larger capital would also be required than has been used at Fair Point, but it would not be nearly as large as you might at first imagine if the plans were shrewdly designed in consideration of the fact that the arrangmnts were to be only for summer use & much ordinary provision against frost could be avoided.

In all probability the dividends on the necessary investmnt would not come so soon or be at once so large as they would on something more nearly imitating the Fair Point speculation, but in my judgmnt they would be surer to continue and be increasing for many years.

The Leets Point property, with strips along the shore running each way from it is well adapted to such an undertaking. There are many advantages as I explained to Mr Miller in confining operations mainly to the close vicinity of the shore. The cost of the works will be less, their value greater.

On the principle that it is better to sell 100 acres of land at a profit of $25 an acre than 25 acres at a profit of $50 an acre, I have little doubt that a more spacious and liberal character in the plan and the sale of land in larger measures than at Fair Point would be good policy.

I have said all that is necessary for my immediate purpose. For an undertaking such as I have indicated I would make a general plan, on my usual terms. I do not wish to do so and I would rather advise you to employ a man who would be able to give to the business more time and personal study and to aid more in the practical management of the work than I could. Mr. H. W. S Cleveland of Chicago with whom I have heretofore cooperated [155] with much satisfaction & who has done an extensive business at the first but is now I believe in want of occupation, would, for example, be such a man—a most worthy, industrious and skilful Landscape Architect. You might possibly secure the service of Mr. F. J. Scott of Toledo, who judging from his book must be fully as competent as I am—in some respects more so, but I fear he is not open to an engagment.

If you wish to make a demonstration next summer, which I would not advise, I would remind you that a camp of tents, skilfully displayed with suitable temporary decorations of bunting, annual vines, flowers, evergreens & various spectacular and theatrical devices on a green field is infinitely more attractive than one of shantees and that it would cost but little if anything more to make sanitary provisions of a temporary character for large number of people decent & complete than barely passable and indecent. Most of the requisite means for such a purpose could I presume be rented for the summer, transported to the ground and made ready for use on short orders.