I have read with regret yours of yesterday just received. Referring to my advice of 25th you state that with your present imperfect arrangements travel to the mountain is greatly increasing. It would cost little to double the convenient carrying capacity of the present road at the place in question and make it during the summer a quieter and in every way more agreeable road than one of stone can be. It is only for the early spring and after showers that an earth road is not much better for pleasure driving than a McAdamized road.

That with your present awkward arrangmnts the travel is larger than you have expected is a slight indication of the value which may be developed for the city by proper improvemnts of the mountain and a sound reason for carefully avoiding false steps.

The road plans I have furnished you, both for the bit of road particularly referred to and all of the remainder, have been designed with the reservoir in view as one element of the work of which they were another and I can only recommend construction to proceed on any part of the road hand in hand with that of the reservoir.

I observed in my last that slight differences might be found desirable in the plan of the reservoir which should modify the plan of road with regard to which you questioned me. It is now obvious from what you say that after a year or two, with returning prosperity, an increase of population, rapid progress in building, new members of the Common Council, new Committees and possibly a new water works engineer, the whole project of the reservoir is liable to be reconsidered; that a larger one may be required or a different situation preferred. In that case the entire plan of roads which I have given you beyond the road already made will have been badly designed and, if carried out, will be regarded as a costly and vexatious mistake. As to the stretch of road which you are more particularly anxious to undertake it would in that case be a barbarism, for which, speaking as a friend, I should be very sorry to have you in the long future of the mountain held responsible.

I fear that the necessity of making the project temporarily popular is constantly urging a policy on the Commission which if its results could be fully recognized would be anything but popular.

Allow me to point out to you why this work should stand on a different footing from other city works in this respect and be managed through quite different methods of administration.

The best results of sewer, pavement, lighting and water supply improvments are demonstrated the moment the expenditure required for them [236] has been made. Their profit is simple, direct and may in a great degree be so measured and stated in advance as to be readily comprehended. Each step in the progress of construction has a comparatively direct and intelligible bearing on the promised result. Hence with rare exceptions the practice of managing them through Common Council Committees is as safe, conservative, economical and efficient as any that has yet been tried.

Park improvments are of a wholly different class. They do not look to the immediate relief of tangible, serious and generally felt public inconveniences. Public opinion cannot, therefore, act in the same manner upon those having them in charge as in the case of other works for the public benifit. There mayor may not be some immediately valuable results of the work as it advances, appreciable by the general public, but whether there are or not, such results are the last and least that should be considered in laying them out. They can by no possibility ever furnish a sound justification for the required expenditure and if the disposition of ignorant and inconsiderate critics to look upon them in that light is in the least encouraged or the right of any man to judge them in this manner admitted, the administration will necesarily be condemned and come to grief.

With sound managmnt after a year or two the real purport and value of the improvemnts will begin to develop and will thereafter increase at a rapidly advancing rate of augmentation for a period of at least fifty years. Money cautiously spent for such a result is likely to be well spent. Money spent for the immediate gratification of the public is almost sure to be extravagantly spent.

Consequently when works of this kind have been managed by Committees dependent from season to season for their funds upon the satisfaction which is immediately felt by the public with what they appear to superficial observers to be doing, they have in every instance within my knowledge after a few years proved mortifying disappointments. On the other hand every one which is generally recognized as a great success, and in which there is general pride and satisfaction has been managed by a proper Commission specially constituted for the purpose in a large degree independent of the Common Council and employing funds, raised expressly with a view to carry out the whole of a particular scheme, usually by a loan specially negociated for the purpose and secured by pledge of the property to be improved.

Of course, I do not mean to suggest that this is the only way in which such a work can be judiciously managed, but I will not conceal my opinion that it is most unfortunate that any attempt should be made to improve such a noble property as the mountain at all while so many elements of uncertainty exist as to the conditions by which its character must be affected & with a policy toward it on the part of the Common Council so unfixed and uncertain from year to year.