On the 9th inst. the Board was informed that the statue of Halleck was intended to be unveiled on the 15th, and that plans had been formed for the occasion for the carrying out of which its sanction and aid were needed.

It was ascertained that the committee having the matter in charge had already made an engagement with the President of the United States, and numerous distinguished persons, to take part in the proceedings, and also to associate with them a military display under the form of an act of courtesy to the President. A thousand invitations had been printed and mainly sent out, [319] each promising a secured seat for two persons; sixty special guests of the committee were also to be provided for upon the platform or in reserved seats adjoining it.

These arrangements had been so far advanced that, on the whole, it seemed best to take the risks of carrying them through than to attempt to have them changed.

Preparations were made on the ground as follows:—A square in front of the statue, large enough to contain seats for the required number was enclosed by a line of posts connected by a strong rope and by a line of iron framed settees, set back outwards, below the rope. An entrance was left at the middle of the Mall, on the south side, and another at the platform. The approach to the rear of the platform from the drive, and the space to be occupied by the military, was enclosed by a rope carried by posts and trees, and, where pressure was likely to be greatest, by a well-braced fence of scantling. The total line of enclosure was 1, 600 feet.

The force available for preserving order consisted of a captain and fifty men of the 7th Regiment, and the lieutenant of the park keepers, three sergeants and sixty-nine uniformed privates. The force, coming on the ground a little before two, at once, and without difficulty, cleared the enclosure of about 3, 000 persons who had previously occupied it, and was then distributed along the lines above defined and the drives leading to them.

The two nearest carriage entrances to the Park from Fifth Avenue were closed except to footmen, and no one was allowed to pass on the drives except those bearing passes from the committee. After the crowd, pressing towards the platform, had become so large and dense that a lane could no longer be kept open without constant exercise of force, visitors with passes were sent along the drive and through the military lines and were able to the last to come to the seats with comfort. Ushers had been provided in addition to the keepers, but, as visitors would not be guided by them, or remain where placed unless in seats near the platform, the attempt to regulate the seating was abandoned.

Just before the military procession reached the ground an inspection was made of the entire line of enclosure and of the approaches to it for several hundred yards each way. At every point on a frontage of more than 3, 000 feet there was a pressing crowd, and it appeared everywhere to be deep and compact. Every rock and other elevation from which it could be at all overlooked was seen to be packed with people, and between these and the standing mass pressing toward the ropes there were moving swarms. From the southern and eastern entrances to the park, streams of visitors choked and overflowed all the walks and poured through the borders and shrubberies. From the enclosure of the seats near the platform southward to the end of the Mall there was a mass so dense that one of the park keepers who undertook to carry a prisoner through it, states that for a distance of fully 250 feet no one could move in it except by pressing others back. Many women begged to be assisted in getting [320] out. A great many people, mostly women and children, when they came near enough to see the standing crowd, turned aside or back and made their way through the vines, shrubs and evergreens, seeking either a place where they could sit in the shade or where the passing crowd could be overlooked. It had been announced that the military would pass out of the park escorting the President along the approach from the Scholar’s Gate, and for more than an hour all the ground adjoining this road and every point on each side from which it could be observed was occupied. Boys climbed into the trees, and girls, to pass away the time, made garlands of flowers and leaves, which they picked as if in the wild woods.

At the same time the Concert Ground, the Pergola, the Casino, the Terrace, and all the open spaces nearly a quarter of a mile away to the northward are stated by those in charge of them to have been crowded, chiefly by people who had abandoned the attempt to get a standing place within sight of the platform.

The gatekeepers report that at times the people came in like a mob, in such numbers that the attempt to count or estimate them was abandoned. The general report is that never before had half so many been seen passing in. The influx continued till the end of the ceremonies, when the current was suddenly reversed.

Apprehending that on the approach of the military there would be a general movement toward the point at which it was to enter between the two wings of the fixed crowd, the military guard and keepers’ force on the drive near by that point was strengthened, that near the platform being correspondingly reduced.

With the entrance of the procession upon the park came an additional press of people who had been previously attracted to the review by the President in Seventy-fourth Street.

The belief that when the President, rising upon the platform to remove the veil from the statue, would stand so high as to be seen even in the rear of the standing crowd, led the greater number of those who had been roving on the outside of it, as the bands were heard approaching, to move from all sides toward the statue, which, draped in flags, was a conspicuous object. This movement adding to the previously great pressure, became almost unendurable to those nearest the ropes. Some women were drawn out fainting, and a line, chiefly of children, was allowed to be formed sitting under and outside the ropes.

The request of the committee that 2, 000 seats should be reserved for guests bearing their invitations, and 30 immediately in front of the platform for those with special cards had been strictly complied with, but of the first not more than a third and of the last but a sixth had presented themselves. Between the main body of spectators and the platform there was consequently an empty space when the President arrived, large enough to contain several thousand persons standing. This, it is needless to say, was an exasperating sight [321] to those on all sides who were under the torture of the crowd constantly struggling to get nearer.

As the President passed from his carriage toward the platform, a distance of 400 feet, there was some struggle by those a little back of the front line to place themselves nearer, and to lift themselves, so as to get sight of him. A few were thrown over the ropes, and in the flurry others followed, and ran after the Presidential party toward the platform, but there was no general break.

As the President appeared on the platform there was a general movement toward it, with loud and continuous cheering and clamor, in the midst of which several of the iron frames of the settees gave way, and a number of persons leapt or were pitched into the but half-filled enclosure. The reserved seats were instantly occupied, and there was for a few moments considerable crowding and confusion within the enclosure, but no violent rush, and fortunately not the least panic. The band played the opening piece of music, the assembly became quiet, and the exercises went on in regular order.

At their close the President and his party returned without difficulty to their carriages, and the military column formed and moved out of the park, followed closely by the greater part of those present.

To these minutes we shall add some general observations.

The day was fair, the temperature warm for the season, but not oppressive, and the park in the richest possible condition of foliage and bloom. The so-called "Carnival” procession in the forenoon had been extensively advertised, and had brought in a great many people from the country who had made it a part of the plan of their holiday to visit the park. A considerable proportion of the men present had their wives and children with them, and throughout all of the crowd there were many women. The proportion of decided roughs was nowhere large, and that of quiet, civil and well-disposed people nowhere small. The spirit of the crowd as a body was patient, good-natured and accommodating. With a very few individual exceptions, there was not only a willingness but an evident good-will and effort to meet the requirements of the authorities, and to maintain such a degree of order and decorum as was appropriate under the circumstances. We did not hear a harsh word, nor witness any violence. We did not see a drunken man, and not a personal injury to anyone has been reported.

In view of all these facts it is gravely significant, and we trust that the lesson will not be overlooked, that as with respect to all the special regulations which are necessary for the development of the park as a place of rural recreation, the crowd was essentially a mob, lawless and uncontrollable. Had the whole police force of the city been on the ground, it could have done little toward protecting the property which it is the essence of the department’s special trust to preserve. Judging from all experience, it would have made no attempt to do so. The keepers of the park, who are supposed to be trained especially for this duty, looked upon the most flagrant offences against the [322] ordinances of the department in thousands of instances under an impression apparently that they were for the time being suspended.

An hour after the military had left the ground we saw keepers repeatedly pass by a group, mainly of children, who in their play were trampling upon and about a piece of rockwork, the crevices of which were filled with delicate plants in bloom and the edges fringed with ferns and mosses. The life of these was stamped out, and in places the ground was left beaten hard, and without a tinge of green remaining.

We saw women and girls breaking off branches of lilacs loaded with bloom, and others carrying aloft bundles of similar branches, passing out of the park by way of the police station, perfectly oblivious of the fact that it subjected them to arrest and punishment. We asked two men openly breaking the law, if they knew that they were doing so; both answered smilingly that the law just then was not of much account.

Long after the President and the military had disappeared, people, especially children, continued to rove off the walks, quietly breaking down and trampling over shrubs and vines, and seemed surprised when remonstrated with.

The turf in the park was in the best condition for hard wear, growing rapidly, and the ground neither moist nor dry. The trees and shrubs were also sappy and pliant, and bent to force as they would not at any other season. The crowd centered at the point where it could least do harm, the surface of the ground being level, covered for a large space with turf and gravel, and bearing no shrubs or low branched trees.

For all these reasons the damage done was comparatively slight, and every pains being taken to repair it as rapidly as possible, under favorable conditions of weather, it is now hardly to be noticed. The turf was soaked with water, and except where the crowd was densest, warm moist weather following, will generally recover. There are hundreds of spots from one to two, or three, feet across, however, where it has been tramped out completely, and the soil ground to dust. These will not, probably, again green over again this year unless it be with coarse annual grasses and weeds.

Forty of the settees were smashed, the iron frames of six being broken. The statues between that of Halleck and the south end of the Mall were loaded with men and boys when the President passed, but suffered no harm. Had there been any delicately cut stone work in the vicinity like that at the Terrace it would have been ruined. No limbs, but hundreds of small branchlets, were broken from the trees.

The city has expended, within the area of the park, nearly ten millions of dollars, and, if it is closely considered for what purpose, in the last analysis it will be found to be to produce certain influences on the imagination of those who visit it, influences which are received and which act, for the most part, unconsciously to those who benefit by them. These influences [323] come exclusively from the natural objects of the park as they fall in passing them into relations and sequences adapted to the end in view. The value of the park is greater or less according to the success with which arrangements for this purpose have been made. If the value of the natural elements is lessened, the value of the artificial, as the roads, bridges and arches, lessens correspondingly. With the increase in beauty and influence on the imagination of the one increases the value of the city’s property—the amount of the city’s income—in the other. A very much higher degree of beauty and of poetic influence would be possible but for the necessity of taking so much space for that which in itself is not only prosaic but often dreary and incongruous, that is to say the necessary standing and moving room for the visitors.

The area thus appropriated in the park is considerably more than a hundred acres, and much study has been given to the object of distributing it in fair proportion to the requirements of the public in different parts, and of keeping it as inconspicuous as practicable. Its extent can nowhere be enlarged, nor can the public be allowed to occupy unprepared ground without destruction and waste of what has been laid out for the main object in the natural elements.

Whenever, therefore, the park is used for any other than its primary purpose, and especially for spectacles entirely foreign to it, like that of a military display, which tend to concentrate visitors, the regulations designed with reference to that purpose are necessarily, in a greater or less degree, out of place, and are overruled; its custodians, as well as its visitors, become accustomed to regard them without respect, customs suitable to paved streets or commons override them, and the result, directly and indirectly, is incalculably wasteful of the public property.