I wrote you yesterday from Milwaukee. We had a good day’s work there with the President, Mr Wahl, who is the one valuable man of the Commission; really the resident Landscape Architect, correcting the errors of the Engineer & Supt, and making good by his own judgment what would otherwise be pretty bad—Of course, he makes errors himself, and does not either sympathize with or fully understand our motives, but he does wonderfully well for a layman and keeps the other incompetents within bounds as far as the Lake Park is concerned. He went with us to the inland park, which is in charge of another Commissioner, who is continually going wrong and obstructive. I think we must protest against his management and interference with our design. But Wahl, though inclined to pretty garden ideas of the work, and to go ahead with executive affairs without closely consulting us, is a real good fellow, means well, is energetic and while he differs with us, respects us; is frank and honest, energetic & sagacious. Were he otherwise Lake Park would have been shipwrecked. His whole heart is in it. He has invented a tree-mover, (on exactly the lines of those which I got up in Brooklyn & which we have used at Washington & elsewhere) and is going with characteristic personal zeal, into tree-moving on a considerable scale; scouring the country for suitable trees, of which, fortunately, the best supply seems to be Sugar Maple, and I have advised him that he need not be much afraid to substitute Sugar Maple for trees of other sorts which he may find in our planting maps (where he can get the Maples of good size & cannot get others.)

I have written of Wahl the more fully because he promises to come to Boston (in June?) solely to review our parks and get instructions from them, [752]

and because he has a daughter there now upon whom I want mother and (or) Marion, at once, to call. *Hotel Thorndike. She has gone there because some relative, young man, in Harvard, has been in hospital with appendicitis. At last account, he was doing well and she would be coming home in about ten days. She had written her father that she had not found any parks in Boston, (or something like that) and evidently is adrift, is misled and getting wrong notions of Boston. I want this explained to mother, Marion (& Mrs. Eliot) to have Marion call upon her at once, and treat her with all convenient hospitality, getting her to our house if practicable, and, at any rate, taking her upon a good drive, showing her Franklin Park, and as much more as she will stand. I never saw her, but I guess she will take a little lecture with illustrations upon the Municipal and the Metropolitan Park Systems. At any rate, let her be treated in a kind and friendly way. Her father is a fine specimen of the rich, successful, good sort of German-American, and is the only man of the Milwaukee Commission with whom I have come into really friendly relations. He is a thoroughly good man and good fellow, and I hope that she may be found something of the same sort, and from what he quoted of her letters shd think that she might be. At any rate I would like to have Marion bring her into frank friendliness as much as proves practicable. She is of a class of people, unknown to us in the East, but who are coming rapidly to be at the top of the heap in important parts of the West, and whom it is desirable that you young people should know, understand and relate yourselves, for they are to be important elements of our national future. I would like to have Rick meet her, and that among you she shd have a good time & get some idea of real Boston. [753]Her father always takes me to a beer house & gives me a taste of Heidleburgh kneipenship?

Phil and I were both a little unwell at Milwaukee—Phil with a mild bilious attack; I with sleepliness and—fatigue, old age, I suppose. I did not feel up to going on to Louisville today; wanted another interview with the Park Engineer, and to call on the Glesners. So concluded to stay here today.

Manning telegraphs from Atlanta, “Arrange to visit Atlanta from Louisville for consultation on proposed Cotton Exposition.” I have a letter from Joel Hurt—bearish as to the Land Company & saying nothing of a Cotton Exposition. This, from Manning, may mean that I shall have to go to Atlanta before coming home. We expect to go to Louisville tomorrow where we shall meet Manning & will telegraph you. I think that it will be best, probably, for you or Eliot or both to meet me in Brooklyn. I have a good deal of work to get thro’ here today.

I leave Hartford affairs confidently to mother. There must be occasion for discrimination as to heir-loom matters.

Affectly