I have recvd your telegram saying that I am wanted in Brooklyn. Squier has no claim on me until I return from this circuit. I told him so. I do not think that anything will be lost. We are getting on pretty well here. It is a critical moment. Have been over two parks today. Shall finish and meet the Board tomorrow night. Then, as you will know by telegrams, start next day for Atlanta. I allowed Phil to write as he did of my motives but the consideration that weighs most with me is that with reference to your future business it is very desirable to make the firm favorably known at the South and “extend its connection” as the merchants say. Very soon our northern cities will all have been provided with parks. Future business in park designing will be in the South and, as I have said to you, in the arid regions; concerning both of which regions our firm and the art of Landscape Architecture has nothing to show, and is very ignorant and unprepared. I want you to be making way in the subtropical and the arid cities before I go. I want the firm to have an established “good will” at the South. Then, as we would all be called Abolitionists at the South, I think a demonstration that the time has passed in which hatred of Abolitionists is an element of consequence in matters of professional business is of some value. But, mainly, if I know myself, I am moved by a desire to get a footing at the South, from Southern men, and willing to pay for it. I consider also, that the job clusters in with Biltmore and the Hurt Atlanta affair, [756]so that we can afford to handle it at less rates than we otherwise could. I hope that you & Eliot will take this view.