“Why?” asked some lover of the trees as things of beauty.
“Well, you don’t see any trees in Main Street, Indianapolis, do you?” replied another triumphantly.
The battle was lost and won right there—Main Street, Indianapolis, was the criterion. “Are we going to be like Indianapolis—or Chicago or New York—or are we not?” I can hear some sturdy rural asking. “If not, let the trees stand.”
What rural would save any tree as against being like New York, I’d like to know. That is why, I suspect, we baked for fifteen minutes in Savona.
And then came “the toon o' Bath,” as we forever after called it, for a reason which will appear,—a dear, lovely, summery town, with a square so delightful that on sight of it we instantly got out and loitered in the shade for over an hour, in spite of our resolution.
Here in the east, for some reason, this idea of a plain green open square, without any execrable reproduction of an American Civil War soldier perched high aloft on a tall shaft, has remained untainted. Wilkes-Barré, New Milford, Owego and now Bath had one, and in New England and New Jersey I have seen scores. The county offices are as a rule put around it, but not in it, as is the rule farther west.
In the west—everywhere west of Pennsylvania and sometimes east of it—a public square is not complete without a courthouse or at least a soldiers' or sailors' monument—or both—planted in the centre of it, and these almost an exact reproduction of every other courthouse or monument for one thousand miles about. The idea of doing anything original is severely frowned upon. Whatever else you may be in America or elsewhere, apparently you must not be different. Hold fast to the type, and do as your ancestors did! Build all courthouses and monuments as courthouses and monuments should be built—that is, true to tradition. If you don’t believe this, visit any countyseat between New York and Seattle.
FRANKLIN DREAMS OVER A RIVER BEYOND SAVONA
But this square, in Bath, like some others in New England and that in Owego, was especially pleasing because it had no courthouse and no monuments, merely a bandstand and a great spread of benches placed under wide-armed and sturdy trees. Under their high branches, which spread as a canopy over the walks and benches below, were festooned, on wires, a number of lights for the illumination of the place at night. About it, on the different sides, were residences, churches, a public school, some county offices, and to the east stores, all with a peaceful, rural flavor. Several farmer families were eating their meals from baskets as they sat in wagons, their horses unhitched and fastened behind. On the benches were seated a number of old soldiers idling in the shade. Why old soldiers should be so numerous at this day and date was more than I could understand, and I said so. It was now fiftyfour years since the war began, and here they were, scores of them apparently, all fairly hale and looking scarcely sixtyfive. They must have been at least seventy years each to have been of any service in the great war of the rebellion.