During this time, (six months,) but thirty persons were detected upon the Park tipsy. Of these, twenty-four were sufficiently drunk to justify their arrest,—the remainder going quietly off the grounds, when requested to do so. That is to say, it is not oftener than once a week that a man is observed to be the worse for liquor while on the Park; and this, while three to four thousand laboring men are at work within it, are paid upon it, and grog-shops for their accommodation are all along its boundaries. In other words, about one in thirty thousand of the visitors to the Park has been under the influence of drink when induced to visit it.
On Christmas and New-Year's Days, it was estimated by many experienced reporters that over 100,000 persons, each day, were on the Park, generally in a frolicksome mood. Of these, but one (a small boy) was observed by the keepers to be drunk; there was not an instance of quarrelling, and no disorderly conduct, except a generally good-natured resistance to the efforts of the police to maintain safety on the ice.
The Bloomingdale Road and Harlem Lane, two famous trotting-courses, where several hundred famously fast horses may be seen at the top of their speed any fine afternoon, both touch an entrance to the Park. The Park roads are, of course, vastly attractive to the trotters, and for a few weeks there were daily instances of fast driving there: as soon, however, as the law and custom of the Park, restricting speed to a moderate rate, could be made generally understood, fast driving became very rare,—more so, probably, than in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. As far as possible, an arrest has been made in every case of intentionally fast driving observed by the keepers: those arrested number less than one to ten thousand of the vehicles entering the Park for pleasure-driving. In each case a fine (usually three dollars) has been imposed by the magistrate.
In six months there have been sixty-four arrests for all sorts of "disorderly conduct," including walking on the grass after being requested to quit it, quarrelling, firing crackers, etc.,—one in eighteen thousand visitors. So thoroughly established is the good conduct of people on the Park, that many ladies walk daily in the Ramble without attendance.
A protest, as already intimated, is occasionally made against the completeness of detail to which the Commissioners are disposed to carry their work, on the ground that the habits of the masses of our city-population are ill-calculated for its appreciation, and that loss and damage to expensive work must often be the result. To which we would answer, that, if the authorities of the city hitherto have so far misapprehended or neglected their duty as to allow a large industrious population to continue so long without the opportunity for public recreations that it has grown up ignorant of the rights and duties appertaining to the general use of a well-kept pleasure-ground, any losses of the kind apprehended, which may in consequence occur, should be cheerfully borne as a necessary part of the responsibility of a good government. Experience thus far, however, does not justify these apprehensions.
To collect exact evidence showing that the Park is already exercising a good influence upon the character of the people is not in the nature of the case practicable. It has been observed that rude, noisy fellows, after entering the more advanced or finished parts of the Park, become hushed, moderate, and careful. Observing the generally tranquil and pleased expression, and the quiet, sauntering movement, the frequent exclamations of pleasure in the general view or in the sight of some special object of natural beauty, on the part of the crowds of idlers in the Ramble on a Sunday afternoon, and recollecting the totally opposite character of feeling, thought, purpose, and sentiment which is expressed by a crowd assembled anywhere else, especially in the public streets of the city, the conviction cannot well be avoided that the Park already exercises a beneficent influence of no inconsiderable value, and of a kind which could have been gained in no other way. We speak of Sunday afternoons and of a crowd; but the Park evidently does induce many a poor family, and many a poor seamstress and journeyman, to take a day or a half-day from the working-time of the week, to the end of retaining their youth and their youthful relations with purer Nature, and to their gain in strength, good-humor, safe citizenship, and—if the economists must be satisfied—money-value to the commonwealth. Already, too, there are several thousand men, women, and children who resort to the Park habitually: some daily, before business or after business, and women and children at regular hours during the day; some weekly; and some at irregular, but certain frequent chances of their business. Mr. Astor, when in town, rarely misses his daily ride; nor Mr. Bancroft; Mr. Mayor Harper never his drive. And there are certain working-men with their families equally sure to be met walking on Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon; others on Saturday. The number of these habitués constantly increases. When we meet those who depend on the Park as on the butcher and the omnibus, and the thousands who are again drawn by whatever impulse and suggestion of the hour, we often ask, What would they have done, where would they have been, to what sort of recreation would they have turned, if to any, had there been no park? Of one sort the answer is supplied by the keeper of a certain saloon, who came to the Park, as he said, to see his old Sunday customers. The enjoyment of the ice had made them forget their grog.
Six or seven years ago, an opposition brought down the prices and quadrupled the accommodations of the Staten Island ferry-boats. Clifton Park and numerous German gardens were opened; and the consequence was described, in common phrase, as the transformation of a portion of the island, on Sunday, to a Pandemonium. We thought we would, like Dante, have a cool look at it. We had read so much about it, and heard it talked about and preached about so much, that we were greatly surprised to find the throng upon the sidewalks quite as orderly and a great deal more evidently good-natured than any we ever saw before in the United States. We spent some time in what we had been led to suppose the hottest place, Clifton Park, in which there was a band of music and several thousand persons, chiefly Germans, though with a good sprinkling of Irish servant-girls with their lovers and brothers, with beer and ices; but we saw no rudeness, and no more impropriety, no more excitement, no more (week-day) sin, than we had seen at the church in the morning. Every face, however, was foreign. By-and-by came in three Americans, talking loudly, moving rudely, proclaiming contempt for "lager" and yelling for "liquor," bantering and offering fight, joking coarsely, profane, noisy, demonstrative in any and every way, to the end of attracting attention to themselves, and proclaiming that they were "on a spree" and highly excited. They could not keep it up; they became awkward, ill at ease, and at length silent, standing looking about them in stupid wonder. Evidently they could not understand what it meant: people drinking, smoking in public, on Sunday, and yet not excited, not trying to make it a spree. It was not comprehensible. We ascertained that one of the ferry-boat bars had disposed of an enormous stock of lemonade, ginger-beer, and soda-water before three o'clock,—but, till this was all gone, not half a dozen glasses of intoxicating drinks. We saw no quarrelling, no drunkenness, and nothing like the fearful disorder which had been described,—with a few such exceptions as we have mentioned of native Americans who had no conception of enjoyment free from bodily excitement.
To teach and induce habits of orderly, tranquil, contemplative, or social amusement, moderate exercises and recreation, soothing to the nerves, has been the most needed "mission" for New York. We think we see daily evidence that the Park accomplishes not a little in this way. Unfortunately, the evidence is not of a character to be expressed in Federal currency, else the Commissioners would not be hesitating about taking the ground from One-Hundred-and-Sixth to One-Hundred-and-Tenth Street, because it is to cost half a million more than was anticipated. What the Park is worth to us to-day is, we trust, but a trifle to what it will be worth when the bulk of our hard-working people, of our over-anxious Marthas, and our gutter-skating children shall live nearer to it, and more generally understand what it offers them,—when its play-grounds are ready, its walks more shaded,—when cheap and wholesome meals, to the saving, occasionally, of the dreary housewife's daily pottering, are to be had upon it,—when its system of cheap cabs shall have been successfully inaugurated,—and when a daily discourse of sweet sounds shall have been made an essential part of its functions in the body-politic.
We shall not probably live to see "the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney made universal," but we do hope that we shall live to know many residents of towns of ten thousand population who will be ashamed to subscribe for the building of new churches while no public play-ground is being prepared for their people.