I wish I were the hay."
The most important thing, I should say, for the success of Bill's fine school is that ample opportunity be given to Bill for every variety of play including swimming and skating, and wherever possible, boating. It is ridiculous to attempt to teach Bill anything without the substantial results of play to build upon. Playgrounds are the cheapest and, in many respects, the best of schools, but they are almost entirely lacking in many of our towns which have grown to cities in a generation in this great nation of villagers. The Boroughs of the Bethlehems, for example, have no playground connected with a Public School, nor any other public place where boys can play ball.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
(This and the following communication are from a small paper, printed and published by two Bethlehem boys.)
We, the editors, have been dragged along back alleys, across open sewers, and through rank growths of weed and thistle to view the Monocacy meadows to consider the possibility of their use as a playground or park. We are not much impressed with the proposal, the place is apparently hopeless, but the park enthusiast could not be touched by argument. To our very practical objection that the cost would be excessive, he made the foolish reply that there is no cost but a saving in using what has hitherto been wasted. To our expressed disgust for the open sewers and filth he replied that that was beside the question, for, as he said, we must sooner or later take care of the filth anyway. But, we said, the creek is contaminated above the town. Very well, he replied, we have the right to prohibit such contamination. But worst of all, in double meaning, was his instant agreement to our statement that we had our cemeteries which, he said, were really better than any Bethlehem park could be.
COMMUNICATION.
Dear Editors: I took a walk along the Monocacy Creek on Sunday afternoon and discovered clear water several miles above town and a fine skating pond; but I suppose that you and all of your subscribers will have to go to our enterprising neighbor, Allentown, to find any well-kept ice to skate on this Winter. Most people think that you boys can swim in Nature's own water, skate on Nature's own ice, and roam in Nature's own woods, but it is absolutely certain that your elders must take some care and pains if you town boys are to do any of these things. And yet, here in the East, children are said to be brought up (implying care and pains) and hogs are said to be raised (implying only feeding). I thank the Lord that I was "raised" in the West where there are no such false distinctions.Your subscriber, S.
P.S.—As I came home covered with beggar-lice and cockle-burrs I saw a ring of fire on South Mountain, an annual occurrence which has been delayed a whole week this Autumn by a flourish of posters in several languages offering One Hundred Dollars Reward! S.
In these days of steam and electricity we boast of having conquered nature. Well, we have got to domesticate nature before much else can be accomplished in this country of ours. We have got to take care of our brooks and our rivers, of our open lands and our wooded hills. We have got to do it, and Bill would be better off if we took half of the cost of his fine school to meet the expense of doing it. When I was aboy I belonged to the Bander-log, but Bill belongs to another tribe, the Rats, and there is nothing I would like so much to do as to turn Pied Piper and lure the entire brood of Bethlehem boys and girls to Friedensville[3] and into that awful chasm of crystal water to come back no more, no, not even when an awakened civic consciousness had made a park of the beautiful Monocacy meadows and converted the creek into a chain, a regular Diamond Necklace of swimming holes. I beg the garbage men's (not a printer's error for man's) pardon for speaking of the beautiful Monocacy meadows. I refer to what has been and to what might easily continue to be. As for the Diamond Necklace, that, of course, would have to be above our gas works where the small stream of pure tar now joins the main stream.