have found rooms on a pleasant park. This park, which is but one block in
extent, is so set off from the thoroughfares that it bears chiefly the
traffic that is proper to the place itself. Grocery carts jog around and
throw out their wares. Laundry wagons are astir. A little fat tailor on an
occasion carries in an armful of newly pressed clothing with suspenders
hanging. Dogs are taken out to walk but are held in leash, lest a taste of
liberty spoil them for an indoor life. The center of the park is laid out
with grass and trees and pebbled paths, and about it is a high iron fence.
Each house has a key to the enclosure. Such social infection, therefore, as
gets inside the gates is of our own breeding. In the sunny hours nurses and
children air themselves in this grass plot. Here a gayly painted wooden
velocipede is in fashion. At this minute there are several pairs of fat
legs a-straddle this contrivance. It is a velocipede as it was first made,
without pedals. Beau Brummel--for the velocipede dates back to him--may
have walked forth to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells on a vehicle not
far different, but built to his greater stature. There is also a trickle
of drays and wagons across the park--a mere leakage from the streets, as
though the near-by traffic in the pressure had burst its pipes. But only at
morning and night when the city collects or discharges its people, are the
sidewalks filled. Then for a half hour the nozzle of the city plays a full
stream on us.

The park seems to be freer and more natural than the streets outside. A man
goes by gesticulating as though he practiced for a speech. A woman adjusts
her stocking on the coping below the fence with the freedom of a country
road. A street sweeper, patched to his office, tunes his slow work to fit
the quiet surroundings. Boys skate by or cut swirls upon the pavement in
the privilege of a playground.

My work--if anything so pleasant and unforced can carry the name--is