Look back, you younger men, to rambles through South Boston farms, and
land at "South End" sold by the acre. Always comes the old conservative
admonition, "Wait!"--yes, wait till the great sea-wall makes City Point
of Castle Island,--wait till the now extended arms of Boston clasp
Brookline to the bosom of the metropolis,--wait till private avarice and
easy legislation, acting intermittently, deface the shore and basin of
Charles River,--wait till the dense and ever growing population,
bursting from its narrow bounds, spreads itself in streets laid out at
random, over what you are pleased to call our suburbs,--wait, in short,
till the inevitable happens, and where are your public parks? You may
have them, even then, I grant you; but you will have them where _the
people_ cannot reach them, and where the cost will be too great.
Remember that our city growth is like the growth of all cities in the
New World and the Old; and, if we want green places in the future
Boston, we must seize them now.

Can we afford the expense? Rather, let us ask, Can Boston afford to be
less comfortable to live in, less attractive, less healthy, than sister
cities? We can afford police, paved streets, light, sewers, scavengers,
a fire department, a board of health, and a score of other agencies, not
because they give salaries and employment to certain men, but because
the public health and safety require it; we can afford schools,
maintained at enormous cost, though it may be conceded that we could
live without education; we can afford pure water in abundance, be the
expense never so great, because we need it; and, if we need pure air, we
can afford to pay for it, to seize the means of having it, and keeping
it forever.

And suffer me, with due modesty, to say, that we in this
meeting--representing as we do the commerce, industries, and professions
of this goodly town--have a right to demand that what we ask shall be
given us, and that Boston shall take and hold for the use of its people
this needed reservation, while yet there is time. I trust our city
fathers will need no further admonition than this meeting gives; but, if
they should, we are enlisted for the war.

As Cromwell, grimly looking down on the fair fields and shining streams
of the land he came to conquer, said, "This is a land worth fighting
for," so let us, as we survey the magnificent area of shore and hill and
glade which fortune now permits us to dedicate to public use, excla