ecially the
school and the boy, together in a bond of mutual sympathy good for them
both.

[Illustration: Roof Playground on a Public School.]

That was the burden of the committee's report. It made thirteen
recommendations besides, as to the location of parks and detached
playgrounds, only two of which have been adopted to date. But that is of
less account--as also was the information imparted to me as secretary
of the committee by our late Tammany mayor--and may he be the last--that
we had "as much authority as a committee of bootblacks in his
office"--it is all of less account than the fact that the field has at
last been studied and its needs been made known. The rest will follow,
with or without the politician's authority. One of the two suggestions
carried out was for a riverside park in the region up-town, on the West
Side, where the Federation of Churches and Christian Workers found
"saloon social ideals minting themselves upon the minds of the people at
the rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought."
"Hudson-bank" (it is at the foot of West Fifty-third Street) has been a
playground these three years, in the charge of the Outdoor Recreation
League, and it is recorded with pride by the directors, that not a board
was stolen from the long fence that encloses it in all that time, while
fences all about were ripped to pieces. Boards have a market value in
that neighborhood and private property was not always highly regarded.
But this is "the children's"; that is why, within a year now, the bluff
upon which the playground is will have been laid out as a beautiful
park, and a bar set to the slum in that quarter, where it already had
got a firm grip. Hard by there is a recreation pier, and on summer
evenings the young men of the neighborhood may be seen trooping
riverward with their girls to hear the music. The gang that "laid out"
two policemen, to my knowledge, has gone out of business.

The best-laid plans are sometimes upset by surprising snags. We had
planned for two municipal playgrounds on the East Side, where the need
is greatest, and our plans were eagerly accepted by the city
authorities. But they were never put into practice. A negligent attorney
killed one, a lazy clerk the other. And both served under the reform
government. The first of the two playgrounds was to have been in
Rivington Street, adjoining the new public bath, where the boys, for
want of something better to do, were fighting