ilton Fish Park that took the place of Bone Alley was laid out with
such lack of sense that it will have to be worked all over again. The
gymnasium and bath in it that cost, I am told, $90,000, was never of any
use for either purpose and was never opened. A policeman sat in the door
and turned people away, while around the corner clamoring crowds
besieged the new public bath I spoke of. There were more people waiting,
sitting on the steps and strung out halfway through the block, when I
went over to see, one July day, than could have found room in three
buildings like it. So, also, after seven years, the promised park down
by the Schiff Fountain called Seward Park lies still, an unlovely waste,
waiting to be made beautiful. Tammany let its heelers build shanties in
it to sell fish and dry-goods and such in. Reform just let things be, no
matter how bad they were, and broke its promises to the people.

No, that is not fair. There was enough to do besides, to straighten up
things. Tammany had seen to that. This very day[34] the contractor's men
are beginning work in Seward Park, which shall give that most crowded
spot on earth its pleasure-ground, and I have warrant for promising that
within a year not only will the "Ham-Fish" Park be restored, but
Hudson-bank and the Thomas Jefferson Park in Little Italy, which are
still dreary wastes, be opened to the people; while from the Civic Club
in Richard Croker's old home ward comes the broad hint that unless
condemnation proceedings in the case of the park and playground, to take
the place of the old tenements at East Thirty-fifth Street and Second
Avenue, are hurried by the Tammany Commission, the club will take a hand
and move to have the commission cashiered. There is to be no repetition
of the Mulberry Bend scandal.

[Footnote 34: June 26, 1901.]

[Illustration: Kindergarten on the Recreation Pier, at the Foot of E.
24th Street.]

It is all right. Neither stupidity, spite, nor coldblooded neglect will
be able much longer to cheat the child out of his rights. The playground
is here to wrestle with the gang for the boy, and it will win. It came
so quietly that we hardly knew of it till we heard the shouts. It took
us seven years to make up our minds to build a play pier,--recreation
pier is its municipal title,--and it took just about seven weeks to
build it when we got so far; but then we learned more in one day
than we had dreamed of in the seven years. Half the East