We have been here nearly two months, and in those two months we have
learnt that American ideas are on the whole, good ideas. There is
usually reason in most things that Americans do, and good reasons,
as for instance, in prohibition. But there is another prohibition
quite different from the one that most people talk about, and it’s
unexplained. It concerns Dick. When I say that it concerns him I do not
mean that it affects him alone. He is merely voicing the great “why?”
of a million children, who may not walk on the grass in Central Park.
“Keep Off”--“Keep Off” is written everywhere. It takes a great many
men in, uniform to enforce this prohibition. Strong men, vigilant men,
diligent men, too. Just as the policemen seem to be picked for Fifth
Avenue traffic, policemen who seem to be entirely friendly towards
children, whose one idea is to help them across the street and to
laugh and joke with them as he does so (Dick has several friends on
the Avenue) just so the parkmen seem to be picked for their job. They
are hard men, cold men, they smile not neither do they joke. They are
like people who have been too long with children. I learnt my lesson a
few days ago when for a great treat Dick took me for a walk in Central
Park. With the perfect courage of an ignorant person, I tossed my head,
drank in deep breaths of fresh spring air, and strode out across the
open. It was the first day of spring, and how good it seemed. Suddenly
Dick seized my arm and pointing to a distant blot in the landscape
said to me, “That is for you--don’t you hear the whistle?” I confessed
I heard a whistle, but I thought someone was calling a dog. “That is
for you to get off the grass--.” But I was a long way on the grass. I
seemed to be in the middle of a sea of green. True, no one was on it
but myself, but that had not seemed to me peculiar. If I thought about
it at all I just thought Americans were too busy to loaf like me, in
the sun.
“Are you sure we mayn’t walk on the grass?” I asked Dick. He was quite
sure, and made some signal to the whistleman to the effect that we
would remove ourselves to the far distant path.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him. And then I learnt what
prohibition means; that you do the thing that is prohibited just as
often as you can, until you are found out. What a game for one’s early
days--to dodge the law, and deliberately break it on every possible
occasion.
I asked a park-keeper whom I met later on what the regulations were and
learnt that towards May there are certain places in the park that may
be walked on, in turn. This will be indicated by a flag flying high
or a flag lying low, I couldn’t quite make out. The children had been
unlucky this year, the keeper said, because there had been so little
snow, which enables them to go anywhere.
Dick is unlucky, because he arrived in New York in February, and will
leave before May, so he has missed and will miss any chance of walking
on the grass!
This afternoon we were lent a car, so I drove him, with Louise, to a
part of Central Park that he has talked of for days. It was not the
grassy part (the view of that green space was enjoyed very much. It
was most gratifying and pleasing to the eye as we sped by luxuriously
in our limousine!). I dropped him at the wooded hillside which is like
the country. You can see no houses, just wooded slopes and streams and
waterfalls and ponds. He took his submarine and his steamer with him,
and I left him there. When he came home in the evening I asked him if
he had enjoyed it. He said, “The park men wouldn’t let me sail my
ships--but I did!” He went on to explain that whenever he put his ships
in the water a whistle was blown. Finally he and Louise got under a
bridge, and under cover succeeded in breaking the prohibition rule for
some time.
“Some day--,” and there was a gleam in Dick’s eye that was something
more than just the naughty look of a mischievous boy--“someday when
I am a man, I shall have a gun, and I shall shoot every man with
a whistle.” “Oh, Dick,” I protested. “Yes I shall--I shall be a
Revolutioner!”
And that is surely the effect on the young of a prohibition that cannot
be explained. Dick knows of no reason why he should not walk on the
grass, nor sail his ships in the streams; what is grass for? Why is
there a park at all? There is one pond in Central Park for children’s
ships, and there is a playground for children’s balls. But one small
pond and one dusty playground, what is that among so many children? In
such a big park?
On St. Patrick’s Day, Dick and I came back through the Park from the
Metropolitan Museum, and the procession was still passing by. People
might not even stand on a rocky eminence to look over the wall. A
parkman stood there, whistle in mouth, proudly, defiantly, king of
all he surveyed. Over the wall came the sound of the bands, and the
marching feet, but only the park-keeper could see the procession.
Big-eyed children stood there, open-mouthed, at the sound of the
“Wearing of the Green.” Truly he was not an Irishman, that park-keeper.
And now I feel sad, and rather anxious, as spring is coming. I have
work that keeps me a while longer in the city. Should I send Dick to
a boarding-school in the country, so that he may enjoy the spring? So
that he should not have daily to endure the sight of green grass viewed
from a narrow gravel path, a path in which he may not even dig, or
build sand castles. Must I send him away so that he shall not grow into
a law-breaker and a “Revolutioner”?
What we really want to know, is: Who does the green grass grow for, in
Central Park?