226 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

To this I will add another experience bearing
on the same point. There can hartlly be a finer
public park in the world than the Druid Hill
Park at Baltimore, a city of about one million
inhabitants—as large, say, as Manchester. The
park lies within easy reach of the city, covering
700 acres, a beautiful place of hills, streams and
woods, where you may wander about for miles
enjoying the charm of nature's solitudes. One
lovely afternoon towards the end of November,
the sky cloudless, the air just keen enough to be
stimulating and the autumn colours in their
last glory, we went there and walked for hours
up hill and down dale, repeating Emerson's
words that in such a place and on such a day
it was a " luxury to draw the breath of life,"
For any creature we saw walking on two legs
we might have been in the depths of the back-
woods. Of all such the park was empty. Not
a mother with her brood; not a baby in a wheel-
cart. On the intersecting speedways hundreds
of closed cars were indeed racing along, but of
human wajker there was no sign. At last we
encountered a park-keeper who had been following
us, I think, in the belief that we were escaped
lunatics. He opened the conversation by point-
ing to a fine building—the public Guest House—
and courteously informing us, with a look at
my wife, that " if we were cold, we could go in
there." It was well heated, he said, there was a
loud-speaker and we should find it a friendly