features of these parks are many. In the first place, the tract along the Des Plaines is large enough to preserve the forests and provide park and pleasure grounds for the eight towns now within the territory and for as many more in the future. Sewerage at present flows into the river in this district and presents one of the problems to be solved. Along the Salt and Flag Creeks are beautiful groves of native trees and miles of charming prairie landscape. The 7,000 acres around Mount Forest are in a wild state, and under the care of a forester could be made very attractive. Here another arboretum could be kept, or the vast area, which unlike the others is not long and narrow, could be used for a camping ground in summer, as it is well wooded and watered. (3) To procure around Lake Calumet at least 3,000 acres of land while prices are low. Here water and land stand on almost one dead level, the interruptions being a few tree-covered ridges, ancient lake beaches. The vegetation consists of sedge, spike-bull, bog-rush, cat-tail, flag, reed and water-plantain on the land and partly submerged parts, with pondweed, white and yellow lilies in the deeper waters. For botanist and geologist there is much of scientific interest. (4) To fill in the lake shore from South Chicago, where necessary, to connect the present system, to make a complete boulevarded driveway along the lake the entire length of the city, and to convert the outlying reefs into islands. The water over these submerged reefs varies in depth from one to fifteen feet. The proposed boulevard is to be from four hundred to six hundred feet in width, with several driveways and parkways running through it, and to have between it and the present shore a lagoon. All these proposed parks are to be connected with each other by an encircling chain. of boulevards, and incorporated into the existing park system. These are the

main points of the plan which the commission offers. Necessarily many of the details and a statement of the difficulties to be overcome are purposely omitted. There are other questions concerning the City Beautiful on which this commission has offered suggestions to the powers that be, some of which are at present being carried out; there are others which they have merely discussed.

In 1903, after the statute limiting park expenditures had been amended, the people authorized the spending of $6,500, 000. This is being done. The city has three park boards-Lincoln Park, West and South Park,-corresponding to the three sides of the city, the natural divisions made by the Chicago River, and, besides, itself has charge of a part of the park system. All these controlling bodies are more or less hampered by the charter question, which is as yet unsettled. settled. The West Park Board has a test suit pending which prevents action just at present; the Lincoln Park Board is going forward with an addition to Lincoln Park of made land-two hundred and thirteen acres-extending from Diversey Boulevard to Cornelia Street. The South Park Board opened one park during 1904, and will open within the year seven large and seven small ones in the crowded districts on the South Side. These parks present several new and noteworthy features. All are provided with a field-house, or neighborhood center building, containing separate gymnasia for women and girls, men and boys, each of which is provided with apparatus, shower and plunge baths; also lockers, clubrooms for athletic clubs, sewing guilds, and other organizations not of a religious or political character, and an assembly hall. Outside the fieldhouse is a large swimming-pool, three hundred and fifty by one hundred and fifty feet, sloping down to a depth of nine feet, in which the temperature of the

water is artificially tempered. Near at hand are dressing-rooms where bathing suits can be obtained free of charge. There is also a shallow wading-pool and a sand-pit, swings, giant strides, and other apparatus for children. In each park the indoor gymnasium has a supplementary outdoor gymnasium, such as a running track, etc. For the wise and systematic use of the gymnasia and playgrounds the park commissioners have provided an athletic director. That the new parks meet a long felt want is shown by the fact that in McKinley Park, on the southwest side-the only one of the new parks which is fully completed and open to the public-121,000 men, women and children used the swimming-pool during the season of 1904. The Chicago Library is cooperating with this movement in establishing branches in each park. The number of people who have thus a neighborhood gathering place and opportunities for recreation and culture brought to their very doors is about three thousand to each district. All is free to the person who conducts himself in a proper and orderly manner.

A part of the features found so desirable in the new park are found also in the nine municipal playgrounds of recent origin, operated by the park boards with the assistance of financial aid from private individuals. More are to be opened soon. Of these playgrounds, varying in size from one to five acres, the Webster, at Thirty-third Street and Wentworth Avenue, is the type. It has an athletic field, playground apparatus for small children and girls, a shelter building, a covered sand court for babies, toilet and storerooms, bath buildings, with hot and cold shower-baths, and lockers for the use of men and boys wishing to change their clothing before and after exercising. Each is controlled by an experienced director, assisted by a policeman, and in summer by a trained woman kindergartner. Over the director there is a trained

director-an athletic coach. On these playgrounds the children work off their surplus energy in healthful recreation instead of terrorizing the neighborhood with their acts of vandalism. The effect upon the question of public order is most marked. The corner gangs become athletic teams; and the boys and girls whose energies are directed into healthful channels become good citizens. In 1903 the attendance was 734,693; that for 1904 is estimated at more than a million.

With the exception of Wooded Island, Jackson Park after the destruction of the World's Fair buildings was left in anything but a desirable state, and the turning of the Midway-the Midway Plaisance of Fair days-now a boulevard connecting Jackson with Washington Park-into a waterway has long been a fondly cherished scheme. Both of these questions are to receive immediate attention.

The center and the show feature of all this vast system, which looks forward for fifty years, is Grant Park, down-town. on the lake shore. In it now stands the Art Institute, one of the finest buildings in Chicago. Beside it soon will stand the Crerar Library and-the crowning work-the new Field Museum, one thousand by five hundred and fifty feet, with the greatest amount of floor space of any museum in the world.

There are other problems in Chicago demanding attention before the metropolis of the Middle West can be a City Beautiful; for example, the transportation and the smoke questions; the expansion of the down-town business district; the doing away with the slums; the placing of all municipal and school buildings in large, open spaces of ground. These are questions which cannot be solved in a few years, but must be worked out slowly.

One writer of the day, in speaking of

the demands of the city dwellers for more of nature, says:

"Is it not a true instinct of so many individuals in a time like the present, when they find their actual lives nipped and cankered on the surface by the conditions in which they live, to hark back, not only to simpler and more 'natural' external surroundings, but also to those more primitive and universal needs of their own hearts from which they feel a departure may be made? They go back to the ever-virgin soil within themselves. And, perhaps, the deeper down they go the nearer they get to the universal life."

When it is not possible for people to live in the country or to spend at least a part of the year near to the heart of nature, the next best thing is to put within their reach as many of the charms of nature as possible. America has forest reservations amounting to something like 62,000 000 acres, but these reservations, being at a distance from the masses of the people, avail little. The great forest reservation of France, Fontainebleau, comprising 42,500 acres, is only thirty-seven miles from Paris, and the round trip fare, third-class, four francs sixty-five centimes, which puts it within the reach of thousands of people. The

great forest reservations of Germany, like the Harz Mountains and the Black Forest, give the opportunity to the masses for frequent outings lasting from half a day to a week. A walking excursion in one of these reservations is the delight of many a poor artisan. The expense is nominal-car fare, accommodations at small, inexpensive hostelries, a small amount of food to supplement what he has with him, and beer, and he and his family have the joys of nature for a few days. It is some place to go to escape the monotony of daily existence. Perhaps the most delightful picture we have of recreation grounds comes from ancient Rome at the time of its pagan glory, when each day the youths exercised on the Campus Martius, or bathed or engaged in swimming contests in the Tiber. American cities have much to learn from foreign countries as to means and ways of providing healthful recreation. In enlarging her park system Chicago is, in part at least, solving many of the awful problems which confront her-infant mortality, the spread of infectious diseases, juvenile crime, public health, and public order. The day when she will emerge from her chrysalis, the City Beautiful is at hand.

I

HAD been reading the Passion according to St. Matthew, and as I pondered over the sad words of the Agony in the garden, my whole soul went forth in reproaches against the apostles, Peter, James and John; the three beloved of Christ, upon whom He had lavished blessings innumerable, and whom He had loved with a love surpassing any to be found from the foundation to the consummation of the world. Oh! how I

wished that I had been there, to comfort the Man-God in His misery and sorrow! How sweet would it have been to wait, and watch, and pray, with One who was about to lay down His adorable life for the sins of the world. I thought of Him, as, returning in search of human sympathy to the place where He had left the three-He found them sleeping!

Oh! the unutterable agony of that moment! The utter friendlessness of Christ, alone in the gloom and stillness