ABSTRACT
Not much work of any importance was being done, only the lining up of a boundary wall with stones cleaned from the pocky, brushy land which had deteriorated from farming into an area used by squatters for huts that could not be called houses, or by followers of occupations best practiced outside the bounds of the better parts of the city, tanners, slaughterers, and so forth. The city had acquired the land after an intricate political struggle involving not only its own government but that of the state, and of rivalries between parties and men. Poets and visionaries had called for a park; now
the city fathers had the land but did not know how to command a design. The hundreds of men hired for the job often did no work. Employment was so scarce in the city in this year of business panic that men fought for a chance to get on the force. When the new superintendent met the en gineer of the works, he found that individual besieged by demoralized, desperate men asking for work.
