The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-06-19

will be. Hither the young men and maidens will come to stroll, and often, through the generations. the most momentouS question of life will here be put, and the answer to it given.
 Here they will bring their children to play, where Nature seems to hold a never ending holiday and dance in which the sunbeams and shadows join. 'spiration here, and the weary multi tude refreshment, in the fresh air and sunshine and flowers beneath the witchery of the soft blue sky, and along the river brink. From the sweetness of sky and leaf, of grass bird and beast and child. they will absorb the spirit with which he was imbued-the love of nature and of man. And the whispering breezes and song of bird and hum of bees and odor of the flowers and beauty of the landscape will tell of the gift and giver forever"
 What glorious Immortality he has won in thus Identifying his personality with the. purest pleasures of the mul- titude. This humble man has triumph ed over oblivion. The tooth of time which knaws their very names from the tonnbstones of the great can, harm him not. For to endless generations he, has become a part of that which is around them. He is made one with nature. She here arrays herself in. gladpess to manifest his excellence He is a portion of the 1ove1iness he made more lovely. He is their companion for all time.
 Into their keeping, to the remotest posterity, we commit this statue. wherein the sculptor with marvellous skill and fidelity has portrayed to them the human form in which his spirit once did dwell.
 But let us not overlook what is. af- ter all, the most important fact in MT Beardsley's relation to this park. .aThe awful shadow of an unseen power floats, though unseen, among us,' and he was but its instrument.
 If we had stood with Deacon Rob- ert Walker and the Stratford Conn mittee on this spot, on that eventfuf hundred years ago, when they laid it out for him as a part of the primeval forest which had covered this section, ever since the time, 10000 years be- fore, when the ice cap that had so long overlaid all New England to the depth of five thousand feet and more at last retreated to it's polar fastness- es, and, in melting, deposited the boulders and shaped the surface of this park substantially as it is today, ing of their act, in the providential plan, which with increasing purpose runs through ail the ages, how com pletely we should have missed it.
 
 10000 souls in all Connecticut. Though Stratford and Fairfield had been set tied seventy-f1ve years, there were not then within those parts of them which now make up the whole town Of Bridgeport seventy-five families. Of these, fifteen lived on Old Mill Green and Old Mill Hill, and the rest near the junction of North and Park. ave- nues. The country hereabouts was a greatly infested with wolves and bears.
 Two centuries have hardly gone by when 10000 families are found living in the town. And by the continuing operation of the same causes which we can now see that within an equal future period the whole region between the Housatonic River on the east and Mill River on the west and extending far to the north of us, will become one of the great workshops of our country, and be filled with a teeming and greatly congested population, to whom a park at this place will be an abso- lute necessity, since all the country round us will then be covered with private dwellings. And so it will con- tinue for ages. All this was hidden from Deacon Walker as he stood here es and looked up at the winter sky. But much besides was hidden from him as he trudged home that night to Stratford through the snow.
 He was then forty-seven years old, and his wife was forty-one. AS he en- tered his door on Stratford Green. seven children ran to meet him. among them little Robert. who was t0l