By no inborn sagacity did I
discover this to be the true first step, but by the trained eye of an
honored and dear friend, that distinguished engineer and famous street
commissioner of New York, Colonel George E. Waring, who lost his life in
the sanitary regeneration of Havana.
[Illustration: "On this green of the dryads ... lies My Own Acre."
The two young oaks in the picture are part of the row which gives the
street its name.]
"Contour paths" was the word he gave me; paths starting from the top of
the steep broken ground and bending in and out across and around its
ridges and ravines at a uniform decline of, say, six inches to every ten
feet, until the desired terminus is reached below; much as, in its
larger way, a railway or aqueduct might, or as cattle do when they roam
in the hills. Thus, by the slightest possible interference with
natural conditions, these paths were given a winding course every step
of which was pleasing because justified by the necessities of the case,
traversing the main inequalities of the ground with the ease of level
land yet without diminishing its superior variety and charm. And so with
contour paths I began to find, right at my back door and on my own acre,
in nerve-tired hours, an outdoor relaxation which I could begin, leave
off and resume at any moment and which has never staled on me.
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