The gathering of the forces Author:Walt Whitman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CIVIC INTERESTS July 9, 1846 [fort Greene Park, Brooklyn] The New York Tribune of this morning prints the following paragraph: A correspondent writes... more » us a very enthusiastic remonstrance against the projected leveling of Fort Greene. We entirely agree with him in the feeling which such desecration inspires; but we fear that the case is a hopeless one. Trade and commerce are an irresistible power, and before their necessities nothing can stand. The requirements of the rapidly flourishing city for "more room" are constant and clamorous; and her citizens are justly proud of the rapid growth, even while lamenting that in her progress a spot so haunted with lofty associations must be despoiled. Who wrote that? It evidently speaks the sentiments of any body else in the world than either of the regular writers for the Tribune. What a sneaking way this, on the part of some one, to "whip the devil round the stump!" We know there are a few small-eyed folk in Brooklyn, who oppose Washington Park, fromjealous or pecuniary motives; but even them we should hardly think guilty of such a subterranean bit of spite as is involved in the way of that paragraph. Tribune writers! all the New York press! we appeal to you, (have you ever been on Fort Greene, just at sundown of a pleasant day?) and invoke your assistance in this matter. "More room," we want, do we? Wei Well if we are crowded for room, (having a stretch of some hundred and twenty miles to grow out upon, at our leisure,) what must your New York be? If the "necessities of trade and commerce," are so vital in such cases that "nothing can stand" before them, why keep your Park, an open space yet? Build it up! cut down the trees on your Battery, and cover their old roots with five-story buildings. "Must be despoiled," quotha!—W...« less