in Brooklyn we have all Long Island to spread over, and land is within the reach of even a parson’s purse.  A man never feels so rich as when he owns a bit of real estate, and I take some satisfaction in the bit of land in the front of my domicile, and in the rear, capable of holding several fruit trees and rose-beds.  Oxford Street has the deep shade of a New England village.  We come to know our neighbors here, which is a degree of knowledge not often attained in New York or London.  The social life here is also less artificial than at the other end of the bridge.  There is less of the foreign element, and of either great wealth or poverty; we have neither the splendor of Paris, nor the squalor of the by-streets of Naples.  The name of “Breucklen” was given to our town by its original Dutch settlers, but the aggressive New Englanders pushed in and it is a more thoroughly Yankee city to-day than any city in the land outside of New England.  My old friend, Mayor Low, urged the consolidation of Brooklyn with New York on the ground that its moral and civic influence would be a wholesome counteraction of Tammany and the tenement-house politics.  For self-protection, I joined with my lamented brother, the late Dr. Storrs, in an effort to maintain our independence.  Ours is pre-eminently a city of homes where the bulk of the people live in an undivided dwelling, and I do not believe that there is another city either in America, or elsewhere, that contains over a million inhabitants, so large a proportion of whom are in a school house during the week, and in God’s house on the Sabbath.

[Illustration:  THE LAFAYETTE AVENUE CHURCH.]

One of the glories of Brooklyn is its vast and picturesque “Prospect Park,” with natural forests, hills and dales and its superb outlook over the bay and ocean.

I hope that it may not be a violation of propriety to say that the Park Commissioners in this city of my adoption bestowed my own name on a pretty plot of ground not far from my residence; and its bright show of flowers makes it a constant delight to my neighbors.  Last year some of my fellow-townspeople made an exceedingly generous proposition to place there a memorial statue; and I felt compelled to publish the following reply to an offer which quite transcended any claim that I could have to such an honor: 

     176 SOUTH OXFORD STREET, JUNE 12, 1901.

     MESS JOHN N. BEACH, D.W.  MCWILLIAMS, AND THOMAS T. BARR.

     My Dear Sirs,

I have just received your kind letter in which you express the desire of yourselves and of several of our prominent citizens that I would consent to the erection of a “Memorial in Cuyler Park” to be placed there by voluntary contributions of generous friends here and elsewhere.  Do not, I entreat you, regard me as indifferent to a proposition whose motive affords the most profound and heartfelt gratitude; but a work of art in bronze or marble, such as has been suggested,