"Certain gentlemen of this city who own fast horses have been aiming for years to get possession of a portion of Central Park and convert it into a road, broad, straight and level, whereon their trotters may be speeded, without any annoyance from vulgar animals or their drivers. Some attempts at public meetings have been made in order to invest the project with the dignity of a popular movement; but these have all proved melancholy failures. Nevertheless a bill has been prepared , and is now before the proper legislative committee in Albany, to authorize the construction of such a road, one hundred feet wide, and to compel the people to pay for the work of desolating their pleasure ground. The gentlemen who have tried to organize these meetings for the spoliation of the Park and who are throwing the weight of their influence in favor of this bill are described as "opulent citizens." It does not follow that a citizen is public-spirited because he is opulent, but, as a matter of fact, some of the abettors of this scheme have a certain civic pride and can generally be counted on for the unselfish support of any measure looking towards the city welfare. It would not be surprising that a man whose loftiest ambition is to be known as the owner and driver of the fleetest trotting horse in the world should be willing to turn the grassy stretches of the Park into a bladeless desert to furnish a track for the exercise and display of this noble animal. the pity of it is that one intelligent and fair-minded man can be found who does not understand that the condemnation of any portion of the Park to such a use would mean its utter ruin ; or who if he does comprehend this, entertains the belief that the plain people who would be permitted to sit on a bench by the road-side and see him drive by, would more than counterbalance any loss or pain, caused by a destruction of the pastoral beauty of the Park."