This home had been first owned 150 years ago, in 1754, by the great-grandfather of Andrew Green, a physician, named Thomas Green; afterwards by his grandfather, Dr. John Green, also a physician; then by his father, William Elijah Green, a lawyer, of whom his son Andrew writes:

"The father of the subject of this memoir resided here with but brief intervals of absence till his decease in his 89th year in the room where he was born."

He writes of his mother also that "She was the daughter and granddaughter of men of renown in civil affairs. She enjoyed the advantages of an accomplished family,' being of good education, refined tastes and excellent principles, but of a rather slender constitution."

He writes of his "father ever the genial companion of his children," of associations which became dearer with the lapse of time," of "The very trees of the homestead embodying memories which greatly enhanced their value," of the "spacious garret, a heterogeneous museum of relics, affording inexhaustible amusement," of the "library, rather scant, but of standard works, elevating, refining and well read."

He closes this sketch of his brother's and his own early home with a feeling word and a line from a poet—

"The ancestral homestead is the place where the survivors like best to dwell, or to linger in their visits.

'I see around me here

Things which you cannot see.''

Must we not believe that the boy of fifteen, coming from a home of which he wrote thus, when more than fifty years had passed away, was a boy of high ideals, that he was not narrowed in his aims in life to the shops in which he toiled for years, first as errand boy and then as clerk?

In this same book is printed the letter written him by this brother Samuel, next him in age, on the day when Andrew at 21 years of age sailed to the island of Trinidad. The letter was not to be opened till he was out at sea, and his brother writes thus to him:

"You leave us now with the hope and expectation of getting wealth. If God sees it best that you become rich, He will send abundant prosperity. You have consecrated yourself to His service; let your light shine brightly among the moral darkness with which you will be surrounded."

Thus the youth of 21 was believed by the brother next to him to possess ideals; first, the prosaic ideal of himself as possibly in the future becoming a high man, but also the higher moral ideal of himself as a servant of his generation.

Not very many weeks since, in the last letter, excepting one, addressed to me by Mr. Green, he invited me to lend my name to his plan of establishing a monument here to the great poet and citizen, John Milton. He had, from early life, made Milton his first choice in the world of literature. John Milton's theory of life is found in that brief birthday poem, which he wrote when he was 23 years old, in which he vowed that whatever his life should be 66 Towards which time leads me and the will of Heaven."

It should be spent

"If I have grace to use it so

As ever in my great taskmaster's eye."

And Andrew H. Green, the young man, entered upon his career in New York with this ideal of life as a service. That this early ideal was also the abiding thought of his later years, I will show further on, from the very latest words which he spoke in public, which declare his theory of life at the age of 83.

How harmonious with this philosophy of life was his first entrance upon a public office. He has made a modest beginning as a young lawyer and has passed his thirtieth year, when he becomes a candidate for office and is successful. But for what office? His own record is as follows:

"He was elected by the people trustee of schools in the Fourth ward. Thereafter he was School Commissioner and member of the Board of Education, then was made President of the Board, it having 44 members."

He was by this time in his thirty-fifth year. The New York city which was Andrew Green's ideal was to be an educated New York. So much as was in his power, he purposed that this city should be made intelligent. His family were educators. Of his brothers and sisters, no less than five were professional teachers, if we include among them the missionary physician out in Ceylon, who was indeed a teacher in a very important way, for he founded a medical school of his own in order to train physicians for the dark races in that out-of-the-way corner of the earth. Andrew H. Green made the education of New York a part of his life. Here again he was following after his hero, John Milton, who honored the teacher, being himself a schoolmaster.

Himself shut out from the walls of high school and college by his entrance upon business at 15, he yet excelled the majority of the men who have been helped by the college, in his appreciation of such schools of learning. He had educated himself so well, that he could rightly value colleges and universities as helps to education. The traveller who has trudged in youth, alone and slow, to the top of Mt. Washington in America, or of Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, can best appreciate the mountain railway that carries another generation by tens of thousands, swiftly to the magnificent prospect.

It was Mr. Green's lively interest in higher education that led to my own acquaintance with him. This became more intimate through his acceptance, a few years since, of a seat in the New York University Council. Here he proved himself to the last, a punctual, wise and useful member. Two weeks before his death, being in attendance upon the annual meeting of this corporation, he remained after its close to give information to the Chancellor which had important value for the University.

At 37 years of age, Mr. Green became a Commissioner of Central Park, for which the movement had begun some years before. The discussion of the question who first suggested this great park is but slightly interesting. The credit for this was not claimed. by Mr. Green. What he claimed for himself is briefly stated in the following sentences dictated by him not long ago to his niece:

"In 1857 he was appointed by the Legislature one of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park and became treasurer of the board: president and executive officer of the board, that is, controller, of the park for about ten years. He had the complete supervision of the engineers, landscape architects, gardeners and the whole retinue of employees, sometimes comprising as many as 3000 men.

"The office of controller of the park was created especially for Mr. Green and on this account, that in the early year or two of the park, there was constant friction with the then forming ring, and the park board were quite willing to leave the work to anyone who would attend to it. At that time, Mr. Green was made president and treasurer. As the park was developed and grew in popularity, some member intimated that one man should not hold two offices. As the Legislature had authorized the board to attach a salary to either of the two officers, the board fixed the salary to the office of the treasurer and elected Mr. Green treasurer. Whereupon Mr. Green immediately declined to accept the office. He was elected president. The member who was elected treasurer with a salary served for a few months without satisfaction. Upon

this the office of controller of the park was created with all of the executive power of the board unified to those of the treasurer, leaving to the president the power of presiding at the board meetings. Mr. Green was elected controller of the park and continued as such for ten years, until the Tweed Charter of 1870 removed the members of the board from office and turned the park over to a department of the city government appointed by A. Oakey Hall, then mayor. Mr. Green was appointed a member of the new board but his associates were those with whom he had no relations whatever and in 1872 he resigned."

I saw Central Park for the first time shortly after Mr. Green began his work. It was like a gem or a group of gems in extreme native roughness, not yet skillfully touched by the hand of the lapidary. By the hand of Andrew II. Green and his helpers, that rectangular stretch of rock was to be made into a jewel which should lie on the bosom of his fair Manhattan. The most ancient book tells us how Bezaleel fashioned a decoration that was to lie against the very heart of the church in the wilderness as that church was embodied in the person of God's high priest. Bezaleel, you remember, made a four square group of gems, selecting and cutting and polishing for the same the most precious stones; ruby and jasper, emerald and sapphire; topaz and diamond. So Andrew H. Green devoted ten years of his life helping to fashion yonder decoration that lies on the bosom of New York. For the emerald he set there the broad meadows and bright lawns; for the diamond, the sparkling water-falls; for the topazes, he set tulips; for amethists, wistarias; for sapphires, violets; for jaspers, jessamines, and for rubies, the red roses, while the lakes were made to reflect the brighter colors of the sunset sky. Such a jeweled decoration he placed on the bosom of the city which was his bride. He was a perfect workman of the elder day of art.

"In the elder days of Art builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; for the Gods see everywhere."