look at it. But if finds an appropriate place in the House devoted to the new and enlarged life of the present, that House which he never saw or entered, and yet to which he gave the first contribution." Among the other generous contributors was an invalid, Mr. William Jones, who gave $4,000 toward the sum of $14,000, its total cost.
The building of the Parish House will always be associated in the minds of those who labored for its erection, with the present existence of Merrick Park, for Mr. Brooks' untiring well directed energies were instrumental in making this plot the beauty spot it is today. Let an anniversary sermon of this, again, bring to us, the spirit of those troublous times. He wrote: " . . . the work well begun of soliciting subscriptions for the erection of the Parish House was stopped in a moment by the sight of the new emergency of the Park. It seemed as we thought of our needs for our Parish work, that we could not wait another month even, for that new building, but yet God's path back into the Desert again was best, we can see today, and that faithful Syndicate's work for the purchase of Memorial Park was worth waiting for. I know, as no one else, as I was privileged to attend the meeting of that Syndicate, how nobly the Parish was represented there, month after month, and it is a thing always to be remembered in our history that men were to be found among us, ready, without solicitation to give $5,000, a third of the whole amount contributed outside of the City's appropriation for the sake of us all, and all to come." Incidentally it was planned at first to place this park's choicest adornment, St. Gauden's statue, "The Puritan," in front of the Old First Church. It stood for a while on Stearns Park. Its surpassing beauty is reproduced in a cast in the Art Museum at Boston, in the Dresden Gallery, and in the Louvre at Paris. An observer, in a spirit of raillery, might notice that the back of this stern Puritan is firmly turned toward the Episcopal Church while his steps are directed toward the first house of worship of the Unitarian.
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