Historic leaves, volume 5, April, 1906 - January, 1907

[34] he meant Boston to share in proportion to her benefits, if not her wealth. The Forestry Law, Chapter 255, which he caused to be passed in its behalf, vested the title of the Fells park in the commonwealth, and the park was to be held under unitary control, the Board of Agriculture acting as a Board of Forestry, in perpetuity for the benefit of the municipalities in which it was situated. It will be seen that, under this plan, there was not the same danger of defeat, or blocking to the wheels of its progress by the greed of owners, as there would have been had the Fells acreage not been wholly secured at the same time.

On October 15, 1880, Mr. Wright called together some 200 people, and on Bear Hill in the Stoneham Fells formed a small association to devise plans and to discuss the means of carrying out any one that might be agreed upon. Two plans were sketched, Mr. Wright's and that of Wilson Flagg, who, years before Mr. Wright's discovery, had pleaded the Fells cause and made his own successless appeal to the government in behalf of its salvation as a Forest Conservatory, a wild, natural garden for the indigenous fauna and flora, and for the purposes of science and natural history. Mr. Wright's plan might well be made to embrace this distinct and yet harmonious feature, and was the one adopted. During the next two months these able advocates had made such headway that the mass meeting held in Medford January 1, 1881, was crowded and addressed by speakers who, having just returned from a smart drive through the Fells, were strong for action in its favor. 1881 later on was the year of the Ravine woods desecration, and this disastrous destruction Mr. Wright fried hard to prevent, but the proprietor of the woods, in an attempt to take advantage of his public spirit for the Fells, charged a price evidently beyond what could be hoped for from any other source, and far beyond Mr. Wright's ability to pay, or in the prescribed time—although he and one other of his associates were ready with $1,000 from their own pockets—to get subscribed.

A tree with Mr. Wright was something almost human and wholly divine, and in no other part of his Fells had God blessed a spot with trees older and grander than in the Ravine woods.