The Moral of the Water Celebration

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THE MORAL OF THE WATER CELEBRATION.

An abundant water supply is not only introduced into Brooklyn, but the fact has been promulgated in every conceivable way thoughout the Union. It is an event to which the people of this city have looked with absorbing anxiety, and which the residents of other cities have regarded with friendly interest. To say at the close of it, that credit is due to the Commissioners who have gratuitously labored to create the works, to the aldermen who have striven to make the celebration worthy of the city, and to the citizens, the firemen, the trades, the military, whose numbers and fine presence adorned the procession, is to say little. For all these are citizens of Brooklyn; it is their own city which has been beautified and glorified, their own property which has been enhanced and improved, by the enterprise, and we have no special call to compliment each other for helping to do that which it was the common interest as well as duty to effect. To the delegations from other cities, and the visitors from abroad, we may indeed be grateful. Never was money better and more profitably spent than that which entertained them; for they go home to tell, not only of Brooklyn's kind reception of them and courtesy to them, but of her stately buildings, her grand avenues, her thriving trade, her expansive territory, her public spirit, her matchless beauty, her evident high destiny. Henceforth each denizen of another city that rode through our streets on Thursday is, if he be a man of fairness and observation, an admirer and advertiser of the beauties and resources of Brooklyn. Wherever he goes, he can and will correct the too current notion that Brooklyn is an obscure outskirt and appendage of New York. He will have seen that she has possessions, facilities, advantages, which are neither dependent on nor derivable from New York; and that with rapid strides she is working out an independent destiny for herself, which may hereafter make her rather the rival than the adjunct of her neighbor. While New York is becoming more and more a mere storehouse, Brooklyn is becoming more and more a home, entwining the pride and affections of her citizens around her, and leading them more and more to feel that their interests identified with hers.

There were a few awkward contretemps connected with the celebration, some of which spiteful malignity has striven to turn to individual detriment; but such tactics are harmless when regarded with calm disdain. Such incidents were the omission of the Water Commissioners' names from the programme of the day; the objectionable circumstances under which the Ode was selected; the neglect to notify the press in time of the intended postponement, and the consequent premature issue of the Oration; the leaving the route, unsettled and subject to change, until the last day or two, which greatly lessened, no doubt, the number and style of decorations on the line; these or such other accidental and trivial blunders and errors might well have been expected and in an affair of such magnitude, and which was on the whole so decidedly successful, will be at once accounted for by the sensible, excused by the candid, and forgotten by the generous—none but a veteran slanderer and back biter of a half century, would wish to embalm their memory.

For our own part, we prefer to look at the great fact, that Brooklyn has completed a grand enterprise in an adequate yet economical manner, and has worthily celebrated its success. Herein is cause for every lover of the city, and every man allied to it either by residence or property, to rejoice unfeignedly. We, at least, feel in no snarling humor, and cannot afford to worry ourselves into a less pleasant frame of mind by chastising ill-natured people whom not even the joyous demonstrations of Thursday could inspire with a solitary ray of cheerfulness.