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Not the right spirit, but at any rate, there you see them.

Is there any amount of destruction?

Yes, sometimes we see a plant dug right up out of the pots, and on Beekman Place, where I have given tulip plantings under the trees on the two blocks here for the last four or five years and chrysanthemums in the fall, and I've planted some of the begonias for recalcitrant homeowners along here and made the rest of the apartment buildings pay for their own begonias for summer, we sometimes find plants gone in the morning. But on the whole, there are more plants than there are thieves, and we do it anyway.

And, actually, I never go anyplace but what somebody comes up to me and says how much they appreciate the flowers. Mostly they think of the flowers on Park Avenue, because that's what there's been publicity about.

Doesn't it add, or won't it add over a period of time to local pride in the City?

Well, one would think so, and DeSapio said before he was dethroned that it was the only thing that they didn't have a complaint about, and the only favorable thing that a visiting king mentioned to Robert Wagner was the lighting of Central Park from 58th or 59th to 64th Street that I persuaded to have the Tishman Brothers go along and d with me--the trees are lighted on Fifth