e countless electric lights. Oscar
has caused the execution of decorative paintings upon the walls. If he
had caused the execution of the decorative painters he would have done
better; but a man who has devoted the greater part of his life to the
propagation of injunctions is not supposed to understand that wall
decoration which appears to have been done with a nozzle is worse than
none. But if carpers say that Oscar failed in his landscapes, none can
say that he failed in his measurements of the popular mind. The people
come in swarms to the Olympia. Two elevators are busy at conveying them
to where the cool and steady night-wind insults the straw hat; and the
scene here during the popular part of the evening is perhaps more gaudy
and dazzling than any other in New York.

The bicycle has attained an economic position of vast importance. The
roof garden ought to attain such a position, and it doubtless will
soon--as we give it the opportunity it desires.

The Arab or the Moor probably invented the roof garden in some long-gone
centuries, and they are at this day inveterate roof gardeners. The
American, surprisingly belated--for him, has but recently seized upon
the idea, and its development here has been only partial. The
possibilities of the roof garden are still unknown.

Here is a vast city in which thousands of people in summer half stifle,
cry out continually for air, fresher air. Just above their heads is what
might be called a county of unoccupied land. It is not ridiculously
small when compared with the area of New York county itself. But it is
as lonely as a desert, this region of roofs. It is as untrodden as the
corners of Arizona. Unless a man be a roof gardener, he knows
practically nothing of this land.

Down in the slums necessity forces a solution of problems. It drives the
people to the roofs. An evening upon a tenement roof with the great
golden march of the stars across the sky, and Johnnie gone for a pail of
beer, is not so bad if you have never seen the mountains nor heard, to
your heart, the slow, sad song of the pines.

IN THE BROADWAY CARS.

PANORAMA OF A DAY FROM THE DOWN-TOWN RUSH OF THE MORNING TO THE
UNINTERRUPTED WHIRR OF THE CABLE AT NIGHT--THE MAN, AND THE WOMAN, AND
THE CONDUCTOR.

The cable cars come down Broadway as the waters come down at Lodore.
Years ago Father Knickerbocker had convulsions when it was proposed to
lay impious rails on his sacred thoroughfare. At the pr