s what they say--I don't know.

"But to Coney I goes a-Tuesday. I gets off the 'L' and starts for the
glitterin' show. 'Twas a fine sight. The Babylonian towers and the
Hindoo roof gardens was blazin' with thousands of electric lights, and
the streets was thick with people. 'Tis a true thing they say that
Coney levels all rank. I see millionaires eatin' popcorn and trampin'
along with the crowd; and I see eight-dollar-a-week clothin'-store
clerks in red automobiles fightin' one another for who'd squeeze the
horn when they come to a corner.

"'I made a mistake,' I says to myself. 'Twas not Coney I needed.
When a man's sad 'tis not scenes of hilarity he wants. 'Twould be
far better for him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services
at the Paradise Roof Gardens. 'Tis no consolation when a man's lost
his sweetheart to order hot corn and have the waiter bring him the
powdered sugar cruet instead of salt and then conceal himself, or to
have Zozookum, the gipsy palmist, tell him that he has three children
and to look out for another serious calamity; price twenty-five cents.

"I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion
near one corner of this new private park, Dreamland. A year ago that
old pavilion was standin' up straight and the old-style waiters was
slammin' a week's supply of clam chowder down in front of you for a
nickel and callin' you 'cully' friendly, and vice was rampant, and you
got back to New York with enough change to take a car at the bridge.
Now they tell me that they serve Welsh rabbits on Surf Avenue, and you
get the right change back in the movin'-picture joints.

"I sat down at one side of the old pavilion and looked at the surf
spreadin' itself on the beach, and thought about the time me and Norah
Flynn sat on that spot last summer. 'Twas before reform struck the
island; and we was happy. We had tintypes and chowder in the ribald
dives, and the Egyptian Sorceress of the Nile told Norah out of her
hand, while I was waitin' in the door, that 'twould be the luck of
her to marry a red-headed gossoon with two crooked legs, and I was
overrunnin' with joy on account of the allusion. And 'twas there that
Norah Flynn put her two hands in mine a year before and we talked of
flats and the things she could cook and the love business that goes
with such episodes. And that was Coney as we loved it, and as the hand
of Satan was upon it, friendly and noisy and your money's worth, with
n