Well, and by this time, having been in the mysterious East days and weeks, I have gazed at several things, as you may imagine. I have not come into the mysterous East to learn and live, but rather to gaze and inquire. And so I gaze and inquire, and gaze and inquire, sometimes perfunctorily, sometimes quite desperately, sometimes very heavily. But always with dogged persistence and the fresh candor of youth. (I don't know just what the fresh candor of youth is, but I like the look of it - when written.) And in so doing I have come upon some rather good things - some very good things, in fact.

By far the best thing yet is Coney Island.

One bright, pretty day I - of Butte-Montana - in company with a Little Chaperone-person went out to Coney Island to gaze and inquire. Coney Island leaves nothing to be desired. Everything is there. God is in his heaven and all's right with the world. It is delicious.

The first thing one gazes at is the beach and the humanity thereupon - especially the children. Little Billy and little Alice and little Katie and little Henry dig and splash and shovel and kick and burrow in the sand. And their legs are bare - it is here indeed that one realizes the glory of bare legs.

"They have no stockings and no shoes," I said to the Little Chaperone-person, wistfully.

"They have not," murmured the Little Chaperone-person, with a note of envy in her voice.

"They have knees - knees of their own. My dear, do you realize that they have knees of their own?" I exclaimed.

The Little Chaperone-person nodded.

And we thought straightaway of the time when we had also been six - the Little Chaperone-Person and I. There were all kinds of children on the beach at Coney Island. I thought that I had seen in Butte-Montana all the kinds of children that the world contains. But no. Here upon the beach at Coney Island I found worlds unknown. There was a little girl lying buried in the sand - only a tousled head, a tanned flat little face, and two hard brown fists were visible. I felt a distinct pleasure in gazing at this. There seemed something fine and desireable about the figure of the tiny girl in the sand.

"Look," I said to the Little Chaperone-person.

"Yes," she made answer. The Little Chaperone-person is an extremely appreciative one.

We walked over to the child.

"Do you like the sand, little girl?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied the child. The child's eyes were the common yet lovely eyes of a real child. She looked out of them as always a child looks.

"Why do you like it?" I went on.

"'Cause it's sand," she replied.

"What is your name?" I ventured.

"Gertrude," replied the child. The wind and the water were mixed in Gertrude's hair. Gertrude's little life was full of weather. "I am six," she added hastily to forestall any questions upon that point.

"Does it feel good to be six?" I inquired.

"I dunno," said Gertrude.

"You are extremely fortunate in not knowing," I observed. "It's hell - just hell - to know, sometimes."

"Huh!" said Gertrude, with wide startled eyes.

"Yes, it is," I repeated, "but never mind. Good-by."

"Good-by" replied the child. She sat up in the sand and stared, stared, stared as always a child stares.

Dear little Gertrude -

"Isn't it very well," I said, "to be six, and not to know it?"

"Oh, very well," assented the Little Chaperone-person.

"And look at this beach," I added, "and all the people on it who are only six."

"They will always be six," said the Little Chaperone-person.

Just then there came a heavy masculine individual of the whiskey-drinking kind and interrupted us.

"Lady-could-you-give-me-a-few-cents-for-the-love-of-God?-I'm-dead-broke-and-" We gave him the few cents - not for the love of God, however. Rather because we wished him to go and get drunk. He was already half-seas over.

"That was not six, certainly," said the Little Chaperone-person.

"No, I think that was about five," I replied with my most positive intonation.

And also upon the beach we came upon a stout old lady who was sitting upright while another packed sand about her in a damp heavy bank. These were not wearing bathing suits, but were in ordinary clothes. The stout old lady sat stiff for this process as she would have sat for a shoe polish or a shampoo.

Often as I've gazed and inquired in my life I have never before beheld anything quite like this.

"What would you call that?" I asked the Little Chaperone-person.

"That is a bit of scenic effect," she replied, meaninglessly.

"Doubtless," I rejoined idiotically.

We both enjoyed the moment thoroughly.

The entire beach was picturesquely infested with humanity.

A man and a girl in their scant flannel garments were sitting side by each, in the sand. They ogled. They coquetted. They languished. They were two lovers. We agreed - the Little Chaperone-person and I - that it did not require a brilliant intellect to divine that.

"Don't speak to them," said the Little Chaperone-person.

Much as I wished to gaze and inquire, we avoided them as if they had had a grievous plague.

And a lone girl sat with her back to the sounding sea.

"What on earth -" I began. "Don't ask me," said the Little Chaperone-Person. "Let it go - it's perfect as it is." Which was true enough.

And the most delicate little incongruity of all was the very slim figure of a young lad stretched out on the sand reading - would you believe it, Villette by Charlotte Bronte. "Did you suppose," I said to the Little Chaperone-person, "that any one ever read that now - particularly a boy!" "I am not thinking of that so much," she made answer, "as of that book plate on this beach, Coney Island, New York."

After which we walked on in ruminating silence.

Then we went to gaze at that steeplechase arrangement. There are some things at Coney Island that are altogether delightful, but there are two things at least that are simple monstrosities. So much so indeed that it gives one thrills and spasms of pleasure to gaze at them and to talk about them.

The steeplechase arrangement is one of them. The grown persons who went in for that were very young. Their shoulders moved and their necks curved exactly as if they were six years old, and the short detached sentences that came from their lips were very well done. "Happy childhood," we said.

And the other monstrosity is that loop-the-loop affair. To merely gaze at this gives one a decided sensation. To make the brief, frantic little journey one must be like a thing that never was on land or sea. The Little Chaperone-person and I stared in rapture at a young woman who had either misjudged her powers or else had been told that the proper thing to do was yell. She yelled. Her mouth opened and emitted loud whoops at irregular intervals on the frantic journey. Her facial expression was a marvel, a caution, a symphony.

"Now, what do you think of," I inquired, "when you see a think like that?"

"Oh," mused the Little Chaperone-person, "I think of a pink parasol - and a little green bottle of cucumber pickles. What do you think of?"

"Of the world, the flesh, and the devil," I replied instantly with another of my most positive intonations.

For a moment we enjoyed life.

Then we came upon a succession of interesting and heterogeneous things.

There was a box that was labelled "Drop in a cent and see twelve - astounding pictures of the war in South Africa - twelve." We dropped in a cent. The pictures were very astounding - the most astounding I have ever seen. And what I liked was the expression of the Little Chaperone-person's face as she looked at them - the delicate incongruity of the two.

And we came to another box labelled "Drop in a cent and hear twelve - popular songs - twelve." We dropped in a cent. The songs were extremely popular - and it was evident that the entire twelve were given out at one and the same time.

"Lovely," said the Little Chaperone-person and I. And we came to a building where one might eat things if one's stomach were good and one's digestion strong. We watched a man consume an egg, and then we turned hastily and walked away. And we came to a barn-like structure labelled "The Johnstown Flood." We ventured inside and looked at it. "There is almost too much striking stage effect," I remarked. "And almost too many foamy billows," added the Little Chaperone-person.

Then we peered into a room where all the machinery in Coney Island was plainly situated. It smelled of steam and grease. And in the midst of pipes and boilers a hand-made peacock with a glass tail was perched. He was a delicate incongruity. "That glass tail," we said with one voice. It alone was well worth the price of admission.

And we came to a dry-goods box where a man with a soiled but angelic countenance expressed a great willingness to make tin-type photographs of you provided you gave him two dimes in advance. I gave him two dimes in advance and he made two tin-type photographs. I suppose they were of me. At any rate I had no reliable information to the contrary. I looked healthy in those pictures. A young person of feminine persuasion brought them to us hot from the camera. The Little Chaperone-person accodentally drew her tiny thumb across one of them, leaving a mark. "Now look what you did!" said the young person in a tense, strained, heavy voice. The Little Chaperone-person recoiled with a sudden serpentine movement. "Oh, let's get out of here," she whispered. We got out. Then we came to a platform scales that was labelled "Your weight and your fortune told for one cent." This was an opportunity that we could not afford to lose. The Little Chaperone-person weighed one hundred and three pounds and I weighed one hundred and seven. Our fortunes were the same. The four pounds difference in weight made no difference it seemed. Our fortune was: "The person you love is waiting for you in advance. Don't fail to have courage." "Isn't it an astonishing thing that the person we love is waiting for in advance?" I said, wonderingly. She agreed absolutely.

Even out in Butte-Montana I had never heard of anything to equal that. It seemed to require a great deal of gazing and inquiring.

By this time the shades of night had made tracks over the beach, and the Little Chaperone-person and I wandered over to the Bowery. My recollection of the Bowery takes the form of a hall where you must drink beer and gaze at a brilliantly-colored semi-circle of persons with legs who sit around on a stage and sing, one after another, desperately, frantically, loudly and with amazing voices. These, to be sure, are not so uncommon in vaudeville but everything has a newness in Coney Island.

"Which of these persons do you like best?" I asked the Little Chaperone-person.

"I like them all so well," she replied, "it's hard to choose any one."

It was so with me also - where they were all so nearly perfect of their kind it was difficult to find a favorite.

But finally we selected a gem - a gem who wore eyeglasses and walked the stage with the air of being in merely temporary durance vile. Also she had a look of some high fine respectable matron of a Girl's School in Massachusetts. She was stout and heavy and held her head high and triumphantly, and her eyeglasses had a long gold chain to them. The chain taken together with her ridiculous short frock, her green legs and the song that issued from her lips, made an incongruity so delicate that it seemed like to vanish momentarily. The words of the song could not be heard - even with that voice - in the general din and uproar, and seeing this dignified creation pacing up and down the stage you might have thought it the sleep-walking scene from "MacBeth" or the court-room scene in "The Merchant of Venice." You might have, only instinctively you didn't.

We gazed at this astonishing vision until our brains seemed paralyzed.

"Come," said the Little Chaperone-person, "that is the limit. Let us leave Coney Island."

So we left Coney Island - a lovable unconscious pathetic thing - and departed into the night.

But as we went we turned, like Lot's wife, and looked back.

We saw a swift picture of the beach in the afternoon: the sweet common world-old faces of the happy children; the lovely eyes of little Gertrude in the sand; the very young babies and the tired work-worn mothers; the salt air from the water, and the water itself in long, long palish-blue waves and lines; the sweep and curl of white foam; the gray shadows on the sky; the dul heavy sun looking through mists; the flying wild clouds - and then a deserted beach in the dusk with water silently moving and vague mysterious phantoms coming up out of the sea.

"Everything," responded the Little Chaperone-person, sleepily.

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