The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1879-08-16
OUR NEW YORK LETTER.

| ~'Dt N'' aug. ~
The great metropolis, like the rest of the
world, is enjoying a spell of the dog days.
| Fifth avenue is desolate lot of locked,
barred, and blank-wndowed houses, and
even busy Broadway was in notified,
limp sort of way. Society is spending
money at scaShore, and Coney Island is the
great attraction for the New Workers at
present Chicago has been said to be the
model OF thrift and enterprise in this coun-
try, but wonder if Coney Island is not
entitled to rival claim. Take Fairmont
Park, with its outlook, gay buildings, rail-
ways, merry crowds, music, understands,
and flying banners; place it on the sea
coast, with the surf beating upon long
stretches of golden sands, with gllstening
sails in the oaing, and you have better
idea of the place than columns of newspa-
per letters could give. Take the circum-
stances of the place. A long island only
separated by a little creek from Long Is.
land proper, brought by the improved
means of transportation within an hours
ride Of New York, the promoters of its sue
cess have gone to work in way that is sure
to be substantial. Several companies have
built narrow-gauge railroads communica-
ting with Gotham running to the Brighton
Beach and Manhattan Hotels respectively,
the same corporations that have built the
railways have also erected the two hotels,
Each house has connected with il large
bathing facilities the largest on the coast;
restaurants and resorts wherein. bands of
music play all day, and in front of each
music-stand on the most improved plans,
fan-shaped, acting as sounding boards
increasing the power of the orchestra, and
deepening the volume of sound. Here
large and complete companies play every
afternoon from four to half-past five, and
evening from seven to nine o'clock. A mar
inc railway connects the two hotels less
than half q mile apart.
have been to New York before James
Gordon Bennett bought villa there, bathed
at Long Branch in the palmy days when
President Grant made i, the summer politi-
cal mecca, took water at Atlantic City
and Cape May, along with
Philadelphias falrest, daughters
and most rollicking sons, but never have
had such surf-bathing as at Coney Island.
The beach is as far ahead of its rivals as is
bath-tub superior for bathing purposes to
wet towel. Everywhere the descent into
the water Is ors'' Hna ";unisir there TO
undertow perceptible, all the room you
want, and breakers to toss you high in the
air or rock you gently upon the sands.
You can lie in them, roll in them, swim in
them, jump over or under them, dive
through them, and if you can swim on your
back, ride over them. Here are thousands
of all ages, sexes and conditions, doing all
these things from the three-year.old stick
ing its ruby toes in the sands where the
pillows just lightly kiss the shores, to the
champion swimmers riding like dolphins,
where the greatest breakers flask their
spray IN the sunlight. In the middle
grounds are thousands jumping, playing,
rolling, swimming, trying to swim, practi
sing fraud by Logging the toes of ones
foot into the sand. Artemus Ward would
say this is great place to study nature
particularly that portion of it that relates
to the anatomy of the human legs. The
first thing that strikes the student who is
able to grasp the subject in all its bearings,
is the melancholy fact than so many girls
with pretty faces have such woofully
thin legs Here are legs whose causes
make no more graceful contour than would
red beet nailed to a bean-pole legs, with
out any calves, snd legs whose calves look
as if by some freak of nature they had been
put on the spine-bones The sight of these
things alone would make you sad, incline
to a life Of celibacy or dive down to the
bottom Of the deep blue sea and become
prey to melancholy, and the sharks were it
not for the view of the really handsome legs
that you see around you.
The policy regulations of the island is
such that in sun bathing there is perfect
freedom and abandon to the delights Of Old
Neptunc's embrace without license. A
pretty girl screams and clutches your arm,
and you are at perfect liberty to half en-
brace her while guiding her shoreward,
only don't attempt to embrace pretty girl
before she gets scared at Ncptune's pillows.
Tha fact is, that is to say an old bachelor
friend of mine asserts it as fact, that the
pretty girls scream, not because they are
alarmed, but to secure some attention from
the sterncr sex. The assertion may be true
or false, but one thing is very certain, |
propose to give myself the benefit Of the