Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1880-06-24
Coney Island.

Coney Island is curiously like the
centennial, that is the only description
that does it Justice. 1t is centennial of
| pleasure, pure and simple, without any
| tiresome ulteriOr commercial purposes,
held amid refreshing breezes, by the sea.
There is the same gay architecture, the
same waving flags, the same delightful,
distracting whirl, the same enormous
masses of staring, good-natured, per-
petualfy marching and counter-march-
ing human heings. Its essential charac-
ter is bound up with the crowd. Its
| virtues are those of a crowd, and so are
/ its faults. Walters and landlords in
such circumstances are apt, like some
philanthropists. to lose their interest in
the Individual in their devotion to the
race. There are numerous minor fail
| ings which are no doubt to be looked
after as things settle quietly into place.
There are permanent guests at the
best hotels who have certain privileges
which the mere exeurslonlst cannot
enjoy. For til m are warm, misty
mornings, when the light is mysterious,
the sea white, and only dark figure
here and there on the distant bars as low
tide occupies the shore, before the crowd
has come down. For them are lone
some strolis. if they will, on the beach
at night. when the crowd has gone and
the initials and myriad footprints it has
left look strange under crescent moon; !;
and, again, evenings of storm without,
when they sit in pensive small groups
to them and jealously guarded from in
trusion, in an upper story. Still, even
these permanent boarders are not like
hoo or1o olc
is no indoor life. They cross the din
ing-room at every meal to greet newly
arrived friends, and hardly expect to
see them again, and are not surprised
to see those from the most remote States,
for they have found that Coney Island
is as cosmopolitan as Broadway. The
crowd fascinates them, and they come
down and mingle with it and make il
their study and are possessed with its
fever of arrival and departure. One
could imagine the merry-go round
becoming something of a dismal
go-round with too long continu-
ance. 1t does not seem likely ever
to be restful place of the peaceful,
,neditative order Of summer resort
so near metropolis that the metrop-
oils can pour itself out in mass upon it
with perfect ease, such a quality must
not be demanded, and this may have
been the secret reason preventing the
development of Coney Island before.
But another kind of entertainment takes
its place. Instead of the saturnalia Of
vulgarity and discomfort that may have
been dreaded, it happily turns out that
the people, arriving in such unique bulk
and so splendidly received, constitute a
most inter esting distraction in them
selves. Even those who do not like
crowds may be reconeiled to this one.
It is excellently behaved. 1t scarcely
seems to need the vigilant special police
enlisted for the island, and the justice
who holds court every morning at the
Manhattan Beach hotel has rarely an
offender to consign to his stout wooden
Bastile in the basement. This crowd
Is clean and neatly dressed, of very re-
spectacle social grade, of great good
humor, and on honest pleasure bent,
and the spirits are insensibly raised in
moving with it.
A touch of patriotic pride really
ought to mingle with our contempla-
ton of Coney Island. 1t is quite or1gi-
nal, distinctively American, and
charming. There is nothing like it
abroad, aud its proximity and extra
ordinary ease of access seem to insure
it against rivalry at home. Trouville
is six hours by express from Paris; and
Brighton and Margate and Ramsgate
(all of which it is the habit to mention
as in the season mere suburbs of their
parent city, are fifty or sixty miles
from London. Even were they nearer,
and had they white sand and blue
waves, there are not. in either metro
polls, the fierce heats of a New York
summer to drive the populace forth to
seek their ref1eshment in anything like
an equal degree. 1t is difficult to see
why the strange new island which has
all at once taken SO considerable a
place in the chart, should not perman-
emily remain what it seems now to be-
the greatest resort for a single days
pleasure in the world. Scrabner.