Arizona republican., 1892-09-11

ON THE BOARD WALK.
 gust, and on Sundays this number, great as it is, often doubles. As good an au- thority as there is in the town, the chief of police, tells me that there were in this town last Sunday over 200, 900 peo- pie!
 One hundred and eighty thousand of these had come for rest or pleasure. Five thousand were walters and porters imported to serve the 1S0,000. The re- mainder were permanent residents.
 Long Branch and Saratoga attract the swell society people; Newport, Mar ragansett Pier and Bar Harbor the 400; Asbury Park the religiously inclined. Atlantic City catches the masses of the people-the hoi polloi. It is here you see the American people as they are the plain, everyday, workaway people. They are good enough for me. They make one proud of his race and of his country. The simple fact that 1S0,000 Americans-men, women and children have the leisure and the spare cash to visit the seashore for at least few days each year is encouraging to any one who believes in prosperity for the many.
 So many people wanted to come to Atlantic City last Saturday that the railroads couldn't carry them. Thirty express trains on three railroads hauled an average of nine cars each, and eight or ten of the trains were run in two sec .tions, and yet people were left in Phila- delphia simply because they could find no cars to get in.
 Atlantic City swallowed them all up. Just how do not know. But it did it, and every one was made comfortable. Nearly POO, 900 Americans gathered in one spot, principally along the strand, made a rare spectacle. They were the common people tradesmen, salaried workers, professional people who are not at the top of the heap-all we'll dressed, nearly all we'll behaved. Thou sands had come for a good time-to drink, bathe, make merry. Restaurants and saloons by the hundred were open. There was no restraint. Yet one might walk about the town for an hour with out seeing drunken man. Of all these thousands only nine were arrested, and they for petty offenses.
 What is the fascination of this city of pleasure that it is able to attract such multitudes to its gates? The ocean, one says, of course. True. The ocean is a great attraction. The strand, two miles long, is from midforenoon till night mass of humanity. Literally thousands sit or walk in the sand watching each other or the gay crowd that is sozzling in the surf. Here we catch the real se- cret of Atlantic City's popularity-t love of people for being where other peo- pie are; the fondness of the average mortal for looking at his fellows. Per haps 50,000 people are on the beach, though only third of them care to bathe.
 Imagine stretch of beach mile or SO long. From II o'clock to l, 10000 people in the surf A third of them women. One-sixth of them children. All sorts of bathing suits, all sorts of figures, all sorts of pranks in water or on the sand. Young and old, lean as Cassius and fat as Falstaff, the ugly and the beautiful, all mixed together. Lovers billing and cooing in the break CTS. Whole families wading out, hand in hand, even carrying the babe in arms. Thousands of merry children prattling in the shallow water or digging in the sand. Here and there a woman with B divine face; here and there & queenly figure; here and there a magnificent man; here and there the lame. the decrepit. The woman with tights and bleached hair. The foolish young man with flesh colored bathing suit. Now and then an idiotic father or mother who, by main force. carries into the water hysterical child. Pretty women basking in the sand. Other women who have provided themselves charming bathing suits which they parade in series of prome- nades up and down the beach, foolishly people do not know they are out to appear and not to get wet. Young women who scream because they think screams make them more interesting. So many incidents, types, characters that l despair of cataloguing them-this is the beach at Atlantic City.
 And there is the board walk. In other places it would be the promenade--the something or other less plebeian than plain. common board walk. Yet this Atlantic City board walk IS about the most interesting thoroughfare I have seen in America--excelled only by Broadway. It is three miles long and has an average width of thirty feet. Some years ago there was no board walk, merely planked way down in the sand. The young men of Atlantic City, who saw the possibilities of their community, insisted upon raising this walk to the dignity of great promo. made. Of course the old men ana the principal taxpayers resisted, but the young men had their way, and the board walk was lifted in altitude, broad. ened in feet and nnds the featrfs o