The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-18

say what you like and have what you like. every blessed minute the livelong dayw
 Poor old Aunt Mirandy' To keep these hopeful pledges will at least tenn porarily trail your banners of practical religion in the dust! half hour later the four were wedged In among the masses of hu, manity thronging the great pleasure boats which daily ply between the seething city and the soothing sea. Aunt Mirandy. already wearied from her unusual mental and physical exer- lions or the morning. nodded and started and gulped and snored. all of which drew forth untranslatable say ings from her outlandish charges for a | time: but the gentle influence of the to them wondrous experience soon sub- dued them. stilled them. perhaps awed them; for 10 these waifs. whose farthest confines Of observation had been the outlying towering walls surrounding the dreadful quarter where they prowled like rats. or the rivers edge where they occasionally skulked to the water like fever-driven beasts. it was all mighty voyage of discovery.
 The islands of the day. with their sin uous shores. their glowing eoves trimmed by emerald verdure and cameo like villas above; the forests. the parks, the home-hung cliffs of radiant river shores: the innumerable ghostly harbor craft; the great Liberty Statue. with extended torch hundreds of feet above the pennants of tallest ships spars: the frowning forts with their cannon gleaming In the sun and silent sentries with their solemn. measured march above: the Narrows. where the tides play wild and flercely; the lofty. lumi- nous Highlands of the Jersey coast, fading into an indistinguishable line of mist and haze, where the far sand dunes and waters meet: the swaying bells with their dolorous throbs the lightships rocking lazily with the tide; and then. as the steamer skirted the Long Island coast, the boundless ocean. bringing the first faint consciousness of measureless immensity they had ever known all toned and touched and tenderly tinted by the impalpable. breeze swung pendulums of the sea's ever changing lights and shades;- wrought upon their souls so deep a spell that they at last sat mute and still. long after the thousands had scrambled from the steamers decks; and only when Aunt Mlrandy. scourged from the land of Nod by the stern hand of silence, awakened with snort ,r,h; nl ha surly reproof at delay. was the blessed spell and enchantment broken; when they scrambled like merciless imps to the summer day pleasures of the shore.
 As they left the great iron pier and passed the long lines of artfully ar ranged nickle-dreadful dens of fakirs and shams, Aunt Mirandy noticed the trio's glistening eyes and craning necks; but she wheedled them past these, and finally, by gentle wiles and promises of future gaieties, enticed them to the beach, where thousands, for miles in either direction, were wallowing in the sands or tumbling in the foaming surf.
 In a trice she had them among the bathers, while she sat like a contented child in the sand. with smiles of satis- faction playing about her hard old face; thinking wonderful things about prac- tical piety, snorting and circulating by turns, and enjoying their enjoyment with the spirit and fervor of elated youth.
 And how those girls of the slums dis ported in that flashing and foaming surf!How they ran and scampered sal lied and retreated, tusselled and strove! How they jumped and plunged and cor vetted and darted, and blowed like frol- icsome porpoises-for the time, in their unrestrained liberty so little different, so completely indistinguishable, from the countless ones around them! And who may know but that, for this little time, they were precisely the same hu- man animals, lifted out of taint and stain by the blessed eXhilaration and abandon of old oceans impartial waves and spume?
 This is at least the view that Aunt Mirandy took of the matter, as she sat in the sand, saying precisely this man. ner of things, though curtly and senten-
 Continued on seventh page)