New-York tribune., 1911-03-05

THEY'RE aw-aw-awl sawlty-y!"
- You know that cry. Per-
baps Just now you do not re-
member where you heard it. Then lis
ten:
Lights. broader. yellower. sreener,
more dazzling than any other lights can
10 Lights that build glittering fairy
towers: lights in long festoons. Lights
like nozzles. quivering with the pressure
behind them. driving their battering
streams against street and booth and
moving crowd and wearied eyes. The
dark i. washed away. 1t is driven into
corners. It skulks far back under steel
rooted sheds. 1t is flung upward bodily
so far that you hardly see it when you
look straight overhead.
Shouts. A rush Of iron wheels on
trestle. Girls squealing. In the dis
tsnce gongs being beaten and bagpipes
ousrreling with time and tune. Still
the shouts. brayed incessantly out Of
tired throats Under the other noises,
sound that is not as loud. but deeper,
more confused and more persistent-the
chattering, rustling. almost rumbling
sound that comes from the stir of
crowd
That crowd pours everywhere. 1t
sweeps us along. We smell beer, and
varnish, and hot dogs" and onions
and warm human flesh. We are nudged
from in front and trodden on from be-
hind. Perhaps We snap back at the Of
fender, and perhaps we laugh. But we
cannot remain polite and unmoved. The
crowd has taken us in. Like it or lump
II. snarl or hold hands. my friends, the
crowd has us all fast No; we are the
orowd-the Vastest, wearcst, sweatiest,
childishest. most human herd between
Honolulu and the headlands of Portu
gal. You remember now. We are at
Coney Island.
They're aw-aw-awl sawlty-y."
A huge man, white aproned and white
capped, bawls at US across a table piled
with white candy. With a thick knife
he whacks of sections from the roll that
he has under his hand
Salty? What is salty? The candy, Of
course. It is the salt water taffy" they
sell at every seaside resort.
The sea-no-yes. This is the sea-
side. We had almost forgotten it. Out
there in the dark, beyond the booths and
the streets eager waves face toward us.
thousands Of them, row behind row like
the people in a theatre, and in their rear
jewelled liners look down from their
horizon boxes to our faring footlights.
Out there the whole salt Atlantic
swashes and swells. All day the sea has
been rolling there, as refreshing for tired
men and women as it has been for the
last ten thousand years, and we. if we
are like ninety-nine out of our hundred
nearest neighbors. have hardly even
looked at it.
You may be the exception. Perhaps
you bathed on scrap of beach between
a dance hail and a crowded pier Per-
haps YOU walked the miles that lead TO
'he cltyS open park, or perhaps you even
cane down from the city by steamer.
IN that case you have seen the sea, and
30u are the one person in your hundred.
ana not like the ninety-nine. 1t is too
much to lead the weary people Of
whole city TO the seashore and then daz-
zie them and cramp them in till they do
Aot see the sea. The princes of the
great amusement parks have learned that
i Goes not pay. The catchpenny show
men are learning the same thing.
and now great change is coming.
" Is startling scheme, like everything
Ct Coney Island. 4 boardwalk, wider