The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-09-30


iciple of the esthetic cult feel like GO
ling right back to the bathing house,
before he has even so much as moist
ened his tootsies, removing his bath
ing toys, getting into his regular ha-
! biliments and deferring all of his
ablutionary ambitions to the blessed
hour when, under the providence of
heaven and with the permission of the
car rowdies, ne can get back to his
own bathtub.
This is precisely what the under
signed has done on no less than four
occasions during the past nine years.
He has known plenty of other per-
sons to do it. When you take reg
ular ocean bath you do not have that
feeling that, on peril of your very life,
you must keep your mouth as tightly
closed as if it were padlocked, for
the purpose of excluding from your
system so much as oneeighth of
drop of the sea water; but you can't
help but feel that way when you get
into the Coney Island bathing water.
l can imagine nothing liquid that I
should not willingly absorb into my
system, even in wholesale quantities,
than so much as a few drops of that
same Coney Island water. l think l
should taste it to the last day of my
life, not because it would be likely to
be especially tasteful, in the evil
sense, but because it requires so lit
tie imagination, in looking at that
water, to develop a gruesome inner
or subconscious sense of what it very
well might taste like.
The worst imitation of a meal that
ever saw in the civilized world, from
the Straits of Sunda to Port Said
and l ask to be credited when | state
that have partaken, from force of
appetite, and to ward off shere starva-
ton, some of the evilist meals ever
heard of-was hurled at me, all in a
messy bunch, upon the occasion of my
last visit at Coney Island. There were
five human beings in my party. l was
the cunnin' little host. Somebody had
wished this restaurant upon me.
paid $3.50 per copy, or $3.50 for the
five meals, before being permitted to
sit down at a table with my party.
l have merely skinned the surface
of the sadness which one runs I'D
against when he does his annual
Coney Island pilgrimage, if he is such
a hard-lucker as to be led into making
such pilgrimage. But it is neces-
sary to make any sort of a rounded !
picture to touch upon the horrors of
getting away from Coney Island after
the long, dreary day.
Getting down there isn't so bad, |
though it's bad enough, whether one
goes by boat or rail. But getting
back is simply equivalent to putting
ones self in jeopardy of life and limb.
This is on account of the prevalence
on the boats and trains of the large
and enthusiastic passels of able
bodied young fellers whose idea of !
mirth and laughter is to murder each
other and the passengers riding with
them. l don't say that they really
start out to murder But their sense
of jollity impels them, as a beginning
of the fun, to insult the woman folk,
and particularly the young and at |
tractive girls unpon whom they clap
their eyes.
Coney Island is known all over the
world Everybody who hasn't been
there has a hankering, at some time
or another, to visit it. It is for the
guidance of this enormous crowd of
persons that l am setting down these
few little facts.
CLARENCE l.. CULLEN.
Fine Job Printing, star Office.