motionless in the growing darkness. It was to such a place the people were surging, leaving glorious New York. Jim and I loitered long on that bridge.

All of us who live in New York have motored, at one time or another, over Queensboro' Bridge; but how few of us have walked its delectable length! Like all Manhattanites, we leave such pleasant experiences to the foreigners who come to our shores. But even they have not discovered it as they may within a few years. There are benches along its pathway, and here one may pause and sit in the sunset, as if one were in a stationary airplane, and view the vast city spread out in a wonderful pattern below. There are glimpses of little parks, and the spires of the cathedral are silhouetted against the background of the west. Guttersnipes are bathing along the shore, and you wonder why rich folk do not purchase houses on this river-bank, where they might have their own private pavilions and a view that can hardly be matched. What is the matter with New-Yorkers?

Then there is Blackwell's Island, with its pitifully blind windows. It must be hard enough to be confined on an island without the added horror of tightly

closed and sealed shutters of heavy iron. Not content with keeping prisoners segregated, they shut out any chance of a view or perhaps we would all want to go to Blackwell's Island! The keepers' houses are beautiful in design, and it gives one a sense of omnipotence to sit above them and see them from the airpeople walking or running hither and thither on graveled pathways, ships floating by on each side of them, and a look of peace about a place that must be anything but peaceful. What a fine residential spot this would make, and how sad it is that it must be utilized, a veritable garden-spot, for the safekeeping of the criminal!

Like most beautiful things, Manhattan, at once the ugliest and the loveliest city on this continent, gained by distance; and I could not help remembering, as I looked back upon it now, its hideous, mean little streets, its pitiful and cruel slums, its unsavory odors; and as I wandered away from it, I knew it could never deceive me. I knew it too well. On its granite heart I, like many another, had suffered and wept, though also I had laughed there; and some lines began to sing in my head, and over on Long Island, much later that night,

I put them down on paper.

We left the city far behind;
Ahead, the roadway seemed to wind
Like something silver white.

For dusk had long since dwindled down,
And now the trees were strangely brown,
And dogs barked in the night.

taken sick, and what you began with enthusiasm will end in disaster." And this, too: "But what will you do for clean linen, and how do you know the inns will not be too crowded, and you may not be able to get a room?"

I could go on indefinitely, giving a litany of friendly counsels and objections. Why people are so interested in telling us what we must not do has always been a mystery to me. It was as if they were to take these little journeys, not I. Having made up my mind to do anything, I usually find a way to do it; and one learns by hard experience that if one takes the advice of

As fair as any mortal girl;

Stray cars went singing by. Far, far away the city gleamed

Like something that the heart had dreamed

A golden butterfly.

It sprawled against the velvet night;
It could not rise and take its flight,
Although its wings uncurled.
And you and I were glad to go
And leave its prison even so,

And pace the lonelier world.

O city, with your splendid lies,
That look of wonder in your eyes,

We left you far behind;

And though you stared with horrid stare Into the moonlit heaven there,

'T was you, not we, were blind!

REALLY GETTING STARTED

IT is curious how, the moment you set out to do anything in this troubled world, you immediately encounter opposition. When I told certain friends that I intended to loiter down Long Island in July, they held up their hands in horror, like my motor acquaintance, and instantly asked: "Why that, of all places? And why in summer? You

home when a delectable trip is planned. So I waved all objectors aside, and, though smiled upon in some cases and almost sneered at in others, I set forth as I determined, trusting to Heaven that it would not pour rain on that first evening out, so that my ardor, as well as my clothes, would be instantly dampened, and I would appear rather ridiculous to the few people who saw us off.

But it did not rain, and for an afternoon in late July it was gloriously cool. So, said Jim and I, the Fates were with us; we had won at least the favor of the gods.

Like every great city, New York is not easy to get out of. It is like nothing so much as a huge scrambled egg, or a monstrous piece of dough that not only covers the dish, but runs over the sides of it; and you can ride seemingly forever in the subway or on the elevated road and still be within the confines of this mighty place, and wonder, like the old lady who was standing in a train to the Bronx, if anybody had a home. "Ain't nobody ever goin' to get out?" you remember she asked at length, weary of hanging on a strap.

Beyond the Queensboro' Bridge there is a flat and desolate-enough-looking

stretch of roadway, partly artificial; a piece of land that was put there for purposes of utility only, so that motorists, pedestrians, and trolley passengers may make as speedy an exit as possible from the roaring town. You wonder

how anything could be quite so forlorn. It is as sad as an old torn calico skirt; and to add to the sadness, a café or two that once might have proved an oasis in this wasteland stares at you with unseeing eyes. The blinds have long since been closed, and the windows are mere ghostly sockets. Lights used to gleam from them at evening; but now the old gilt signs that told of cool and refreshing beer dip in the dusk, and hang as a king's crown might hang from his head after the Bolsheviki had marched by. It gives one a sense of departed glory. There is a tatterdemalion effect in these suspended haunts of revelry that brings a sigh to the lips. Nothing is so tragic as these innocent deserted road-houses, save possibly a table filled with empty wine-glasses after a night of festivity and the knowledge that there is no more wine in your cellar.

Let me make my first confession right here and now. I must pause to tell the anguishing truth that, disheartened at once by this bleak prospect, and knowing that Flushing, with its pretty main street and park would quickly delight our spirits, Jim and I boarded a packed trolley so that we might speedily pass this wretched jumble of nothing at all.

Moreover, we had no sooner begun to lurch down the line, crushed in with dozens of working people on their tired way home, than we discovered we had taken the wrong car. Instead of going straight to Flushing, we were on

the way to Corona, which I had vaguely heard of once or twice, with no real knowledge as to where it was. We found we could transfer there, and would not waste so much time, after all. It gives you a feeling of extreme youth to be lost so near a city where you have always lived, and Jim and I could not help laughing at what we called an "experience." I was glad we had made the mistake, for at the cross-roads, if the inhabitants of Corona will forgive me for calling two intersecting streets of their humming little town that, I ran into a young fellow standing on the corner who regaled me, as we waited for our car, with the gossip of the village. He had knowledge of every motion-picture star in the world, it seemed, and he loved talking about them. There were prizefights-amateur ones, of course-about every evening, and he himself had taken part in many a tussle, and was so proud of his strength that he invited me to put my hand on his arm to convince me of the iron sinews therein. I must say that, having done so, I would have staked all I had on him in any bout. He was of that lithe, panther-like type which is so swift in the ring, and he told me so many happy little stories of himself as a pugilist that Jim and I took quite a fancy to him, and even went so far as to ask him to dine with us at Whitestone Landing, whither we were bound. He had one of those engagingly simple personalities that win you at once, and he said he I would like to come, oh, very much indeed, but he had dined sometime ago (people in the country always seem to sit down to "supper" at five o'clock or

so) and, well, ahem! he did n't quite know what he- And he started to step back from the curb where he had been talking, and glanced over his shoulder so many times that finally my eye followed his, and I saw what I should have seen before a pretty girl, of course. And of course she was waiting for him.

And what did he care about two stupid strangers and their fine shore dinner when he had this up his sleeve all the while? I told him how sorry I was that we had detained him even a second. He smiled that winning smile of his, darted across the road, and seized his girl around the waist in the tightest and most unashamed squeeze I have ever seen, and was off down the street, his very back expressing his happiness.

Well, Bill Hennessy, I'll never see you again in this mixed-up world, but I certainly wish you well, and if our paths ever do cross again, I hope to see several strapping little Hennessys around you.

Our trolley came at just the right moment thereafter, for we felt strangely lonely there on the corner, with Bill and his joy gone down the street, and as we sagged into Flushing we grew hungrier and hungrier. Yet we determined we would walk through the scented dark to Whitestone Landing. Bill had told us the exact road to take; said he 'd often walked there, and now I knew with whom!

It was all he said it was, a lover's lane to make the most jaded happy. A path for pedestrians ran beside the main road most of the way, soft to the feet, and

peaceful in the enveloping night. The moon had come out brilliantly, and the sky was studded with stars. It was getting on to nine o'clock, and, except for once when I camped out in Canada, I did n't know where our beds would be that night. It's a glorious sensation, such ignorance. We were aware that country taverns closed early, as a rule, off the beaten tracks; but this only added zest to our leisurely walk.

It took us much more than an hour to reach Whitestone Landing, which is right on the water, and we found a place kept by a Norwegian woman; not very much of a place, I must admit. There were ugly portraits on the wall of unbelievably ugly ancestors; but when you have come several miles on foot, and suddenly emerge from the darkness feeling very tired and hungry, almost any light in any window is thrillingly beautiful to you.

"It's pretty late for supper," was her greeting, and our hearts sank; but she must have seen that we were woefully disappointed. A hopeful "but" immediately fell from her lips. "But

maybe I can- Say, do you like

hamburger steak and French fried potatoes and clam chowder?”

Did we? We followed her right into her cozy and clean kitchen, where her husband sat in placid ease, as the husbands of so many landladies sit always, and the odor of that ascending greasehow shall I ever forget it? It smelt as I hope heaven will smell.

And such clam chowder as it was! Thick, juicy, succulent, it dripped down our throats like a sustaining nectar, some paradisial liquid that an angel must have evolved and mixed. I dream of having again some day in a certain Paris café a soup that thrilled me when I first tasted of its wonder; but never, never will anything equal, I am convinced now, Mme. Bastienssen's clam chowder.

We were given beds that night-and how good the sheets felt!-for the infinitesimal sum (do not gasp, dear reader!) of one dollar each. And the next morning I was awakened, only a few miles from rushing Manhattan, by the crowing of a cock; and when I looked from my window, happily energetic as I had not been for many mornings, I saw wild roses climbing over a fence, and caught glimpses of the gleaming little bay, with rowboats out even this early. Whitestone Landing is a place of house-boats. I had some friends once, I remembered, who lived on one all summer, and commuted to the city from it. There is a boat-house, with a bathing-pavilion here, and a little steamer plies between Whitestone and Clason Point every half-hour, and excursionists go over for picnics under the trees, with heavy lunch-baskets and half a dozen children at their sides.

Jim and I determined to get an early start, and after a breakfast that was almost as good as our supper of the evening before (nothing could ever taste quite so fine), we set off for Bayside by a back road, which Mr. Bastienssen roused himself sufficiently to tell us of. He was a pale, weak-eyed, blond little man, who seemed resentful of most visitors, though common sense should have told him that they were exceedingly necessary if he was to continue his life of large leisure.

Now, there is nothing I like more than a back road, particularly in these days of hurry and scurry, and it was a perfect morning to walk anywhere. The air was like wine, it was not a bit hot, and we made such an early start that we met few travelers, and none at all on foot for some time. The road curved, after we passed a little bridge, and woods on the right almost lured us exploringly into them. We did venture to go out of our way to see the dewdrops on the leaves, but as the sun was kindly that morning and could not, in July, be depended upon to remain so, we thought it better to get along. A farmer was tilling the ground near by, and the smell of the earth was good to our nostrils, poor paving-stone slaves that we were; and out in a vast potato patch the rest of the farmer's family were bending over the plants, as serene as if they were hundreds hundreds of miles from anywhere. Here the road turned charmingly, and Jim and I were positively singing at our taste of exultant liberty, drinking in our joy, and wondering why we had never thought of coming out like this before. Suddenly, directly around the turning, two strange-looking men came running toward us, swinging their arms in fiendish fashion. They were hatless and coatless, and their shirts, as they came nearer, were seen to be open at the throat. They kept close together, and one of them was huge beyond belief, while the other was smallish and not given to quite the frantic gesticulations of his comrade.

"Maniacs!" I whispered to Jim, not a little alarmed; and it seemed to me I had read that there was an asylum somewhere near this spot, though on second thoughts it was only a military fort. Nevertheless, to see two men running amuck this early of a morning, confounded us, and we thought we had better get out of their way.

I could see that Jim was as uncomfortably frightened as I, though he would not say so. As the strangers came nearer, he dodged to one side, as did I; and then, as they passed us without even a glance in our direction, we both burst out laughing.

"A prize-fighter, with his trainer, practising shadow-boxing!" cried Jim,