By Irving Browne.
CURRENT TOPICS. Vacation at Atlantic City. — Atlantic City is the greatest watering-place in America. It has above six hundred hotels and boarding-houses, and in the height of the season more than one hundred thousand visitors gather there. D'Amicis, the most brilliant and poetic of all the writers of travels, in his book on Constantinople, gave a marvellous description of the floating bridge that connects Europe with Asia at Galata. (By the way, he wrote the finest account of a bull fight ever written, in his "Spain" — good reading for present days.) If the Easy Chairman possessed his genius he could make a good deal out of a description of the famous "Board Walk " at Atlantic City, where he has been passing a month on account of writer's cramp in the throat. Many of our readers have doubtless been there, but many more have not, and few persons ever spend a month there, and so we venture to make it the theme of a vacation paper designed not to in struct but to amuse. The "Board Walk" is the backbone of Atlantic City, but the ribs radiate from only one side, in the form of streets, and on the other side are the ocean and Europe, Asia, Africa, and that part of the United States commonly called the Phillipine Islands. The climate of the place is avowed to be warm in winter and cool in summer, being pleasantly modified by the gulf stream, and so people go there almost the year round. We found such a variety of climate and weather in May that we suspect that the Spaniards have hooked up the gulf stream and carried it away. The dimensions of the Board Walk are stated in the hotel circulars as four miles in length, forty feet in breadth, and twelve feet in height. The only one of these dimensions that is strictly accurate is the last — that had to be right all the way because the sea dashes underneath (sometimes overhead). In the widest part it is forty feet, but much of it is narrower, and although it may be four miles long at times, it is not just now, for some of it has been carried away by the sea. It is sustained for a large part by steel supports. Jutting out afar into the sea are three piers, and when one essays to walk the length of them in the
broiling sun he is tried by his piers. Heinz, the pickle and bean man, rents one of them for advertis ing and selling his wares. The others are given up to amusements, such as exhibitions of diving and haul ing of nets which come up full of things that recall Peter's wondrous vision. Off one of these piers they show regularly every week how the "Maine" was blown up, by the explosion of a torpedo under a small vessel made to order, and thus keep the war spirit at the boiling point. On the inner side of the walk are many small shops and booths. Some of them are galleries devoted to " rifle practice," but that practice seems to extend all along the line in the matter of prices. There are some very choice goods on sale, however, especially in china and pic tures, and in the dull season of May, one can get good bargains, especially from dealers who have goods in the custom-house and need money to get them out. Down on the beach a sculptor makes attractive forms of drowned women in high relief, and medallions of the current celebrities, Gladstone, McKinley, and Dewey, in the damp sand, and sends a damp over the audience by passing around the hat at the con clusion. One of the shows on the Walk that is best worth the cost is " Beautiful Jim Key," the educated horse, who (not which) reads, writes and ciphers better than many small boys, or even " grown ups." Jim is a bay, and his trainer and owner is a black, and the one knows just about as much as the other. The merry-go-rounds, with their gay music, and their assortment of legendary and real animals — drag ons, unicorns, lions, ostriches, roosters, camels, horses, camelopards, goats, etc., — in the most co quettish and vivacious poses, draw crowds who pre fer this mode of getting seasick to the trouble of going a-sailing. A Japanese tea-garden, and a maze in which one can become hopelessly lost for a dime, are also alleged attractions. Wheeled chairs are pro pelled in all directions (except east and west), and form a very convenient mode of reconciling the tak ing of exercise with laziness. The one man who propelled his own chair by a crank probably was a crank. Toward the lower end is a beautiful casino, where one may play billiards or ten-pins, or bathe, or listen to wild Hungarian music played by tame Mag yars, for a moderate compensation. Schlatter, " the 405
