“The Pike, the Pike! let’s shove off for the Pike.” They stop a few moments to hear the soft tones of Il Trovatore by the famous Hawaiian band, and exchange greetings with some St. Louis friends, who propose a mild stimulant for their infirmities which consist chiefly of a severe thirst that needs quenching. Downey’s cabaret is sought, where in a cosey corner of bohemia the corks are drawn from ice-cold bottles of “blue-ribbon” as they sing of “the soft-flowing dreamy old Rhine” and “Meet me to-night in dreamland.” The latest stories are told and toasts are drunk to the health of the absent. From the tinkling glasses of bohemia, the marines meander to the Pike. Ten minutes’ walk from the north pole to Ireland through a labyrinth of gayety. Everybody visited the Pike, particularly at night, when the soft pedal was put on conventionalities and every “piker” became a thoroughbred bohemian, and then some. Commencing at the north pole you would follow in rotation on either side of this animated thoroughfare: first the Galveston flood, an excellent representation of the devastation of that Texan city: Battle Abbey, with its relics of antiquity, on the right; cross over, and you see Hobson sinking the _Merrimac_, also the battle of Santiago. There is a rush, and we find ourselves in Turkey, watching the slim princess trying to beat it with an American kodak fiend. After “shooting the chutes” a few times, in order to be sure of not missing anything, you stroll to a palmy dance-hall and join in a “Frisco dip” or perhaps a “St. Louis rag,” with liquid refreshments during the intervals. From this point you take a boat for the “Garden of Eden” and the scenes of creation; the dark recesses of this cavernous route were the cause of many leap-year proposals in 1904. Leaving Paradise you stop to watch a fellow picking confetti out of his sweetheart’s eyes; he is laughing, and some one throws a handful of confetti into his mouth; he swears at this, but he is only joking. A barker on the opposite side is holding a crowd with his spiel on “Hereafter.” You enter a dark subterranean passage likened unto the intricate caves in the “Chamber of Horrors” depicted in Dante’s Inferno, a journey along the river Styx on the outskirts of hades, and you are transported to Paradise for a turn along the “golden strand.” Returning to earth, the strains of music from a Spanish orchestra can be heard in Old Madrid, where troubadours and matadores exchange stories over a bottle of madeira. A dark-eyed señorita from Cordova, who wears her clothes well, sings La Paloma, clicking the castanets to the accompaniment of an orchestra from Barcelona. “Bravo! bravo!” yell the marines, as she joins them in a Pall Mall and goblet of wine.