The official directions for spending a day at Coney Island certainly indicate a belief in the possession of enormous physical energy and indefatigable curiosity on the part of the visitors in those who compose the code. Having given you sailing instructions by the iron steam boat to Bay Ridge for the Sea Beach Railway (ticket 35 cents), you are to visit the Sea View Palace Hotel, the Piazza, the two iron piers, the _Camera obscura_ (10 cents), the Great Milking Cow, the top of the observatory (15 cents); then to eat a Rhode Island clam bake (50 cents), visit the aquarium (10 cents), take a park waggon and ride over the Concourse to Brighton; see the hotel grounds and bathing pavilion there; then take the Marine Railway (5 cents) to Manhattan Beach; visit the Oriental Hotel and take the Marine Railway to Point Breeze (10 cents) and return back to Brighton Beach Pavilion and take a bath; then see the Museum of Living Wonders (10 cents), dine at the Hotel Brighton, hear a concert in the evening, and return to New York by 11 o'clock. "This trip," observes the compiler, "may fatigue one, but the excitement soon overcomes the trouble." Coney Island is indeed an institution. Along the sea front of the bank for some three or four miles there has been constructed an esplanade lined with seats, and defended from the sea by a stone wall. Outside there is a belt of shingle on which the surf breaks, but not violently, unless in bad weather. Large bathing establishments, with every appliance, are placed at convenient intervals along the shore. Here in the season tens of thousands of people may be seen, all properly and decently attired, disporting in the waves. At the time of our visit, the hour and the season of the year seemed not to be favourable to the indulgence. We were too late in the day. It is an early place, and from 7 till 9 A.M. from the month of June to the end of September are described as the orthodox periods. Nevertheless the spectacle was quite unique, and if you can imagine Brighton with half-a-dozen Pavilions blown out to twice their size, and the largest hotels multiplied by ten in length, breadth, and depth, you may fancy what the Coney Island front is, provided always that you can also conjure up (literally) myriads of well-dressed men, women, and children perambulating the esplanade or sitting in the grounds around the various establishments which occupy a large space inland--pavilions, hotels, exhibitions, restaurants, and club-houses. There were fireworks going on in broad day; but these were principally for the purpose of exhibiting very ingenious Japanese figures, which were discharged from bombs, and which gradually descending were objects of eager competition amongst the younger members of the enormous multitude. And with all so much good-humour, so much propriety of demeanour; none of the brutal rushes of "roughs" which disgust one with English popular assemblages--none of the brutal horse-play, and