Of course, this is part of the city. The road map proves it. But there are very few places along this route where you can find it out in any other way. The road leads up over a sort of plateau; a wide expanse of country can be viewed in all directions, but there are only more fields to see, more farm-houses and squatty barns, perhaps a village church steeple in the distance, a village that has its oldest inhabitant and a church with a church-yard. Away off to the north, across a gleaming strip of water, which the map shows to be Long Island Sound, lie the blue hills of the Bronx. They, too, are well within Greater New York. So is all that country to the southwest, far beyond the range of the eye, Jamaica, and Jamaica Bay and Coney Island. And over there, more to the west, is dreary East New York and endless Brooklyn, and dirty Long Island City, and, still farther, crowded Manhattan Island itself. Then one realizes something of the extent of this strange manner of city. It is very ridiculous. [Illustration: Past dirty backyards and sad vacant lots.] When at last the head of Little Neck Bay is reached, here is another variety of primitive country scene. The upland road skirting the hill, beyond which the rifles of Creedmoor are crashing, takes a sudden turn down a steep grade, a guileless-looking grade, but very dangerous for bicyclists, especially in the fall when the ruts and rocks are covered thick with leaves for days at a time. Then, after passing a nearer view (through a vista of big trees) of the blue Sound, with the darker blue of the hills beyond, the road drops down into a peaceful old valley, tucked away as serene and unmolested as it was early in the nineteenth century, when the country cross-roads store down there was first built, along-side of the water-power mill, which is somewhat older. In front is an old dam and mill-pond, called "The Alley," recently improved, but still containing black bass; in the rear Little Neck Bay opens out to the Sound beyond, one of the sniping and ducking places of Greater New York. The old store, presumably the polling-place of that election district of the city, is where prominent personages of the neighborhood congregate and tell fishing and shooting stories, and gossip, and talk politics, seated on boxes and barrels around the white-bodied stove, for the sake of which they chew tobacco. It is one of those stores that contain everything--from anchor-chains to chewing-gum. There are bicycle sundries in the show-case and boneless bacon suspended from the old rafters, but the best thing in the place is a stream of running water. This is led down by a pipe from the side of the hill, acts as a refrigerator for a sort of bar in one corner of the store--for this establishment sells a greater variety of commodities than most department stores--and passes out into Long Island Sound in the rear.