Early in the season though they were, Katie and Hermann no sooner stepped upon that Surf Avenue which is at once the heart and the aorta of the Island, than they felt, as there they always felt, that they had entered upon the Land of Carnival. The broad, but crowded, way was dancing with the noise of festival, with the clangor of brass bands, the cries of venders, the smell of the circus, the tang of the sea. Here, from mixed drinks to mixed music, went not the thugs and blacklegs, the pallid men and the painted women that would have filled such a place had it been within the borough of Manhattan. In their stead here drove the cars of generally stolid people of business and leisure, and here, above all, walked the workers of the city, the weaker sex and the stronger, seeking holiday. The full-portion hat on the half-portion girl is as familiar to Surf Avenue as to the Waldorf palm-room; care is erased from the tablets of memory. On Coney there is no To-morrow. The laughter of the hundreds of children rang out no more freely than did that of the thousands of their elders. Mothers with babies in their arms were young again. Stately blondes and languorous brunettes, gracefully seated on the wooden steeds of the score of merry-go-rounds, rode with a dignity unsurpassed in Hyde Park or the Bois, and never a cowboy at a round-up was more adventurous than the young East-Sider mounting a hired horse upon the Pony Track. Every nook had something to sell, and Katie had her day's work in keeping Hermann from stopping at each booth. There were miles of scenic railways on all of which he wished to ride; there were scores of panorama that tempted him with pictures of every disaster from the San Francisco fire to the Messina earthquake. There were the familiar canes waiting to be caught with the familiar ring: there were the familiar chutes to be shot, and the familiar "galleries" where the rattle of rifles recalled the battle of the Yalu. Down on the beach an army was shouting in the surf, and on every hand along the jostling, good-natured street were peanuts and popcorn, "crispettes" and "hot dogs." Upon dozens of polished floors dancers were slowly revolving with a marvelous ability to distinguish between the time of their own orchestra and that of the band in the café opposite, and everywhere were picture machines and machines that sang.