It is sufficient to say that I went to Coney Island yesterday, and watched the bathers and the children--listened to the crisp, lingering music of the waves--ate a robust lunch on the pier--wandered in and out among the booths, tents, and hub-bub--and that through all these pleasures I had a companion that enjoyed them with a gravity that I can never hope to [v]emulate, but with a soulfulness that was touching. As I came back in the boat, the breezes singing through the [v]cordage, music floating from the fore-deck, and the sun lighting with its dying rays the shipping that covered the river, there was sitting in front of me a very pale but very happy bit of a boy, open-eyed with wonder, but sober and self-contained, clasping tightly in his little fingers a short, battered stick. And finally, whenever I pass by a certain overhanging balcony now, I am sure of a smile from an intimate and esteemed friend who lives there. HENRY W. GRADY. ARIEL'S TRIUMPH[141-*] This story is taken from Booth Tarkington's novel, _The Conquest of Canaan_, which gives an admirable description of modern life in an American town. Joe Louden, the hero, and Ariel Tabor, the heroine, were both friendless and, in a way, forlorn. How both of them triumphed over obstacles and won success and happiness is the theme of a book which is notable for keen observation of character and for a quiet and delightful humor. I Ariel had worked all the afternoon over her mother's wedding-gown, and two hours were required by her toilet for the dance. She curled her hair frizzily, burning it here and there, with a slate-pencil heated over a lamp-chimney, and she placed above one ear three or four large artificial roses, taken from an old hat of her mother's, which she had found in a trunk in the store-room. Possessing no slippers, she carefully blacked and polished her shoes, which had been clumsily resoled, and fastened into the strings of each small rosettes of red ribbon; after which she practised swinging the train of her skirt until she was proud of her manipulation of it.