“‘I made a mistake,’ I says to myself.  ’Twas not Coney I needed.  When a man’s sad ’tis not scenes of hilarity he wants.  ’Twould be far better for him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services at the Paradise Roof Gardens.  ’Tis no consolation when a man’s lost his sweetheart to order hot corn and have the waiter bring him the powdered sugar cruet instead of salt and then conceal himself, or to have Zozookum, the gipsy palmist, tell him that he has three children and to look out for another serious calamity; price twenty-five cents.

“I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion near one corner of this new private park, Dreamland.  A year ago that old pavilion was standin’ up straight and the old-style waiters was slammin’ a week’s supply of clam chowder down in front of you for a nickel and callin’ you ‘cully’ friendly, and vice was rampant, and you got back to New York with enough change to take a car at the bridge.  Now they tell me that they serve Welsh rabbits on Surf Avenue, and you get the right change back in the movin’-picture joints.

“I sat down at one side of the old pavilion and looked at the surf spreadin’ itself on the beach, and thought about the time me and Norah Flynn sat on that spot last summer.  ’Twas before reform struck the island; and we was happy.  We had tintypes and chowder in the ribald dives, and the Egyptian Sorceress of the Nile told Norah out of her hand, while I was waitin’ in the door, that ’twould be the luck of her to marry a red-headed gossoon with two crooked legs, and I was overrunnin’ with joy on account of the allusion.  And ’twas there that Norah Flynn put her two hands in mine a year before and we talked of flats and the things she could cook and the love business that goes with such episodes.  And that was Coney as we loved it, and as the hand of Satan was upon it, friendly and noisy and your money’s worth, with no fence around the ocean and not too many electric lights to show the sleeve of a black serge coat against a white shirtwaist.

“I sat with my back to the parks where they had the moon and the dreams and the steeples corralled, and longed for the old Coney.  There wasn’t many people on the beach.  Lots of them was feedin’ pennies into the slot machines to see the ‘Interrupted Courtship’ in the movin’ pictures; and a good many was takin’ the sea air in the Canals of Venice and some was breathin’ the smoke of the sea battle by actual warships in a tank filled with real water.  A few was down on the sands enjoyin’ the moonlight and the water.  And the heart of me was heavy for the new morals of the old island, while the bands behind me played and the sea pounded on the bass drum in front.

“And directly I got up and walked along the old pavilion, and there on the other side of, half in the dark, was a slip of a girl sittin’ on the tumble-down timbers, and unless I’m a liar she was cryin’ by herself there, all alone.