Serenus come home a few days after we did. He’d been on the Bowery of Coney Island that night, Josiah havin’ refused to go to such a lowdown place with him. So as it often is in this strange world, the wrong-doer comes out ahead, 313 for the present. He made a night of it with Jim Cobb, a rural cousin, and not a hair of his head wuz scorched, nor the smell of fire on his garments.
But I wuz proud that Josiah withstood temptation, and told him that I would ruther he had got afire, and burned considerable, than had him yield to the tempter.
I myself never sot foot on the Bowery; I wuzn’t goin’ to nasty up my mind with it, though I hearn there wuz some good things to be seen there. Folks told me I’d ort to gone to Brighton, and Atlantic City, and see the milds of beautiful Pleasure places along the ocean, but I sez, “I thank you, but I’ve seen enough,” though there wuz sights there that I would loved to see.
Among ’em wuz that Mother’s Camp, where thousands and thousands of poor children and their mas go to spend a day in the bracin’ atmosphere. And the children have pure milk, and their mas good tea, and they can go there day after day all they want to. How the children look forward to it, and their mas too.
“I myself never sot foot on the Bowery; I wuzn’t goin’ to nasty up my mind with it, though I hearn there wuz some good things to be seen there.” (See page 313)
The goodness and helpfulness of such places along the beach, wrops their bright mantillys over some of the other places not so good and makes folks more lenitent to ’em, as they endure a poor husband for the sake of his good wife, and visey versey.