I didn’t try to climb that pole, and wouldn’t if I had been a athleet. How did I know but it would turn into a writhin’ serpent, and writhe with me? No, I thought I wouldn’t take another resk in that dredful spot. And I wuz glad I thought so, for jest a little ways off, some honest, easy lookin’ benches stood invitin’ the weary passer-by to set down and rest and recooperate. And right there before my eyes some good lookin’ folks sot down on ’em trustin’ly, and the hull bench fell over back with ’em and then riz up agin, they fallin’ and risin’ with it.
I hastened away and thought I would go up into the second story agin and mebby ketch sight of my pardner, for the crowd had increased. And as I stood there skannin’ the immense crowd below to try to ketch a glimpse of my lawful pardner, all to once I see the folks below wuz laughin’ at me. I felt to see if my braize veil hung down straight and graceful, and my front hair wuz all right, and my cameo pin fastened. But nothin’ wuz amiss, and I wondered what could it be. The balcony wuz divided off into little spaces, five or six feet square, and I 265 stood in one, innocent as a lamb (or mebby it would be more appropriate to say a sheep), and leanin’ on the railin’, and one sassy boy called out:
“Where wuz you ketched? Are you tame? Wuz you ketched on the Desert of Sara? Did Teddy ketch you for the Government?” and I never knowed till I got down what they wuz laughin’ at.
The little boxes in the balcony wuz painted on the outside to represent animal cages. On the one where I had been wuz painted the sign Drumedary. Josiah Allen’s wife took for a drumedary—The idee!
But the view I got of the crowd below wuz impressive, and though it seemed to me that everybody in New York and Brooklyn and the adjacent villages and country, wuz all there a Steeple Chasin’, yet I knowed there wuz jest as many dreamin’ in Dreamland and bein’ luny in Luny Park. And Surf Avenue wuz full, and what they called the Bowery of Coney Island, and all the amusement places along the shore. And all on ’em on the move, jostlin’ and bein’ jostled, foolin’ and bein’ fooled, laughin’ and bein’ laughed at.
Why, I wuz told and believe, that sometimes 266 a million folks go to Coney Island on a holiday. And I wuz knowin’ myself to over three thousand orphan children goin’ there at one time to spend a happy day, the treat bein’ gin ’em by some big-hearted men. Plenty to eat and drink, and a hull day of enjoyment, candy, pop corn, circus, etc., bright day, happy hearts, how that day will stand out aginst the dull gray background of their lives! And them men ort to hug themselves thinkin’ the thought, over three thousand happinesses wuz set down to their credit in the books of the Recordin’ Angel. And I sez to myself, “Samantha, you ort to speak well of anything that so brightens the lives of the children of the great city.”
As I went into Dreamland Park, it seemed agin as if all the folks in the city wuz there in the immense inner court, surrounded by amusements on every side. They wuz comin’ and goin’, talkin’, laughin’, hurryin’, santerin’, to and fro, fro and to. Lots on ’em talkin’ language I never hearn before, but I thought, poor things, you never had the advantage of livin’ in Jonesville, so I overlooked it in ’em.
