Chapter 6 ATLANTIC CITY

O ye, who dwell in youth's inviting bowers,

Waste not, in useless joy, your fleeting hours,

But rather let the tears of sorrow roll,

And sad reflection fill the conscious soul.

For many a jocund spring has passed away,

And many a flower has blossomed to decay;

And human life, still hastening to a close,

Finds in the worthless dust its last repose.

Still the vain world abounds in strife and hate,

And sire and son provoke each other's fate;

And kindred blood by kindred hands is shed,

And vengeance sleeps not-dies not, with the dead.

All nature fades-the garden's treasures fall,

Young bud, and citron ripe-all perish-all.

-From the Persian.

"The excessive heat of the summer of 1921 made it the first impulse of travelers to plunge straight into the cool, kindly ocean, where they could wade and bathe in the surf, sprawl for hours in the sand, or indulge in races and various games along the beach."

One is greatly impressed with the vast numbers of resorts on the Atlantic coast. All along the Jersey shore from Bar Harbor to Cape May you will find it almost as thickly settled as a town. Here along this coast an amazing degree of congestion exists. You will marvel to see all along the beach from Sandy Hook, fifty miles of crowded street, of hotels, and houses, and behind these still others. How this vast seaside population thrills one, bringing visions of the "vastness and wealth of teeming millions" of this great nation of ours. One author says, and with truth, that Atlantic City could accommodate all of France and still have room for more while Asbury Park would furnish ample room as a seaside resort for Belgium and Holland.

Atlantic City, known throughout the world as a great all-the- year resort, is situated upon Absecon Island off the Jersey coast. Absecon is an Indian name given to this island, meaning "Place of Swans." Great flocks of these graceful birds are said to have frequented this spot, where they fed on clams and oysters. The swans have long since gone, their place being taken by less graceful and more richly attired birds, that at stated times flock there in vast numbers. Its close proximity to the large eastern centers of population give it an unrivaled location. The climate is made equable by the Gulf Stream. It is much warmer here in winter than at New York or Philadelphia and weather records show sixty-two per cent sunshine. Motorists visit the seashore metropolis by tens of thousands in all seasons of the year.

Atlantic City has one thousand two hundred hotels and boarding houses to meet every purse and entertains twenty million people annually, the transient population reaching four hundred thousand in August and never being less than fifty thousand.

For six miles along one of the finest bathing beaches on the Atlantic seaboard extends the world-famed board walk, sixty feet wide, topped with planking and built upon a steel and concrete foundation, where promenade health and recreation seekers from all parts of America and foreign climes. There are four great piers varying in length from one thousand to three thousand feet, with auditoriums and all kinds of amusements which are as varied as the visitors are versatile. The shops of the board walk are one of its most attractive features.

One's motto at Atlantic City as well as the world over should be that of a certain medicine man who gave this advice to his customers: "Let your eyes be your judge, your pocketbook your guide, and your money the last thing you part with." But, alas! how few heeded the free advice he gave them, but persisted in buying his patent nostrums until their pocketbooks could scarcely raise an audible jingle!

Money may befriend one at Atlantic City but it will never admit him into real society where the passwords are wit, wisdom and beauty of character; which, united, forma truly royal life. There are people who care not whether their clothes come from Paris or Mexico just so they are comfortable, serviceable and becoming. Society of this type is not exclusive but admits alike all worthy people.

"What space bath virgin's beauty to disclose

Her sweets, and triumph o'er the blooming rose.

Not even an hour!"

What a motley crowd of human beings throng the board walk! How like the vast interminable deep is this thronging, surging mass of humanity, where they, like restless waves, pause awhile on the margin of the boundless sea until the ebb tide moves out in the vast sea of life. "Here the fury of fashion ebbs and flows, a constant stream, representing all the states of the Union." Here are men with silk plug hats and petite mustachios who seem "straight from Paris!" Others whose ruddy faces and commanding air proclaim them genial sons of the Emerald Isle, while still others are the possessors of so many and varied characteristics one might be justified in calling them mongrels. One would think the lovely Pleiades themselves came every night on a long journey to look at the board walk with an interrogation mark in every twinkle. Here come youth and beauty seeking pleasure. Here, too, you will see old age trying to recall their youthful days "when the serious looking canes they so carefully carry gave place to the foppish switches they so artfully carried in their younger days." Here the gilded doors of idleness and pleasure are ever ajar but they never lead to the halls of noble aims and the palaces of worthy ambition. Here the entrances are always crowded with that class of people whose motto is, "Things are good enough as they are," or "Eat, drink and be merry," or "We are weary of well doing."

Here beauty assembles, but it is ofttimes not the beauty of life. It is the glaring show and tinsel array of society that attracts great numbers, who, like the beautiful colored night moths, are enamoured of the gleaming light, venturing nearer until they scorch their wings, or blinded by the brilliant rays plunge headlong into the flames and are burned to death. "The allied army of fashion meets here." Here, then, is their Thermopylae or Argonne, it may be.

The test here as elsewhere is the using of means already acquired to some worthy end. Many can acquire wealth, but few know how to use it wisely The art of spending is more readily acquired than that of saving, as may be easily seen. An article appeared in an American newspaper telling how the appearance of the world's greatest spender startled London by blazing her way into the Prince of Wale's box in Albert Hall-a literal walking diamond mine. Her costume, which contained more than seventy- five thousand diamonds and pearls, was insured for five million dollars. The article stated that this person would visit the United States to show us something real in the art of spending. We as a people need no instruction in this art, but need to read more our illustrious Franklin's advice on saving. One wonders what this dressing may bring to the American home or how much the common interests of mankind will be helped! What a blessing is wealth when rightly used! True society looks inwardly and not outwardly, and all that does not belong to it falls away as does wheat fanned by a sheet; the trash and chaff being blown away.

One cannot tell the rich from the poor in their camouflage, but the really rich in character are easily discernible, arrayed in modest garbs as unostentatious and serviceable as those of the nightingale or the thrush. Like all great people the melody of their lives eclipses their array until only the soul-thrilling memories of what they are or were remain to gladden the weary pilgrim on life's road. The indigo bunting is arrayed in splendid robes, yet his song is high pitched and rasping. But the dull robed songsters delight the ear. Some people have not yet learned that a fifty-dollar hat can never cover the deficiency of a two-cent head. Ofttimes money only makes a mean life more conspicuous. True, some of these people dress more becomingly than they suspect for their slim, pointed-toed English shoes admirably match their few ideas. They are much persecuted for their belief, thinking that a number six shoe can be worn on a number nine foot.

It is almost as interesting to watch people in the act of scraping acquaintance as it is to see a group of flickers love- making in early spring. Some one will purposely drop her kerchief at just the right moment. If you would see the glaring look given to some sprightly lady who picks it up before the intended one arrives, you will leave kerchiefs alone, especially if you belong to the feminine gender. There are others who take a great interest in a dog or child while they examine a register or look at the thermometer, if the master or more often mistress of said dog strikes their fancy. If perchance they find they have stopped in New York or Boston at hotels of notable expensiveness, then it does not take much scraping until their acquaintance is made.

On the famous board walk may be seen girls who were sixteen some twenty years ago. They remind you of the man who has an old or repainted Ford who advertises his machine not as old but reconditioned. There are women riding in wheel chairs, being pushed along by colored men. They see, not the magnificent reaches of the vast ocean or the wild breakers that come rolling in upon the beach, but ever anon caress the poodle they have with them or notice the wart on the nose of a passer-by in the place of his charming manners. Perhaps the poodles are taken to the sea beach for their health but their vitality surely could never become so low as that of their mistresses.

These very people may have toiled most of the summer so they could feign riches by taking a few rides in the wheel chair. There are idle poor as well as idle rich and both should receive no commendation for not trying to better their lowly lot.

Rare flowers do not grow in great clumps. The orchids bloom in gloomy swamps, far removed from the haunts of men; the morning and evening hymn of the hermit thrush rises from solitary places- -along wild lakes and among high mountains.

One old dame with a glowing face like an ocean sunset and a gown that for richness of color and vivid contrast would have made Joseph's coat of many colors appear very ordinary, remarked that she came out on the board walk to study types. But types of what? Perhaps she was observing the lilies of the board walk whose raiment was so dazzling that Solomon would not have arrayed himself like one of these even though he could. They are true lilies for they toil not, neither do they spin, unless it be a fabulous yarn about some fair rivals, and for this lack of toil they lose the real meaning and significance of life. Everything about them is toil, not that grinding toil with no final goal to reach but that exhilarating joyful kind as seen in the waves, in bees and flowers. The waves come running up to shore sending silver reflections glinting along the beach, always blending beauty and usefulness; the air about the linden trees is melodious with multitudes of murmuring toilers preparing for a winter's need; the purple fox-glove, that good Samaritan among the flowers, in modest beauty holds aloft its purple bells all unmindful of the cheer it brings to lonely hearts or the hope it bears to thousands of sufferers.

It is surprising to see that by far the greater numbers of people turn their backs on the ocean while they scan the daily papers for sensational items or the latest styles. It seems a cruel waste of glorious linden trees to say nothing of the wealth of sweets that the bees have lost to record at least some vamp's trial in a murder case or some miserably rich woman's divorce scandal.

There are those who go to Europe who bring back to their native land only the latest fashions of Paris with a little knowledge of foreign profanity picked up from the cafes and boulevards. They can tell nothing about the wonders of the Louvre; the grandeur of Raphael's Madonnas; the beauty and charm of the Mediterranean shores. Their souls perhaps have never been touched by the grand sublimity of the Alps. What feasts they have attended, taking away only the husks! Far away in some foreign land they have spent years vainly seeking for pleasure only to learn that:

"Pleasures are like poppies spread.

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.

Or like the snowfall in the river

A moment white, then melts forever.

Or like the rainbow's lovely form

Evanishing amid the storm."

The first cool breeze blows away the froth of fashion, for it is composed of delicate flowers that the first chill wind of adversity causes to wilt and droop and lose their fragrance. "Now the cool forenoon serenity of the ocean is no longer profaned." They have followed the siren voices of this bewildering region until they have arrived on some shoals that hint of a coming winter, and emerge with duller plumes like birds of passage, ready to flock to sunnier climes. They remind one, too, of the gorgeous colored butterflies which flew about all summer, at first things of beauty, dazzling the eye with their brilliant colors; haunting the most fragrant flowers for nectar, reveling in the sunshine the whole day long. Now they appear in their torn and faded robes to hover over a few pale flowers as if "loath to leave the scenes of their summer's revelings."

Only the more hardy remain to enjoy the grandeur of the winter ocean like the chickadees and cardinal grosbeaks that enliven our winter woods. The many flowered asters remain regal and cheery though a thousands winds may blow. Those who see the real beauty and indescribable grandeur of the ocean here, if they cannot remain, will show evidences in their beneficent lives that they have had a wonderful summer by the sea. Here amid the most beautiful manifestations of Nature's power and grandeur they have gained broader hopes, higher aspirations and a purer life. They leave the frivolous things of life on its remotest shores, where a few returning tides bury them in the sands of forgetfulness or the receding waves wash them like clams far out to sea.

Look at the fate of summer flowers,

Which blow at daybreak, droop ere evensong

And, grieved for their brief date, confess that ours

Measured by what we are and ought to be,

Measured by all that, trembling we foresee,

Is not so long!

The deepest grove whose foliage hid

The happiest lovers' Arcady might boast,

Could not the entrance of this thought forbid:

O be thou wise as they, soul-gifted maid!

Nor rate too high what must so quickly fade,

So soon be lost!

Then shall love teach some virtuous youth

To draw out of the object of his eyes

The whilst they gaze on thee in simple truth

Hues more exalted a refined form,

That dreads not age, nor suffers from the worm,

And never dies! -Wordsworth.