sun as it sends its rays over the water makes everything beautiful.

PROSPECT PARK.

A short drive leads from Greenwood to Prospect Park, crossing several more railways, all going, like almost every other road, toward Coney Island. Finally, the "Ocean Parkway" is reached, the great Coney Island boulevard, a splendid road, two hundred feet wide and planted with six rows of trees. It is laid in a straight line direct from the south-western corner of the park down to that noted seaside resort, which is three miles away. Prospect Park, covering nearly a square mile upon an elevated ridge in the south-western part of Brooklyn, is a comparatively recent enterprise. The perfection of elaborate decoration and landscape gardening displayed in the New York Central Park is not seen here, but it has what is better—a good deal more of the perfection of Nature. The attractive undulating surface has scarcely been changed, and the fine old trees that grew many years before the land was thought of for a park are in magnificent maturity. Its woods and meadows, winding roads, lakes, and views combine all the charms of landscape. From Lookout Hill, its most commanding point, there is a view almost entirely around the compass, stretching over land and sea, and including Brooklyn and New York, the Long Island and Jersey shores, Staten Island, the Navesinks, the harbor, and the ocean. Within the park are an enclosure for deer, an extensive lake, and a children's playground much used by the Brooklyn Sunday-schools. Here the concert-grove and promenade are attractive. From this charming place we go away toward the city by the main entrance, which is called the Plaza. This is a large elliptical enclosure, having a splendid fountain in the centre, where the water pours down a huge mound, and as the cataract falls it runs over openings that can be brilliantly illuminated from within. Abraham Lin

GOING TO CONEY ISLAND.

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coln (in bronze) overlooks this Plaza, which leads to Flatbush Avenue and thence into town. There are many charms of residence in Brooklyn wherein New York is lacking, and they have had much to do with its rapid growth. There is plenty of room, too, for spreading, both for living homes and as a city of the dead, for the back country of Long Island stretches indefinitely toward the rising sun, ready to absorb the millions who may be sent over from Gotham.

X.

GOING TO CONEY ISLAND.

THE visitor to Brooklyn cannot help noticing that nearly all of its railroads lead to Coney Island. This barren strip of white sand clinging to the southern edge of Long Island, about ten miles from New York, is the great objective point of the millions in and around that city when in sweltering summer weather they crave a breath of salt air. There are a dozen ways of going down by both land and water, separately or combined, but when the enormous crowds of the metropolis suddenly take it into their heads to go upon a hot afternoon all the routes are overcrowded. Let us follow the New York and Brooklyn example, and start for Coney Island upon one of the numerous railways, taking the Long Island Railroad to Mr. Austin Corbin's seaside paradise-Manhattan Beach. We are soon trundling merrily over the flat land beyond Brooklyn in a train laden with sightseers bound to the races and the ocean, made up of men and women of all nations and all kinds—a human conglomeration such as only cosmopolitan New York can produce. We get past all the cemeteries and their attendant monumental yards, and run out among the prolific

potato-fields and cabbage-gardens that furnish staple food for our numerous Irish and German fellow-countrymen of these parts. We also cross at grade a half dozen other railroads, all leading down to the same popular objective point. We are going through the suburban town of Gravesend, a district of Kings county famous for successful market-gardening and practical politics. Its semi-rural and seacoast population worships always at the shrine of that noted political chieftain and boss-John Y. McKane. Gravesend is a township not thickly inhabited by steady residents, but those it has are gifted beyond most of their fellows in the practical statesmanship that has always an eye out for the main chance. It will be interesting to our Philadelphia friends to know that this region was the ready absorbent last year of much of the "fund" which the Quaker City contributed to save the country by electing President Harrison. McKane on that interesting occasion. was a financial manipulator with telling effect. Gravesend enjoyed an unexpected and most remarkable political revolution; Harrison's New York majority was made sure, and Senator Quay, as he found his budget of arguments (sent from Philadelphia) producing such remarkable results among the truck-gardeners and clam-gatherers of the district, probably then felt happier than he has at any time since his candidate became the dispenser of patronage.

SHEEPSHEAD BAY.

As the train rolls briskly across the level surface of this noted district, we come out from among the corn and cabbages to the edge of the great salt-marshes fringing the Long Island shore. Behind the eastern edge of Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay puts in, having upon its shore the ancient fishing-village of that name, which has been metamorphosed by the march of fashion into a summervilla town. The train halts on the outskirts of this village to land many of its passengers at one of the greatest racing

ON THE RACE-COURSE.

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establishments of the country, the famous race-course of the "Coney Island Jockey Club." It is one of the chief racedays of the June meeting, and we enter with the crowds keenly bent upon the enjoyment of an afternoon's sport. Passing through the expansive covered ways under the bordering foliage toward the grand stand and the paddock, the extensive lawns are found in perfect verdure under the influence of abundant rains and most careful trimming, and the flower-beds are charming. The stands are crowded with thousands of men and women enjoying the races in the most animated way, and doing not a little speculating upon the result. The spacious betting-pavilion behind the stands contains hundreds of excited people, who crowd about the betting-places, and then wildly rush out to the stand in front as a bell announces the opening of a heat. Here is all the mystic and peculiar paraphernalia of the bettingring, with placards couched in the special language of the turf. There are plenty of "mutual machines for "straight" and "place" betting, whilst some seventy-five of those professional sporting individuals known as "bookmakers" have set up business in a long row extending around the sides of the pavilion, paying one hundred dollars apiece per day for the privilege. Each has his sign and placards, making a miniature office where he conducts trade. Here gather the excited crowds, rushing between the paddock and the stands, and then to the betting-places, and at times business is brisk.

ON THE RACE-COURSE.

The scene upon the race-course is brilliant and full of animation, as the people eagerly watch the contests of speed and training and study with admiration the magnif icent movements of the famous animals upon the track. In the paddock with the horses there gather between the races the jockeys and the wise men of the turf, who are up on all points of horseflesh and pedigree and fully posted on

"weights" and all that sort of thing-necessary knowledge for the accomplished turfman. Out in front is the great oval race-track, with its distant borders of stables, all the centre clear of trees and shrubbery, so that nothing obstructs the view, and the ground sloping down from the lawns and stands toward the lower level of the race-track, keeping every part in full sight as the race proceeds. Watching the sport from the greensward below or the stands above-at times wild with excitement or breathless with hope or despair when some "neck-and-neck" contest gives an electrical shock to the anxious wagerer as it goes unexpectedly wrong or otherwise—is a grand mixture of wealth and fashion with the "lower ten thousand;" for all manner of men and women love the pleasures and the chances of the race-track. During the June meeting of 1889 this noted race-course at Sheepshead Bay witnessed some great contests, among them the "American Derby," the "Suburban," run on the 18th--one of the best races of the season, watched by twenty thousand people, with nine noted horses contesting for ten-thousand-dollar prizes, and the estimate being that bets aggregating two million dollars changed hands on the result. This wonderful race, which had been talked about for a half as year, the vast crowd saw it, was a flying bunch of glossy-coated horses and little jockeys in bright silk colors passing around the track in barely two minutes time, the close being a mighty cheer as the victor rushed under the wire at the judges' stand and won the race.

In that supreme moment many of the deeply-interested spectators lived fast, and, as their betting fortunes were made or marred, their faces told the story. The winner was August Belmont's Raceland. This race-course is masked from the railways by a border of foliage which makes almost the last cluster of thrifty trees on the edge of the fast land. The racing ended, the crowds moved in vast procession out to the trains to go down and cool off in