Beloved: This is your first letter from me: yet it is not the first I have
written to you. There are letters to you lying at love's dead-letter
office in this same writing--so many, my memory has lost count of them!

This is my confession: I told you I had one to make, and you laughed:--you
did not know how serious it was--for to be in love with you long before
you were in love with me--nothing can be more serious than that!

You deny that I was: yet I know when you first really loved me. All at
once, one day something about me came upon you as a surprise: and how,
except on the road to love, can there be surprises? And in the surprise
came love. You did not _know_ me before. Before then, it was only the
other nine entanglements which take hold of the male heart and occupy it
till the tenth is ready to make one knot of them all.

In the letter written that day, I said, "You love me." I could never
have said it before; though I had written twelve letters to my love for
you, I had not once been able to write of your love for me. Was not
_that_ serious?

Now I have confessed! I thought to discover myself all blushes, but my
face is cool: you have kissed all my blushes away! Can I ever be ashamed
in your eyes now, or grow rosy because of anything _you_ or _I_ think?
So!--you have robbed me of one of my charms: I am brazen. Can you love
me still?

You love me, you love me; you are wonderful! we are both wonderful, you
and I.

Well, it is good for you to know I have waited and wished, long before
the thing came true. But to see _you_ waiting and wishing, when the
thing _was_ true all the time:--oh! that was the trial! How not suddenly
to throw my arms round you and cry, "Look, see! O blind mouth, why are
you famished?"

And you never knew? Dearest, I love you for it, you never knew! I believe
a man, when he finds he has won, thinks he has taken the city by assault:
he does not guess how to the insiders it has been a weary siege, with
flags of surrender fluttering themselves to rags from every wall and
window! No: in love it is the women who are the strategists: and they have
at last to fall into the ambush they know of with a good grace.

You must let me praise myself a little for the past, since I can never
praise myself again. You must do that for me now! There is not a battle
left for me to win. You and peace hold me so much a prisoner, have so
caught me from my own way of living, that I seem to hear a pin drop
twenty years ahead of me: it seems an event! Dearest, a thousand times,
I would not have it be otherwise: I am only too willing to drop out of
existence altogether and find myself in your arms instead. Giving you my
love, I can so easily give you my life. Ah, my dear, I am yours so
utterly, so gladly! Will you ever find it out, you who took so long to
discover anything?

"Next Sunday," said Dennis Carnahan, "I'll be after going down to see
the new Coney Island that's risen like a phoenix bird from the ashes
of the old resort. I'm going with Norah Flynn, and we'll fall victims
to all the dry goods deceptions, from the red-flannel eruption of
Mount Vesuvius to the pink silk ribbons on the race-suicide problems
in the incubator kiosk.

"Was I there before? I was. I was there last Tuesday. Did I see the
sights? I did not.

"Last Monday I amalgamated myself with the Bricklayers' Union, and in
accordance with the rules I was ordered to quit work the same day on
account of a sympathy strike with the Lady Salmon Canners' Lodge No.2,
of Tacoma, Washington.

"'Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job,
bein' already harassed in me soul on account of havin' quarrelled
with Norah Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the
Dairymen and Street-Sprinkler Drivers' semi-annual ball, caused by
jealousy and prickly heat and that divil, Andy Coghlin.

"So, I says, it will be Coney for Tuesday; and if the chutes and the
short change and the green-corn silk between the teeth don't create
diversions and get me feeling better, then I don't know at all.

"Ye will have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The
old Bowery, where they used to take your tintype by force and give ye
knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall
Street of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to
keep a news ticker in 'em; and the doughnuts are examined every four
years by a retired steamboat inspector. The nigger man's head that
was used by the old patrons to throw baseballs at is now illegal;
and, by order of the Police Commissioner the image of a man drivin'
an automobile has been substituted. I hear that the old immoral
amusements have been suppressed. People who used to go down from New
York to sit in the sand and dabble in the surf now give up their
quarters to squeeze through turnstiles and see imitations of city
fires and floods painted on canvas. The reprehensible and degradin'
resorts that disgraced old Coney are said to be wiped out. The
wipin'-out process consists of raisin' the price from 10 cents to 25
cents, and hirin' a blonde named Maudie to sell tickets instead of
Micky, the Bowery Bite. That's what they say--I don't know.

"But to Coney I goes a-Tuesday. I gets off the 'L' and starts for the
glitterin' show. 'Twas a fine sight. The Babylonian towers and the
Hindoo roof gardens was blazin' with thousands of electric lights, and
the streets was thick with people. 'Tis a true thing they say that
Coney levels all rank. I see millionaires eatin' popcorn and trampin'
along with the crowd; and I see eight-dollar-a-week clothin'-store
clerks in red automobiles fightin' one another for who'd squeeze the
horn when they come to a corner.

"'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.

"'Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,' says I; 'and what's to be done
about it?'

"''Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,' says she,
sittin' up straight. And it was the voice of no other than Norah
Flynn.

"'Then it's not,' says I, 'and we're after having a pleasant evening,
Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this new Coney Island, then? I
presume ye have come here for that purpose,' says I.

"'I have,' says she. 'Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting beyond.
'Tis an elegant evening I've had. I've seen all the attractions that
be.'

"'Right ye are,' says I to Norah; and I don't know when I've been
that amused. After disportin' me-self among the most laughable moral
improvements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore
for the benefit of the cool air. 'And did ye observe the Durbar, Miss
Flynn?'

"'I did,' says she, reflectin'; 'but 'tis not safe, I'm thinkin', to
ride down them slantin' things into the water.'

"'How did ye fancy the shoot the chutes?' I asks.

"'True, then, I'm afraid of guns,' says Norah. 'They make such noise
in my ears. But Uncle Tim, he shot them, he did, and won cigars. 'Tis
a fine time we had this day, Mr. Carnahan.'

"'I'm glad you've enjoyed yerself,' I says. 'I suppose you've had a
roarin' fine time seein' the sights. And how did the incubators and
the helter-skelter and the midgets suit the taste of ye?'

"'I--I wasn't hungry,' says Norah, faint. 'But mother ate a quantity
of all of 'em. I'm that pleased with the fine things in the new Coney
Island,' says she, 'that it's the happiest day I've seen in a long
time, at all.'

"'Did you see Venice?' says I.

"'We did,' says she. 'She was a beauty. She was all dressed in red,
she was, with--'

"I listened no more to Norah Flynn. I stepped up and I gathered her
in my arms.

"''Tis a story-teller ye are, Norah Flynn', says I. 'Ye've seen no
more of the greater Coney Island than I have meself. Come, now, tell
the truth--ye came to sit by the old pavilion by the waves where you
sat last summer and made Dennis Carnahan a happy man. Speak up, and
tell the truth.'

"Norah stuck her nose against me vest.

"'I despise it, Denny,' she says, half cryin'. 'Mother and Uncle
Tim went to see the shows, but I came down here to think of you. I
couldn't bear the lights and the crowd. Are you forgivin' me, Denny,
for the words we had?'

"''Twas me fault,' says I. 'I came here for the same reason meself.
Look at the lights, Norah,' I says, turning my back to the sea--'ain't
they pretty?'

"'They are,' says Norah, with her eyes shinin'; 'and do ye hear the
bands playin'? Oh, Denny, I think I'd like to see it all.'

"'The old Coney is gone, darlin',' I says to her. 'Everything moves.
When a man's glad it's not scenes of sadness he wants. 'Tis a greater
Coney we have here, but we couldn't see it till we got in the humour
for it. Next Sunday, Norah darlin', we'll see the new place from end
to end."

New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless,
for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze
was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of
feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five
feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on
Manhattan pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in
the direction of her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of
the great Garden were out; the benches in the Square were filled with
sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures
in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into
tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden--its
constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating
of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single,
graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of
ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift
flight to catch a Harlem train--remained poised with its arrow pointed
across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it
would have passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose
duty it is to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other
lands.

Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began
to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden
upon her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened
her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size
of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to
"enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it)
requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a
sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua
schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid,
classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel
the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C's.

"Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!" called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
through the still, midnight air.

"Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as
flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And 'tis so hoarse I am I can
hardly talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me
throat by that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. 'Tis
after being a fine evening, miss."

"If you don't mind my asking," came the bell-like tones of the golden
statue, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I
didn't know that Liberty was necessarily Irish."

"If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications
ye'd not need to ask," replied the offshore statue. "If ye wasn't
so light-headed and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and
presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government
for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of
New York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was erected.
Ye must know, Miss Diana, that 'tis with statues the same as with
people--'tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were
created that influence the operations of their tongues at all--it's
the associations with which they become associated, I'm telling ye."

"You're dead right," agreed Diana. "I notice it on myself. If any of
the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air
in the ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a
Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare."

"I'm right glad ye've made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,"
said Mrs. Liberty. "'Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there
anything doin' up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?"

"Oh, la, la, la!--no," said Diana. "Notice that 'la, la, la,' Aunt
Liberty? Got that from 'Paris by Night' on the roof garden under me.
You'll hear that 'la, la, la' at the Café McCann now, along with
'garsong.' The bohemian crowd there have become tired of 'garsong'
since O'Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling
him it. Oh, no; the town's strickly on the bum these nights.
Everybody's away. Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this
evening with his stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep. A
waiter biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up.
He looks around and sees his little pothooks perpetrator. 'H'm!' says
he, 'will you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?' 'Sure, in a
minute,' says she, 'if you'll make it an X.'

"That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
is. La, la, la!"

"'Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the
cat show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the
privates look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand
as floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl
that measures 36, 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam
on the banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the
Vanderbilts, Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And
ye have the French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert
Emmet-Sangerbund Society dance the Highland fling one with another.
And ye have the grand O'Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant
in the world, where the French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers
in doin' the cake walk. Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole
town, Miss Diana.

"'Tis weary work," sighed the island statue, "disseminatin' the
science of liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down
at Ellis Island and see the gang of immigrants I'm supposed to light
up, 'tis tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write
out their naturalization papers."

"Say, it's a shame, ain't it, to give you the worst end of it?" came
the sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. "It must be
awfully lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don't see
how you ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are
wearing went out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to
be held for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady.
That's where Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. I'm always a little ahead of
the styles; but they're coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a
moment--I caught a puff of wind from the north--shouldn't wonder if
things had loosened up in Esopus. There, now! it's in the West--I
should think that gold plank would have calmed the air out in that
direction. What were you saying, Mrs. Liberty?"

"A fine chat I've had with ye, Miss Diana, ma'am, but I see one
of them European steamers a-sailin' up the Narrows, and I must be
attendin' to me duties. 'Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of
Liberty to welcome all them that survive the kicks that the steerage
stewards give 'em while landin.' Sure 'tis a great country ye can come
to for $8.50, and the doctor waitin' to send ye back home free if he
sees yer eyes red from cryin' for it."

The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many points
on the horizon with its aureate arrow.

"So long, Aunt Liberty," sweetly called Diana of the Tower. "Some
night, when the wind's right. I'll call you up again. But--say! you
haven't got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I've kept a
pretty good watch on the island of Manhattan since I've been up here.
That's a pretty sick-looking bunch of liberty chasers they dump down
at your end of it; but they don't all stay that way. Every little
while up here I see guys signing checks and voting the right ticket,
and encouraging the arts and taking a bath every morning, that was
shoved ashore by a dock labourer born in the United States who never
earned over forty dollars a month. Don't run down your job, Aunt
Liberty; you're all right, all right."