watching a peevish old man tending his fishing lines,
fastened to wires with little bells on them. "What do you catch here?"
we said. Just then one of the little bells gave a cracked tinkle and the
angler pulled up a small fish, wriggling briskly, about three inches
long. This seemed to anger him. He seemed to consider himself in some
way humiliated by the incident. He grunted. One of the small boys was
tactful. "Oh, gee!" he said. "Sometimes you catch fish that long,"
indicating a length which began at about a yard and diminished to about
eighteen inches as he meditated. "I don't know what kind they are," he
said. "They're not trouts, but some other kind of fish."

This started the topic of relative sizes, always fascinating to small
boys. "That's a pretty big boat," said one, craning up at the tall stem
of the _Eclipse_. "Oh, gee, that ain't big!" said another. "You ought to
see some of the Cunard boats, the _Olympic_ or the _Baltic_."

On Riverside Drive horseback riders were cantering down the bridlepath,
returning from early outings. The squirrels, already grossly overfed,
were brooding languidly that another day of excessive peanuts was at
hand. Behind a rapidly spinning limousine pedalled a grotesquely humped
bicyclist, using the car as a pacemaker. He throbbed fiercely just
behind the spare tire, with his face bent down into a rich travelling
cloud of gasoline exhaust. An odd way of enjoying one's self! Children
were coming out in troops, with their nurses, for the morning air. Here
was a little boy with a sailor hat, and on the band a gilt legend that
was new to us. Instead of the usual naval slogan, it simply said
_Democracy_. This interested us, as later in the day we saw another,
near the goldfish pond in Central Park. Behind the cashier's grill of a
Broadway drug store the good-tempered young lady was reading Zane Grey.
"I love his books," she said, "but they make me want to break loose and
go out West."

VENISON PASTY

[Illustration]

The good old days are gone, we have been frequently and authoritatively
assured; and yet, sitting in an agreeable public on William Street where
the bright eye of our friend Harold Phillips discerned _venison pasty_
on the menu, and listening to a seafaring man describe a recent "blow"
off Hatteras during which he stood four hours up to his waist in the
bilges, and watching our five jocund companions dismiss no less than
twenty-one beakers of cider, we felt no en