electric lights by the myriad. To this element these things spell amusement; but it is not the element that will bring enduring profit to park managers. So now, though most parks through the country display such shows as mysterious mechanical devices, riding devices, carousels, and concessionaire attractions, much attention is being paid to athletic fields, swimming pools, bathing beaches, ice ponds in winter, and shooting galleries.

The environs of New York seem to make a class for themselves in regard to amusement parks. For, whereas through the country approximately the same route has been covered in the evolution of the picnic ground into the hysterical spectacle and on into an organized recreation centre, New York appears unable to combine attractions such as draw the following boasted by parks in other communities. In New York it is Coney Island or nothing; parks that have been fitted up at great expense to make an appeal to what is termed "the better class of people" have

generally lost money and have never made any. The old Glen Island Park, across the stream from New Rochelle, illustrates this point. Laid out, as one admirer contends, something like the original Garden of Eden, with its pavilions and zoological gardens, it made a million dollars for John H. Starin in the old days. Then came the sensational success of Coney Island, and Glen Island Park was outfitted with electric lights, dance halls. and all the up-to-date "novelties." But it failed. It was neither the one thing nor the other. Attempting to draw "the better class of people" to its views of the Sound, the trees, shore dinners, and clam bakes, it found that "the better class of people" preferred, when it did go to amusement parks, to make a sort of "slumming expedition" to Coney Island.

There is a large and ever-increasing number of amusement parks through the country, however, which draw steadily from all classes of people. They are becoming becoming well-organized, and present

really extraordinary attractions besides their "novelties." Willow Grove Park, in Philadelphia, for example — and, by the way, this is generally considered the largest and most important park in the country presents regularly such free attractions as Theodore Thomas's orchestra, and Sousa's and Innes's bands. There the patrons can sit and listen to the country's best music and watch soft electric lights play over the lake to the left - that is, if you call visitors who are required to pay nothing "patrons." Willow Grove Park is not a great moneymaker, but it pays

A PARACHUTE JUMP

ONE OF THE OLDEST AND MOST POPULAR PERFORMANCES AT COUNTY FAIRS

its way and rests on what appears to be a substantial, permanent foundation.

The amusement park is an American creation. Until very recently it was unknown in Europe, and has developed in this country only within the last twenty years. No one can claim to have invented it, as it has grown up in various styles in various places from various causesbringing forth free parks, pay parks, street railway parks, beach resorts, excursion resorts, "zoos," concert gardens, and "white cities."" From 1904 to 1907 there was a hysteria of park promotion, followed by a

=