In this story, there is a man named Stimson who owns “Stimson’s Mammoth Merry-Go-Round”. Little children go on the merry-go-round and try to grab metal hoops as they go round. There is a young man named Frank who collects the hoops from the children when the ride finishes. He is always smiling at a girl who sells tickets. This girl is named Lizzie, and she is Stimson’s daughter. Stimson is annoyed that Frank is always smiling at his daughter. Frank and Lizzie have a complicated relationship consisting only of smiling at eachother. They have nevr spoken, and yet they seem to be in love. One day Stimson gets so annoyed, he tells Lizzie to stop staring at Frank, and he tells Frank that if he keeps staring at Lizzie, he will be fired. But this does not stop Frank. When Lizzie goes down the the beach with her friend, Frank follows. At first he doesn’t know what to say, but then Lizzie’s friend leaves him and Lizzie alone, and they begin to talk, and they were very happy with eachother. Then one day, Stimson arrives at his merry-go-round to see that both Lizzie and Frank are not there. He runs home, and his wife is there, hysterical. She says that Frank and Lizzie drove by, and before the wife could ask where they were going, they drove away. So Stimson runs down the street after them. He gets a “hack” (i think it’s like a taxi) and tells the driver to chase after the buggy that Frank and Lizzie are in. Stimson is furious, and caught up in the chase. But the buggy is going too fast, and Stimson begins to feel old. He realizes that the fast buggy infront of him is the pace of youth, “…swift-flying with the hope of dreams.”

I liked this story the most out of the three we have read. I actually liked some of the descriptions, because they were very vivid, like “the summer sunlight sprinkled its gold upon the garnet canopies…”

I think that Stephan Crane was incorporating yet another moral into this story. I think he was saying something like, you can’t chase after youth, that youth is not forever, and at some point you will age, and just have to accept that.

idk…i could just be randomly reading into it. What do you guys think?