It was delicious to me, then in the prime of youth and ambition, to sit on the hurricane or “spoon” deck, as our Sunday editor called it, and study not only the hundreds of boys and girls, but also the older men and women, who came principally to make love, though secondarily to enjoy the river and the air, to brood over the picturesque groupings of the trees, bushes, distant cabins and bluffs which rose steeply from the river, to watch the great cloud of smoke that trailed back over us, to see the two halves of the immense steel walking beam chuff-chuffing up and down, and to listen to the drive of the water-wheel behind. This was in the days before the automobile, and any such pleasant means of getting away from the city was valued much more than it is now. But to return to this Sunday editor and his orders. I was to make sketches of spooning couples, or at least of two or three small distinctive groups with a touch of romance in them. Steele was to tell how the love-making went on. This, being an innocent method of amusement, relief from the humdrum of such a world as this was looked upon with suspicion if not actual disfavor by the wiseacres of the paper, as well as by the conservatives of the city. True conservatives would not so indulge themselves. The real object of the Sunday editor was to get something into his paper that would have a little kick to it. We were, without exaggerating the matter in any way, to shock the conservatives by a little picture of life and love, which, however innocent, was none the less taboo in that city. The story was to suggest, as I understand it, loose living, low ideals and the like. These outings did not have the lockstep of business or religion in them. II Well, to proceed. No sooner had the order been given than Steele came to me to talk it over. He liked the idea very much. It was a good Sunday subject. Besides, the opportunity for an outing appealed to him. We were to go on the boat that left the wharf at the foot of Beach street at eight o’clock that evening. He had been told to write anything from fifteen hundred to two thousand words. If I made three good sketches, that would make almost a three-fourths page special. He would make his story as lively and colorful as he could. He was not a little flattered, I am sure, by having been called to interpret such a gay, risqué scene.