Summer came; and with the initial weeks of summer came also the time for the first of the series of annual outings conducted under the auspices of the _Evening Dispatch's_ Fresh Air Fund for the Children of the Poor. Yearly it was the habit of this enterprising sheet to give excursions to the beach, employing therefor a chartered steamboat and the contributions of the public. The public mainly put up the money; the owner of the _Evening Dispatch_, Mr. Jason Q. Welldover, principally took the credit, for thereby, on flaunting banners and by word of speech, was his name and his fame made glorious throughout the land. As repeatedly pointed out in the editorial columns of his journal, the =Little Ones= of the slums were enabled, through the =Generosity of This Paper=, to breathe in the =Life-giving Ozone= of kindly =Mother Ocean=; to =Play= upon the sands; to =Disport= themselves in the very =Lap Of Nature=; returning home at eventide =Rejuvenated= and =Happy=--the phraseology and the capitalisation alike being direct quotations from the _Evening Dispatch_. Since Miss Betty Gwin was on the staff of the _Evening Dispatch_, it was quite natural that she should take a personal pride as well as a professional interest in the success of the opening outing of the season. As suitable candidates for admission to its dragooned passenger list she thought of Miriam Finkelstein and Solly Finkelstein. She pledged herself to see that these two were included in the party. Nor did she forget it. Upon the morning of the appointed date she went personally to Pike Street, assumed custodianship of the favoured pair and, her own self, escorted them to the designated place of assemblage and transferred them into the keeping of Mr. Moe Blotch. Mr. Blotch belonged in the _Evening Dispatch's_ Circulation Department. Against his will he had been drafted for service in connection with the Fresh Air Fund's excursion. He was a rounded, heavy-set person, with the makings of a misanthrope in him. That day completed the job; after that he was a made and finished misanthrope. While murder blazed in his eyes and kind words poured with malevolent bitterness from his lips, Mr. Blotch marshalled his small charges, to the number of several hundred, in a double file. To each he gave a small American flag, warning each, on peril of mutilation and death, to wave that flag and keep on waving it until further orders. Up at the head of the column, Prof. Washington Carter's All-Coloured Silver Cornet Band struck up a clamorous march tune and the procession started, winding its way out of the familiar Lower East Side, across the tip of Manhattan Island, to the verge of the strange Lower West Side.