A hot dog merchant there, hearing the strains of music and beholding the approach of a multitude, lit his fires and laid specimens of his wares upon the grid to brown and sizzle. A closer view of the massed crowd, advancing toward him from the pier, disillusioned him. As a regular subscriber to the _Evening Dispatch_ he knew that these oncoming hosts were not to be considered, even remotely, as prospective patrons. For had it not been written and repeatedly written that they were to be regaled, ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT EXPENSE, at Stanchheimer's Chowder Pavilion? Verily it had been so written. Uttering fluent maledictions in his sonorous native Greek, the hot dog man went inside his booth, pulled down the shades and turned off the gas. On a wide and windswept shore, where pallid sands ran down to pallid sea, and sea in turn ran out and out to mingle, under shrouding fog banks, with lowering skies, the small Fresh-Air funders were turned loose and sternly ordered to enjoy themselves. Perversely, they persisted in huddling in close, tight clusters, as though drawn together by a gravitation of common discomfort. Their conductor was not to be thwarted. He had a duty to perform--a duty to them and to his employer--and scrupulously he meant to obey it if it cost forty lives. From group to group Mr. Moe Blotch ran, yanking its members out into the cheerless open. "Play, consarn you! Play!" he blared at them. "Laugh and sing and dig in the sands! Breathe in the life-giving ozone or I'll break every bone in your bodies!" Little Miriam found herself alone and lonesome in the shadow of a depressingly pale-yellow dune. She thought of the warm and comfortable tenement hallway, crowded as it would be with gossiping little deputy mothers and crawling, babbling babies. She thought of the shifting panorama of Pike Street's sidewalk life, spectacular and thrilling. She thought of her own two special charges--Izzy and Izzy--deprived now of their customary guardianship and no doubt pining for it. These poignant memories overcame her. She lifted her face to the unresponsive vault of heaven, and she wept. Once she was at it, there was no false restraint in her weeping; she bemoaned her lot shrilly, copiously and damply. Moisture streamed from her eyes, her mouth, her nose. In her rendition there was a certain aquatic wholeheartedness that would have interested and startled a student of natural hydraulics. Practically this child had riparian rights.