hree on the North River--at the Battery, Bethune
Street, and Fifty-first Street; and one floating around without any home
at all--that is, it is built, and the authorities have not decided where
to anchor it."

"Well?" exclaimed both boys, interestedly.

"Now, boys, in order to understand thoroughly how much these free baths
are to the people who use them, you must put yourselves in some other
boys' boots, or perhaps I should say jackets, so many of them have no
boots at all.

"You and Dick live in a very lovely home. Just imagine yourselves in a
dingy tenement-house, shut up for the night, with three or four other
boys, to sleep in a dark room where never sunlight or breeze enters
through the whole year; the heat is suffocating; you toss uneasily back
and forth, more than likely on the floor. You have heard during the day
that to-morrow the Gouverneur Street or some other bath will be open.
What do you do?

"Before the day breaks you leap from your bed, waken your brothers or
comrades, fling on your jackets and trousers, rush down the rickety
stairways out into the cooler air of the morning, and scud down to the
docks.

"When you arrive there you find already quite a line of boys and men
ahead of you. You can not go above them--the policemen won't allow
it--so you take your places at the foot of the line, glad that it is no
longer. Poddie is number fifty-one, Dick fifty-two. By twos and threes
the line grows to be three hundred strong. At five o'clock the doors
open, the keepers appear, and one hundred are admitted. But here we are:
you shall begin to judge for yourselves."

"Whew!" exclaimed Dick, looking up and down a long line of ragged, grimy
urchins, who were tiptoeing in impatience to enter. "How will all those
fellows get in? Shall we have to foot the line?"

"Not while I have my 'open, sesame,' with me," replied Uncle Fritz,
pointing to a small silver badge on his coat lapel.

The keeper just glanced at it, and Dick was greatly surprised to see how
politely they were invited to walk in, "all through a bit of shiny
silver," as he expressed it afterward.

"What a crowd of boys!" thought Poddie, as his eye roved from one to
another of the hundred ducking, diving, splashing little and big
fellows, who were laughing and shouting with delight. "What a jolly time
they're having!" said he, turning to his uncle.

"Yes," said that gentleman. "I don't believe you have more fun at the
Central Park bath, Poddie