"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."