The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-07-31
Wonderful Boy Swim
mers Of New York
Boiling Pot Fifty Feet Deep Their Swimming Hole
BY A. L. HAZARD.

poor coin would be swallowed in for
ty feet of ooze the moment it reached
there. But throw a white oyster shell
or any similar bright object that is
not heavy enough to sink in the mud,
and the average New York river front
boy will bring it up every time from
water thirty feet deep.
He can catch most objects before
they reach bottom. But if he has to
get clear down into the marine night
and grope around in the swirling mud,
he will do it. And if you hold a stop
watch on him, the second hand will
make a good journey before the water
gives him up again.
When the heat blasts the rookeries
and fills the dirty streets of the poor
districts with sodden vapor and
stenches and the lamentation of wilt
ing babies, the boys practically live in
the river.
1t is nothing uncommon for boys to
dive into the stream at s in the morn
ing and not to climb out again till
noon.
Thin, shivering, with teeth chatter
ing, they still manage to escape cramps
and all the other terrors of water. And
in the hours that they spend in the
river they get no rest other than that
to be obtained by clinging now and
then, snail-like, to the slippery, Shiny
! spiles.
! More Fish Than Boy.
They do everything that a fish does.
They can swim under water as well
as on top. They catch each other by
the feet and pull each other under.
They struggle, with arms locked
around necks, deep below the surface.
till there ism a breath left in their
tough little bodies. They play tag,
prisoners base, and even ball in the
river. They will, on proper occasions,
engage in a regular fight with all the
rules, pummeling one another with as
much attention to detail as if they
were on dry land.
The plutocrats among them wear
those apologies for fig leaves that are
known as tights. The more rugged
citizens were their skin alone.
The perfection to which they have
brought the art of dressing and I'M
dressing is worth a chapter in the his
tory of clothes. Arrived at the end
of the pier, the tenement house boy
gives himself a shake and a wrigge.
The shake sheds the trousers. The
wriggle sends the. shirt into the air.
The next instant he is overheard.
The lot of the policemen assigned
to duty at the piers is one of heart
rendlng humor If one y sighted
heading down the pier. and there is
time, the spiles are alive at the warn
ing signal with boys, who fit up the
smooth, wet wood like lizards, fall
wildly on the tangled mess of clothes.
hurl themselves headfirst into any old
garment, and, snatching what is left,
race away.
If there isn't time to do this, the
boys on the pier grab the clothes and
rush away to hiding places or
around to the next pier, while the
swimmers, resting contentedly in the
water, make shrill remarks to the po-
liceman that are calculated with deep
cunning to affect his hottest private
feelings.
Queer 'T4aunching Day"
Aug. is the fete day of the New
York water boys. On that day who
ever ventures near the edge of a pier
is more than likely to be hurled into
the water. 1t is sacred rite whose
origin is lost in the past. Launching
Day" they call 1t, and many a silk
hated. frock-coated stranger, visiting
a pier in the tenement districts on
business, has learned about II sudden
ly by finding himself struggling in the
river while a crowd of deliberately in
nocent loungers watch the kindly but
strangely clumsy efforts of the swim
mers around trying TO save him.
Most tenement house boys whose
timidity has kept them from learning
to swim until that day, are impelled
to the piers then by the same irresist-
ible impulse that used to lead persons
to throw themselves under the car of
old Juggernaut. Down they wander.
with palpltating hearts, and over they
60 to scramble ashore presently as
full-hedged swimemrs or else to be
grappled for and brought up as
corpses. which is something that hap
pens on occasion.
Launching Day" isn't the ferocious
feast of riot that is used to be on the