CULLED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 725, 26 April 1922, Page 8

CULLED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.

The cold hath in the morning is a social fetish that makes, two clear divisions of mankind —the thoroughly virtuous who do not shrink from

the full rigors and the Laodicoans who play with the hot water tap. As

a custom it may be peculiarly English, but one hears less of a varia tion of it that has respectable au

thority. Benjamin Franklin, while representing the American colonies in London, wrote in one of his informing letters to a French corres-

pondent that the “shock of cold water bath always appeared to me as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my- constitution to bathe in another element —I mean cold air • With this view I i ise early almost every morning, and sit 1 in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half on hour or an hour, according to the season,, cither rea 'inf? or writing. The practice is not in the least painful, but on the contrary, agreeable ; o S it h; opens, I make a supplement to mv right’s rest of one 01 two l:rurs of the most pleasing sleep that can 1)0. imrgrilled." FrankMn was 02 at the time. He nail still to live- 22 of the most active 'years of hi.-> ex-t>-ao:dinrry career, so that in his cam to’d-r.U’ baths seem to have done r:) harm. An:inrr story of remarkable seifcntoi —that of Talleyrand’s final interview with Napoleon —is retold in r . recent book: —“The Emperor stormed at him —iou are a coward, a traitor, and a thief ! You don t even believe in Goth You have he-

ir aye d and deceived everybody. You would ,sell your own father.” Not a muscle of. Talleyrand’s face or bddy moved as he stood quietly under the storm of Corsicana invective. He appered to be the last person interested in what was being said.” Years after be bad bis revenge. Someone recalled that Napoleon had rebuked a Prince for not a 'dressing him as Sire. " ‘ Ajaccio and S,\ Helena,” Talleyrand said quiefy. “disperse with comment as to that title.”