BOILED IN A BATH.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 347, 30 October 1875, Page 3

BOILED IN A BATH.

. At Japan the're : would be much surprise felt if the traveller did 'hoi auk for a bath. There were no preparations required, no rushing chambermaids, no ..turning on this and oil' that—every V thing was quite ready, and I was ;it once conducted to a huge wooden bath, jwith a small earthen furnace let in tit the foot, and a lid enclosing the whole of the top with the exception of a space just big enough for the head "of the bather to emerge through. In one of these, contrivances, with a small furnace burning.gaily, a Japanese, alter his day's work is over, will sit calmlv boiling himself with the lid on, and the water bubbling about him at .boiling heat. He seems, however,, to', like it uncommonly, to judge from the pleased expression on his face fast deepening under the process into beetroot-like tints ; and when he Has,} at last, had an hour of it— he takes off the lid and emerges as much like a 'boiled lobster as a human being can. become. My bath was quite ready; the small furnace" glowed with live pieces of chareoal; the water bubbled merily, and my companion of the bath, taking off the lid, invited me to enter. o Not being, however, either a Japanese!, a blue lobster, or. a potato, I did not see any particular object in being boiled, and so had the fuel raked out of the furnace and a few buckets of cold water added before I got in. When I did get in, though,.after these alterations in the arrangements, I found it most grateful, and; as 1 lay reposing my aching limbs, I heard Burton in the back yard going through i the more vigorating process of having buckets full of cold water, just drawn from the well, dashed over him by his betta.-—' Temple Bar.'