CLARA BELLE VISITS A TURKISH BATH.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1013, 17 December 1881, Page 3

CLARA BELLE VISITS A TURKISH BATH.

Not a man was to be seen about the place. A woman took my §1.50 in an outer office, and let me into the next room, which looked like the cabin of a Hudson’s River steamboat. It was long and low, with soft carpet on the floor, and doors at the sides, opening into lirtle dressing-rooms. I was told to go into one of these and disrobe. Must I take off everything ?” I asked. Everything! O yes,” said the attendant ; “ but you will find a sheet to wrap yourself it.” Just then a ghostly figure, wound in a sheet, emerged from a room and disappeared through another door at the further end of the cabin. She was a tall, thin woman, with a bloodless face, and her black hair hung loose. But she was enveloped, and that gave me comfort. I might have been seen ten minutes afterwards coming sheeted out of my room, and slinking towards the entrance of the bath. I pushed open the door, and had scarcely seen that I was in a mere ante-room, when whisk went the sheet, and I was in the condition of my grandma Eve before she took to aprons. An attendant had grabbed off the covering. “ Here,” I said, huddling myself together, “ I want that.” “ O, none of the ladies ever wear anything,” was the response in an expostulatory tone. Well, it wouldn’t do to kick against the fashion, and I allowed myself to be pushed into the bath-room. What a sight met my astounded eyes ! About fifty utterly nude women were in that big room, lounging in willow chairs and sofas, walking about, chatting with acquaintances, and perspiring like squeezed sponges. The temperature was 120degs., the dry heat pouring in from registers on all sides. I was awfully ashamed at first, but the unconcern of the great majority reassured me, and at length I ventured out of the corner in which I had taken refuge. There were many comely bathers, to be sure, with fine forms and smooth, white skins, but the revelation of hol-low-chested maids and flabby matrons, of spindle shanks and arms, of corns and bunions, and of various unshapeliness, was beyond my power of description. I saw several persons whom I had teen before, and bices me. how

altered they looked without clothes! One of these Was the popular leading actress of a theatrical company, and 1 knew her by sight, because of having seen her half undressed on the stage. Somebody called me by name, and I with difficulty recognised the face of an acquaintance. Perhaps that assemblage was not fairly representative, but taking it as a standard, not one in ten of us is reasonably good in finery, and not one in fifty would do for statuary. J The best figure in the lot was that of a woman who could not have been less than 45 years old, and it was perfection itself in every curve and proportion ; but, as a rule, the women of 25 to 30 excelled in form, the younger ones being scrawny, and the older ones being either gaunt or flabby. The only wearers of anything were the dozen attendants, all slender, sprightly young women. Each had a towel wrapped around her body from waist to hips, another over one shoulder and across the breast to the opposite armpit, and a third wound turban-like around the head; They looked jaunty and agreeable. It was their task' to show bathers how to use the cold water douches, pools, and showers, and to scrub them with brushes as they lay on marble tables. I liked the bath well enough, but I am sorry I saw the women, for they disenchanted me.