Persian Women's Fondness for the Bath.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 226, 29 October 1887, Page 3

Persian Women's Fondness for the Bath.

Tin: bath takes up a good deal of the time of all Persian women. Even the poorest will attend the Hani mam at least once a week. For the lady the bath is one of the serious affairs of life, and takes up daily from two to four houis of her time. It is something more than our idea of a bath. The victim is scraped and mbbed and parboiled. The soles of the feet are pumiced until they aie hoft and tender as those of a little child. The hair is thoroughly washed by mean^ of hot water and the saponaceous clay for u hich Khira/ is celebrated. Then the attendants mix in a brazen bowl the aromatic henna with tho requisite amount of lemon juice, till a brown paste of the consistency of gruel is produced, and several handfuls of the repulsive-looking compound are smeaiod over the lady's head. Then the hair, collected into a mass, in bound up with cabbage-leaves. Small quantities of the dye are smcaied over the eyebrows ; the noles of the feet, toes, the palms of the hands and tho finger-tips are also covered with it. And now the lady has to sit perfectly still for from one to three hours, till, like a meerschaum pipe, she coloius ; and It. i.= exactly the colour obtained on the best specimens of pipes that is most fashionable among the Persian ladies. Day after day the bath is thronged with women, each sitting peifectly still for the colour to " take." But they have their l-ewaxd, for the henna dyes the hair a beautiful deep warm chestnut; hence grey hair is unknown among Persian ladies. While the colouring process has been going on tongues have been running and a good deal of scandal has been exchanged. The female barber, with a pair of tweezers, has removed every outlying hair from tho region of the lady's eyebrows. It is the ambition of every Persian woman that her eyebrows shall meet, or at least appear to do so ; so attractive are eyebiows that meet that they arc called the " bridge of love." The first care, then, of the Persian beauty is with a little pencil of antimony to unite her eyebrows, and then she proceeds to make thorn appear of unnatural thickness. Her eyelashes are pencilled, too, in a manner not unknown to our countrywomen. By this time the lady will have smoked many kalians or waterpipes,' she will have partaken of tea and regaled herself with coffee ; iced sherbets, too, will not have been wanting. Her finger-tips, nails- and palms, as well as the soles of her feet and toes, have attained a bright chestnut hue which will last a week. The hair is carefully washed once more. It is seldom under a yard long, often much more, for the Persian woman never cuts her hair, except in front, perhaps, when two heavy love-locksare left on either sido of the face. The ladies now return home to their noonday breakfasts. i^fter breakfast there is generally a siesta, and this, in a hot country, is almost a necessity. About 4 o'clock tea and pipes appear, and then the lady receives callers or pays visits, or, perhaps, does a little shopping, or takes the air mounted on her ambling mule or a donkey of snowy whiteness. — "Pall Mall Gazette."

The "New York Minor" tells a dwarf story concerning an ancient dame who saw a small boy in the Boston depot crying by the washing room door. "What's the matter, bubby ?" asked the lady. "I can't get up to the basin to wash my hands," said the boy. The lady took him in and fixed him up nicely, brushed his hair and wiped his »ose. All at once she paused and blurted out: — "How old arc you, sonny, for Heaven's sake ?" " Thirty-seven las^ March," blubbered the famous dwarf, Major Page, and that old Boston lady had as good a fit as they haye 1 seen itvNew England for years.