BATHING EXPERIENCE.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 1028, 10 December 1872, Page 3

BATHING EXPERIENCE.

M.H.8., the sprightly lady correspondent of the Missouri ' [Republican,' lias been taking a Turkish bath in New York, and doesn't like it. Here's what she says of it: —" We were divested of every stitch of our clothing, our rings and bracelets locked up, our back hair taken off, our own special possession of seventyfive or a hundred hairs made into a little hirsute pill and impaled with a hair pin* That was the only token of civilisation that we boasted. The procession formed. At the door we were handed a minature sheet and a little bit of sponge wet with cold water. We went through a passage to a room, where we dropped our sheets and entered a vapor that clothed us decently. I wonder the ' Illustrated Police Gazette" or the ' Day's Doings' haven't hit on this business for illustration. Well, in this steam I thought I should suffocate. It poured up and in and through"; holes till it was dreadful. The use of the wet sponge I ascertained was to put on the top of your head, to prevent " coup de steam," or some such dire complaint. They wouldn't let me out, and the temperature got worse and worse, and I began to think of my mother and an obituary notice in the ' Eepublican,' when we were pronounced cooked enough, and led out into a room in which was a mighty tank of cold water, through which you must wade or swim as you could. Caesar's ghost! I flew through it. My anatomy and physiognomy were heated to boiling point. The water seemed like ice. It sent the blood rushing to my hollow head (I'm convinced I have no brains), and my heart came ker-flop up and went kerchunk down. I made up my mind this was the worst of it and tried to be resigned, I had been scraped and scrubbed in the vapor room till I was scarified. I stood on the brink and watched my companions splashing through the infernal tank. One of them to expedite her own release, caught at my ancle; away went my soapy feet from under me, and I went in for a second time. How very near an end was the happy connection between M.H.B. and the St. Louis 1 Eepublican At the next stage of this truly awful experience wo received the "shower." I bad now become convinced that I should never see home or friends again. In a calm despair I walked under a solid column of water that nearly broke my bade, and just here I got mad. That fat attendant hasn't yet recovered sufficient to make a complaint, and when the thin woman went before Judge Dowling that gentleman said it was a conspiracy, that no woman of my size, unaided, could do so much damage. He told the woman to go home and say nothing about it, for she'd evidently been dreadfully drunk and undertaken to walk through a carpetcleaning machine. And that's the first and last Eussian batrrl.take.