The Arabic Bath.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 8, 20 February 1902, Page 19

The Arabic Bath.

Here in White Island we escaped both the plague and the earthquake, but the canvasser for a Parent Collapsible Arabic Bath is on the rampage in our peaceful sea-pirt city. He has red hair and yellow pamphlets. The other day he ran across the street to me with a joyous smile as if about to tell me that some rich uncle of mine had died, but insteai, he worked off something like thiß : (Good morning, sir, have you seen our Patent Collapsible Arabic Bath 1 Just the thing for sedentary people. Or perhaps you are a letter-carrier 1 Very well, our Bath was specially invented for those who have to bustle round a bit. It is an Indiarubber blessing, sir. When folded up, it will fit into a fairish-sized envelope. Let me sell you one. It is the very best cure on this Footstool, sir, for colds, coughs, sore throats, angina picturesque brain fever, influenza, inflammation of the phalanx, baldness, insulated stomach, rheumatics, etc. etc. etc. Have you the plague or the leprosy, sir? Don't answer unless you like. I know there are some things we all like to keep dark, sir. But if you have, buy one of our Baths, sir, and you will become as healthy as a man with a Government pension. When our Baths become properly known, every jing-bang doctor will have to live with his wife's people, and all the universities and medical schools will be turned into Benevo. lent Institutions for Indigent Medico 3. Say you'll take one, sir_ You can fib the thing up anywhere. Fancy enjoying all the Oriental luxuriousness of the far-famed Ham-ham in the privacy of your own coal-shed. And we can supply you with drugs in threepenny packets so that you can have a sulphur bath, potash bath, mudjbath, iron bath, benzine bath, or a bath with any kind of mineral water you just fancy, including Wai-rongoa, Puriri, and lemonade; and we engage to furnish one set of drugs with the Colapaible Arabic in a n^at handbag for the ridiculously small sum of fifty shillings. Just imagine it, sir, Rotorua in a handbag, and all for two pun ten 1 Don't say iyou can't afford it, sir. How much will it cost you to get rid of lumbago or paralysis of the brain, or diabetes, or gout ? And what do >you think a fit of epidemics wiU Co3t you ? And what will be the doctor's foe for yanking out a tumor or a dyspepsy 1 And, sir, I'll kn^ck off the ten bob. Did you

say you are not troubled with theße complaints ? Listen, sir. The skin contains about 5,000,000 pores. We will not be particular for one or two. Your skin, sir, contains 5,000,000 little sewers. What would happen, sir, if you stuffed up each one of them with a wad of cotton- wool ? You would die, sir — frizzle out before you would have the last one stuffed. What happens to a city when thd drainage is stopped ? It is decimated, sir. And that is what will happen to you. You will be decimated, sir. Think of your widow sir, and buy one of our Patent Arabic Collapsibles. A 9 you are a stranger I'll let you have the whole thing for seven-and-six. You don't think you will make a deal ? Very well. Lovely weather for this time of the year. Good morning.'