SPRING IS HERE, WITH POEMS AND BATH TUBS
Well, there has been quite a bit happened since I last communed with you. Spring is coming; I can tell by the Poetry and the Real Estate ads. A Poet exists all year just to get his Poem published in the Spring. Then when he sees it in print he starts getting next Spring’s verse all ready. These early Spring Real Estate ads read, “This House is located on the shady banks of a Beautiful stream.” Say, if there is a beautiful stream anywhere now the Rail Road runs along it and all you have to do is to get run over by a freight train to reach this beautiful stream.
A favorite ad is, “Beautiful Home in heart of the most exclusive Residential District, 5 Master Bedrooms and 9 baths; Owner going to Europe.” Now let’s just take that ad out and dissect it and see what it is.
In a Real Estate man’s eye, the most exclusive part of the City is wherever he has a House to sell. The Dog Pound may be on one side and the City Incinerator on the other but it’s still exclusive. And it is, too, for it will be the only house in the world so situated.
Five Master Bedrooms! Now, they get that Master junk from English ads where the man may be the master. Still, I don’t know why they call all the rooms his. Over here they call them Master Bedrooms but the Wife will pick out the Poorest one for him, and keep the other 4 Good ones for Company.
Now, to the ordinary man on reading that Ad of 9 Baths, that would be an insult to his cleanliness. A Man would have to be awful Busy to support that many Baths, unless, of course, he neglected some of them. The ad might better have read, “Buy our home and live in a Bath Tub.” The biggest part of City homes nowadays have more Baths than Beds. So, while they can’t always ask their Company to stay all night as they have no place to put them, they can at least ask them to Bathe. So, when you are invited out now, you can always be assured of your private Bath, but you must leave before Bedtime.
When you visit a friend’s newly finished Home you will be shown through all the Bath rooms, but when you leave you couldn’t, to save your soul, tell where the dining room was. They seem to kinder want to camouflage or hide that nowadays. There is such little eating being done in the Homes now that a dining room is almost a lost art. Breakfast is being served in bed, Dinner at the Cabaret with dancing attached, and Lunch—no up-to-date Man would think of going anywhere but to his Clubs for lunch. Besides, didn’t he hear a funny one and must get to the Club to bore his alleged friends with it? He will talk everybody’s left ear off all day and come home and bite his Wife’s off if she asks him to tell her the news.
And then they have such an enlightening custom nowadays. Every body of men who can think of a name have a Club. And is not Congressman Blindbridle, who has just returned from a free Government trip to Bermuda, going to deliver a Message at today’s Luncheon on “Americanism, Or what we owe to the Flag?”
Now, as the dining room space has been eliminated to make room for an additional Bath, most of the eating, if one happens to be entertaining at home, is done Off The Lap. This custom of slow starvation has shown vast improvement of late. Instead of the Napkins being of Paper, why, they have been supplanted by almost-linen ones with beautiful hemstitching. That’s to try and get your mind off the lack of nourishment. As I say, the Napkin is hand sewn but the Lettuce Sandwiches still come from the Delicatessen.
Why, in the good old days, they couldn’t have fed you on your lap ’cause you couldn’t have held all they would give you. Now you have to feel for it to find it.
But the Husband does come home some time during the Day or Night, for is not the overhead on his outlay of Baths going on all the time, and shouldn’t he be getting home to get some good out of some of them?
It’s not the high cost of Living that is driving us to the Poor House,—It’s the high Cost of bathing. The big question today is not what are you going to pay for your plot of ground, but what kind of fixtures are you going to put in your legion of Bath Rooms. Manufacturers of Porcelain and Tile have Supplanted the Pocket Flask as our principal commodity.
The interest on unpaid-for Bath Rooms would pay our National Debt.
Now, mind you, I am not against this modern accomplishment, or extravagance, of ours. I realize that these Manufacturers of Fixtures have advanced their Art to the point where they are practically modern Michael Angelos. Where, in the old days, an Elephant Hook was almost necessary for a Wife to drag her Husband toward anything that looked like Water, today those Interior Bath Decorators can almost make one of those things inviting enough to get in without flinching.
But, in doing so, they have destroyed an American Institution, and ruined the only Calendar that a Child ever had. That was the Saturday Night Bath. Nowadays a Child just grows up in ignorance. From the Cradle to the Altar he don’t know what day of the week it is. In those good old days he knew that the next morning after that weekly Ear washing he was going to Sunday School. Now he has not only eliminated the Bath on Saturday but has practically eliminated the Sunday School, for neither he nor his Parents know when Sunday comes.
But, in those days, that old Kitchen Stove was kept hot after supper. And not only the Tea Kettle was filled but other Pots and Pans, and the Family Wash Tub was dragged up by the Fire, and you went out to the Well and helped your Pa draw some Water to mix with that hot. While you was doing that, your Ma, if you stayed Lucky and had a Ma up to then, was a getting out all the clean Clothes and a fixing the Buttons, and a laying out the schedule of who was to be first. And She was the only one could tell just how much hot Water to put in to make it right. And if anybody had to feel of the hot water and get burned it was always her, not you, and she found dirt behind, and in, your Ears that all the highfaluting Fixtures in the World can’t find today.
Now that was an event. It meant something. It brought you closer together. But now bathing is so common there’s No Kick To It. It’s just Bla!!
The Romans started this Bath Gag; now look what become of them. They used to have the most beautiful Baths, kind of a Municipal Bath, where they all met and strolled around and draped themselves on Marble Slabs. It was a kinder Society event. It compared to our modern Receptions. I have seen some beautiful Paintings of them, but I have yet to see a Scene where a Roman was in the Water. But they did look, oh, just too cunning, sunning themselves out on the Concrete Banks of those Pools. It must have been like visiting our modern Beaches, where no one can swim but the Life Guard, and they don’t know that he can as he has never been called on to go in. But, like the Romans, our Girls can arrange themselves in the most bewitching shapes out on the sand, which, after all, must be much more comfortable than the Asphalt that those little Cæsars had to spread themselves over.
I tell you if Baths keep on multiplying in the modern Home as they have lately it won’t be 5 Years till a Bath Tub will be as necessary in a home as a Cocktail Shaker.
If two members of the same household have to use the same Bath, it is referred to now as a Community Tub.
Statistics have proven that there are 25 Bath Tubs sold to every Bible.
And fifty to every Dictionary, and 389 to every Encyclopedia.
Proving that, while we may be neglecting the Interior, we are looking after the exterior.
If the Father of our Country, George Washington, was Tutankhamened tomorrow, and, after being aroused from his Tomb, was told that the American People today spend two Billion Dollars yearly on Bathing Material, he would say, “WHAT GOT ’EM SO DIRTY?”