The ground upon which certain of the great editors of the city have attacked the carrousel is that of the temptation to wrong-doing which it presents to the young. Certain it is that wherever a carrousel is located a large clientele of girls of tender age seems to follow in its wake. These girls are of the sort irreverently referred to by the very tough young men of the period as “chippie.” They do not seem to be burdened with a great supply of innocence, but it is beyond question that the surroundings of the carrousel lead them to indulge in such behavior as they would not be guilty of elsewhere. In this respect the caroussel has in a measure taken the place of the skating-rink. Roller-skating some years ago was a craze, and while the carrousel craze has never assumed the dimensions of that popular “fad” its associations are very similar. There is always a liberal supply of alcoholic beverages to which the patrons of the carrousel, male and female, have easy access. Indeed, in some cases, there is a saloon directly attached. From this fact it may be easily imagined that this is not the sort of place from which a girl of fifteen or thereabout can be expected to derive any lasting benefit—and any number of such girls will be found enjoying themselves at the various carrousel enclosures.
Whatever be its merits or demerits the carrousel constitutes one of the features, good, bad or indifferent, of a great city. As such it is mentioned here, and for no other reason whatsoever. It may interest you to go and take a look at one.
CHAPTER XIV.
TURKISH BATHS—-MASSAGE—-MANICURES.
The heading of this chapter may at the first glance seem peculiar. If so, you don’t have to read it, do you? Nevertheless, a little space may be devoted, in a haphazard sort of way, to a feature of Chicago life that is not without its charms for those who are initiated.
Chicago is nothing if not metropolitan. The Turkish bath is a feature of metropolitan life which should not be deprived of its proper share of attention.
Ever taken a Turkish bath? No? Then remedy the deficiency in your education at once and at the same time taste one of the sublimest sensations that falls to the lot of man in this prosaic world of ours!
To particularize all the Turkish baths of the city would consume too much space. They can be found in connection with most of the leading hotels. The Palmer House baths, located beneath the barber shop, the floor of which is studded with silver dollars, is perhaps the most celebrated. They are open day and night—as all Turkish baths naturally are—and enjoy a large patronage. There are other places, quite independent of the hotels, notably Franks’, on Wabash avenue. The visitor is well cared for and given a taste of Oriental cleanliness and luxury at any hour of the day or night.
The Turkish bath owes a good deal of its popularity, I fear, to its revivifying effect on the toper. A man may enter a Turkish bath with the most aggravated case of “jag” on record and emerge in a few hours fresh, cleansed and glorified—“clothed and in his right mind,” as Holy Writ has it. Not to say that only tipplers patronize the baths! Far from it. People of unimpeachable sobriety indulge regularly in them for their health-giving qualities alone. In hot weather, when the clothing sticks with disagreeable closeness to the body, there is no easier method of “cooling off” than a passage through this fiery, or rather steaming, ordeal. Listen a moment and learn how it is done.
You descend a flight of stairs into a basement and enter the mystic portals. A colored servitor, almost nude, escorts you politely to a dressing-room. The torrid atmosphere has already produced a feeling of enervation, and you doff your clothes with alacrity. You then wind about you the sheet with which you have been provided and emerge, giving all your valuables to a clerk, who deposits them in the safe. You are then led to the “hot-room,” as it called, in which you remain as long as you like.