The ugly-girl papers

by S. D. Power

In the sultry and oppressive weather of summer the hot bath is of all others most cooling. No matter how heated the system, water as hot as possible is the safest and most efficient relief. One wants to remain in it long enough to give every part of the body a thorough scrubbing with soap and a mohair wash-cloth, which cleanses the skin more thoroughly than a brush. The hot water dissolves every particle of matter that clogs the pores, the rough cloth and soap remove it searchingly, and the towel is hardly laid aside before a delicious coolness and freshness passes upon one, like that of a dewy summer morning. The dangers resulting from a sudden check of perspiration by plunging into cold water when overheated, or by sitting in a draught to cool, are avoided, and a greater sense of coolness follows. People who suffer much in warm weather should reckon this a daily solace. All enervating effects are warded off by an instant’s plunge into cool water of, say, seventy degrees. I say cool, for it certainly will feel as if iced after a bath of nearly a hundred and fifty degrees. In a common bath-room, by this means, one may experience much of the real benefit of a Russian vapor-bath.

The bath lasts fifteen minutes, when the vapor is turned off. When the steam in the box has had time to condense, the cover is unjointed, and the bather treated to a scrubbing with soap and warm water, which gradually cools and cleanses the body. Then cooler water is poured over the body, and, after wiping, one is wrapped in a fresh sheet and lies down to pleasant dreams.

It is hard that such a necessary requisite to the highest vigor should rank, as it does, among luxuries. One can hardly imagine an addition to a fine house more desirable than a bathing-hall, such as Roman patricians added to their palaces, where any form of vapor or hot bath was at command.

Many improvements are needed in our public baths. There should be small dressing-closets, as there are at swimming-baths, where one’s clothes may be kept from contact with beds on which a thousand people rest in the course of a year. The reposing-hall should be well lighted, and paved with tiles, instead of being spread with bits of carpet to be tossed about; and there should be ample space between the couches. Every thing should convey the impression of space and repose—of sunshine, for the sake of its reviving power, and of refinement, for the soothing it always brings the nerves.

Usually the bath-house is built in a court-yard, where high walls on every side shut out the sunlight. The basement dressing-room is filled with narrow couches covered with light rubber sheets, suggestive of nothing more pleasant than cast-off clothing, and rest measured by the bath clock, when one’s pillow must be given up to a new-comer.

From this huddled room the bather steps into one beyond summer heat, dark and dripping with moisture, with a plunge bath in the centre. Passing through it, one finds next what seems like a wide marble staircase running the length of each side almost to the low roof, with gratings let in the face of the steps. The bather ascends one of these stony couches, and lies down with head on the stony pillow carved every six feet or so for the purpose. Wrapped in a sheet, already wet with moisture since leaving the dressing-room, a large sponge dipped in cold water at the back of one’s head, and another at the mouth and nose, one feels as if there were perspiration enough already for sanitary purposes; but when, with a hiss and a roar, the steam is let on through the gratings, one finds the difference. Rolling vapor fills the room, so dense that every outline is shut out as completely as in the darkest night. The heat rises to suffocation, the new bather thinks, and rushes again and again to the douche against the wall to wet her throbbing head, or into the next room, which seems cool as a waterfall, for a gasp of air that she can breathe. Old and experienced bathers lie still, declaring that, with head down and the wet sponge pressed to the nose, they breathe without difficulty. What was perspiration is literally a flowing away in rills and sheets of water that drip from the bather’s reeking sides. One seems to have turned to jelly, and submits helplessly to the scrubbing-brush and final shower-bath of water at eighty degrees, which causes a shiver by contrast.

The outer room is refreshing in its coolness, and one wraps a dry sheet and blanket round one and lies down on the India-rubber cloth in dreamy indifference to all the rest of the world.

What follows is Elysium. Every ache and pain, every care, is dispelled in a trance of rest.

All the descriptions by Eastern travelers of the luxury of the bath are found true in this last stage of enjoyment. One is rejuvenated, entranced, and sinks into a light sleep, whose approach seems a prelude to paradise. The eyes close to keep out the sordid surroundings of the bathing-room; and every idea, or rather sensation—for the brain is too passive to think—is bliss. This is the dolce far niente Italians aspire to—the sum of all delight possible to sensation. Passion and rapture have no charms that equal it. It is the death and extinction of all pain. Quite as beautiful is the return to consciousness, sense after sense regaining double brightness as softly and steadily as the unfolding of a flower.

After a reluctant waking and going out into the sunlight again one seems to have found a new self. The feather-like lightness and elasticity of every limb amount almost to delirium, they are so different from one’s usual dullness. It is freedom that feels like flying. If this is simply health, in our common state we must be farther toward extinction than we imagine.