Continuous Vaudeville

by Will M. Cressy

One of the things that grated on her artistic sense was the bath tub; it held water all right, and it was clean enough; but it was a plain, unpainted tin affair and she shuddered every time she looked at it. Every time she took a bath she shuddered twice.

One evening while reading The Ladies' Home Journal, she came across the heading—"How to Enamel a Tin Bath Tub." "Ah ha! At last!" She read the article; then she read it again; it was simple enough; she could do it; she knew she could. And she also knew that if it was done, she would have to do it; for Hubbie didn't have the Artistic Temperament worth a cent. He wouldn't have cared if the bath tub was made of old rubber boots; he didn't use it much anyway.

So the next morning she took the clipping from the paper down to the paint store, bought a can of enamel, a bottle of varnish and a paint brush, and after dinner went after that bath tub. First she scrubbed it thoroughly; then she dried it; and then she put on the white enamel; a good job too. But as she stood back and looked at it, it did not quite fill the bill; it was rather thin; the tin showed through in spots. Well, if one coat was good, two coats ought to be better; so she went back and put on another coat. It was a great improvement; wonderful, in fact; a third coat would make it look like the finest marble; so on went a third coat.

The next thing, according to the printed directions, was the coat of varnish. Now the man that wrote those directions probably took it for granted that any one using them would know enough to let one coat dry before putting on another; so he did not mention that fact in his directions. And so now, according to directions, our lady friend, not content with putting on three coats of enamel, all at one sitting, proceeded to put on the coat of varnish.

The directions then were to fill the bath tub with cold water and let it set for twenty-four hours.

As this was on a Wednesday, and of course there could be no use for the tub before Saturday, she let the water set until that time, in order to let the paint get "set" good and firm.

Saturday night she went in and let the water out and after admiring the white and gleaming tub for awhile she proceeded to take her bath. Usually, on account of her hatred for the old tin tub, she made this ceremony as short as possible; but to-night, sitting there in this beautiful white tub, she lingered; she could almost close her eyes and imagine herself Cleopatra reclining in her alabaster bath, waited on by slaves; she reached up and got a bottle of perfume from a shelf over her head and perfumed the waters. And she decided that in addition to the regular Saturday night performance she should hereafter play a Wednesday matinée.

But all good things come to an end; and finally she decided to arise; with a sigh she placed her hands on the side of the tub and lifted; with a scream she took her hands off the side of the tub and settled back, and felt. She discovered that this "good thing" had "come to an end" in more ways than one; and that as far as she was able to discover "the end" and "the good thing" were liable to remain together indefinitely; for she had settled into that mess of paint, enamel and varnish, until she and that bath tub had formed an attachment that nothing short of a doctor or a plumber could separate.

For purely personal reasons she did not want to call for either the doctor or the plumber. And much less did she want to explain her predicament to her husband. She always had been in the habit of facing her troubles bravely; but here was a situation where this rule was hard to follow. Another rule she had always tried to follow was to put her troubles behind her; but, although she was now following this rule, somehow it brought no relief.

Meanwhile, while she sat there thinking all these things over, the paint was setting harder than ever; ditto the lady. Something must be done; and she had got to do it herself. So she began a sort of rocking movement; back and forth, side to side, she twisted and writhed. She realized, more than ever, how much she had become attached to that old tin bath tub; she realized how it was going to pain her to break away from it; sometimes she doubted as to whether she could go away and leave it; she wondered if she would have to go through life wearing that darned old tin bath tub.