Europe Revised

native Aryan stocks of Europe came to pass on the

about the consistency of Scotch stage dialect-soupy, you know, and thick and bewildering. I had expected that servants with lighted tapers in their hands would be groping their way thro

e. To be sure, it was not the sharp, hard sunshine we have in America, which scours and bleaches all it touches, until the whole world has the look of having j

on was rather a dim and wavery gentleman who caught up with you as you turned out of the shaded by-street; who went with you a distance and the

ondon would be drenched in that wonderful gray color which makes it, scenically speaking, one of the most fascinating spots on earth; but it was never downright foggy and never downri

of the year, and here the cursed weather is perfectly fine-blast it!" You could tell they were grieved about it, and disappointed too. An

h. I am much given to taking a cold bath in the morning and speaking of it afterward. Peopl

nglish bathtubs are constructed on the principle that every Englishman who bathes is nine feet long and about eighteen inches wide, whereas the approximate contrary is frequently the case. Draped over a chair was the biggest, widest, softest bathtowel ever made. Shem, Ham and

long-waisted, thin-lipped pewter pitcher. There was plenty of hot water to be had in the bathroom, with faucets and sinks all handy and convenient, and a person might shave himself there in absolute comfort; but long before the days of pipes and taps an Englishm

you to-day, sir!" she said. "It was still

nstead of the coffee the waiter brought me-the shaving water being warmish and containing, so far as I could tell, no deleterious substances. And if the bathroom were

mysterious and murky compound full of strange by-products. By first weakening it and wearing it down with warm m

polliwogs, when I made the discovery that there were no towels in the bathroom. I glanced about keenly, seeking for help and guidance in such an emergency. Set in

ng, one is waiters and the other is maids. For some minutes I considered the situation, without making any headway toward a suitable solution of it; meantime I was getting chilled. So I dried myself-sketchily-with a toothbrush and the edge of the window-shade; then I dressed, and in a still somewhat moist state I went down to interview the management about it. I first visited the information desk and told the youth in charge there I wished to conver

to lay in any towels beforehand-such a thing might possibly occur, you know-how do

y simple. You noticed two pushbutt

difficulty. One of them is for the m

r the waiter or the maid-or, if you should charnce to be in a hurry, f

have enjoyed taking a bath with a lot of snoopy old elders lurking round in the background; but I am not so constituted. I was raised differently from that. With me, bathing has ever been a solitary pleasure. This may denote selfishness on my part; but such is my

id. When one of them comes you tell them to send you the manservant on your floor; and when he comes you tell him you

gentleman in this place to go practically unmarmaladed at breakfast because I am using th

," he repeated patiently. "You

ay; I also felt that if any word of mine might serve to put this es

could get them without blocking the wheels of progress and industry. We may still be shooting Mohawk Indians and the American bison in the streets of Buffalo, New York; and we may still be saying: 'By Geehosaphat, I swan to calculate!-anyway, I note that we still say that in all your leading comic papers; but when a man in my land goes a-toweling, he goes

very simple-so very simple, sir. We've never found it necessary to make a change.

me, would you kindly ask the proprietor to request the head cook to communicate with the carriage starter and have him inform the waiter that when in future I

re supposed to be stationed; but when you ring for the manservant a small arm-shaped device like a semaphore drops down over your outer door. But what has the manservant done that he should be thus discriminated against? Why should he not have a bell of his own? So far as I mig

the human bath and they resent mildly the assumption that any other nation should become addicted to it; whereas I argue that the burden of

districts when the bathing season for males practically ended on September fifteenth, owing to the water in the horsepond becoming chilled; but that time has passed. Along with every modern house that is built to-day, in country or town, we expect bathrooms and plenty of

bove his front door testifying to his magnificent enterprise in this regard. The Continental may be a born hotelkeeper, as has been frequently claimed for him; but the trouble is he usually ha

wn land at about the time of the Green-back craze-a coffin-shaped, boxed-in affair lined with zinc; and the zinc was suffering from tetter or other serious skin trouble and was peeling b

-drum and its dam a dark lantern, and that it got its looks from its father and its heating powers from the mother's side of the family. And the plumbing fixtures were of the type that passed out of general use on the American side of

d the descriptions of the large country places that were there offered for sale or lease. In many instances the advertisements were accompanied by photographic

ming, in rustling black silk; of old Giles-fifty years, man and boy, on the place-wearing a smock frock and leaning on a pitchfork, with a wisp of hay caught in the tines

tter end to put the ax to the roots of the ancestral oaks. I could imagine these parties readily, because I had frequently read about both of them in the standard English novels; and I had seen them depicted in al

and one bath; sixteen rooms and two baths; fourteen rooms and one bath; twenty-one rooms and two baths; eleven rooms and one bath; thirty-four rooms and

bit of bathing. After considering the proposition at some length he said I should understand there was a difference in England between taking a bath and taking a tub-that, though an

urther imagine a couple of pink-and-white English gentlemen in the two baths. If preferable, members of the opposite sex may imagine two ladies. Very well, then; this leaves the occupants of thirty-two bedrooms all to be provided with large tin tubs at ap

here shows the haughtily aquiline but slightly catarrhal nose, which is a heritage of this house; that each pair of dark and brooding eyes hide in their depths the shadow of that dread Nemesis which

that end we have the present heir, a knighted dub. We know they cannot put the tubs in the family picture ga

opinion I shall simply say that the bathing habit of Merrie England is a venerable myth, and likewise

cture he gently deposits one or more carboniferous nodules the size of a pigeon egg, and touches a match to the whole. In the more fortunate instances the result is a small, reddish ember smo

we overheat our houses and our railroad trains and our hotel lobbies in America, nevertheless we do heat them. In winter their interiors are

ing, shrouding draperies of some airproof woolen stuff. At nighttime the maid enters your room, seals the windows, pulls down the shades, locks the shutters, closes the curtains, draws the draperies-and then, I think, calks all the cracks with oakum. When the occupant of that chamber retires to rest he is as hermetic as old Rameses the Firs

of bathing facilities. There is some fresh air left in England-an abundant supply in warm