that all the
water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where
the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they
want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as
feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only
difference is, that it isn't quite as lukewarm when we get it here as
it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the
measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine,
and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people
here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and
when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if
there's a penny's worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the
pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to
catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it's too
valuable to be allowed to get away. If it's the gas that does it, a
rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas
coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.

When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four
degrees I said to him that he'd be boiled alive, but he wasn't; and
when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in
the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch
on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so
many minutes, and when he's ready to come out he rings a bell, and then
he's wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair
until he's dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it
makes me want to try it too; though as there isn't any reason for it I
haven't tried them yet.

This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good
deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high
buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at
one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths,
where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground,
which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from
what I remember about summer time I don't see how eighty-two degrees
can be cold.

Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis c