ere at
the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were
naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or
politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or
a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment,
here, whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and
stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his
skin--well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain
additional exercises--one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred
times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing
your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your
shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back
to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran--you
were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and
agilely take a bath.

"Well, now, you're ready, are you?" this to a noble jurist who, like
myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. "Come on, now. Now you
have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself
wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself
thoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all
the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin
thoroughly--now start!"

The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice
given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under
the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of
the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of
cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove
beneficial.

He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside
for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all
dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and
gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he
had been most roughly urged by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would
continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite
delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all.

"Soap yourself!" exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather
was out in the room once more. "Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap
your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either!
Now soap your