FROM BATH DODGER TO EPICURE.

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 46 (Supplement)

FROM BATH DODGER TO EPICURE.

Perhaps the most striking example of the difference between childhood and maturity is the attitude towards tiie bath. It is strange to remember how we were wheedled into that steaming tub with paper boats and celluloid dolls; but so it was once upon a time, before the beauty of the mystic rite crept into our souls.

.Uy stormy bath nights were always put down by wise elders to a natural antipathy to cleanliness (says a correspondent to an exchange), but although this may have had something to do with the matter, the real reason lay far deeper. A bath, like a tasty dish or rare wine, needs to be lingered over, to be relished contemplatively; it is no occasion for brisk rubbings and scrubbings from alien hands. And a bath, unlike wine, is simply ruined by company. That is my chief grievance against those so wise elders; they, by their gratuitous presence, their offleiousness, kept me for years in ignorance of the true function of bathing, which is not to chase the dirt into the water, but to let it soak out naturally while one, lies watching the drops rush together on one’s knees as on a well-boiled egg. Unreproached Laziness. This is the one time in life when we can be thoroughly lazy without reproach. Nobody knows what goes on behind that locked door; whether we are using the cold tap like any man or being recklessly extravagant with the scented salts. If one would convey an idea of hardiness and energy it rather sets a time limit to lotus eating. The most trusting relations will grow suspicious after a while, and all to frequently they want a bath themselves. If this last is the case one must go warily with the hot tap, in case it should “dry up” before they are through and thus betray you. The Half-Hour Limit. For these reasons the true epicure accommodates herself into the space of half an hour; a short while for the performance of all the details of the ceremony, but with practice it is surprising what one can accomplish. Although the age of paper boats is gone, the cruel bristling brush proves a more seaworthy craft, and we must keep an anxious, if restful, watch upon it. Trying to drown the sponge is more exciting; while the brain can be interminably exercised as to what it was precisely that Archimedes discovered on such an occasion as this. Having chased the soap down the right leg and up the left the less philo-

sophic will frequently set to and wash, And it is then that the fussy mothers and aunts of the past are regretted. We may be grown up now, with childproperty of our own, but that lost spot on our back continues to elude us, and now, when we worship the god of cleanliness, there is none to make us clean ' , xv x ... t „„ Life is like that. grown to be an epicure Fate brought me in a foreign land to a house which h? T 0 been tlie delight of my childhood. In the true Continental manner the bathroom walls were perforated with so many doors that no nervously constituted Englishwoman would ever dare to enter the place. Even if none of the Innumerable doors was forgotten in the round of the for- ~ , . i„„. tillcatlons impatient voices would clamour for the passage to their apartments.

por what we have not suffered, p or what we have not borne, pgr joy without illusion, Rose-scent, without the thorn, For hea) . t3 wg * nof j - . . - Tor hopes we never cherished, For visions never crossed, Tor vows we have not uttered, For thoughts crushed down and slain, For tcart wg drank in sileilC6i For wordt wg choked with pain, For on^tt j sb s 0 benumbing, W e bore it all unknown. Ff)r pra y er 3 that Ug unanswered, For purpose overt hrown, For blindnes , t 0 the suffering, p or deafness to the curse, Of those, we let and hindered &V thoughtlessness, and worse, For Death, when Life was dastard — For victory won; jsord God! We kneel and thank Thee And yield Thee fudge alone!