THE FIRST BATHROOM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 341, 1 March 1911, Page 2

THE FIRST BATHROOM.

; 1 Now in the dim, dim past, perhaps j in the days of Darius or some other I eastern potentate, a man came intc | the domicile of his landlord one i morning early, and whined and murI mured, saying : I "Lo !my roof leaketh ; send a man j up to mend it at once, or a bit ! sooner." j The landlord could scarce believe | his ears ; and he said : "'Go to, thou cozener ! Dost noi i remember we have had no rain these j many moons, so that the country round about is dry as a bone in the Libyan desert ? Beside, I had those cracks plastered only five years ago, so how can they leak ?" For in those days they did not send for the slater when the roof leaked, but for the stonemason ; because the roofs were flat and tiled with large flagI stones. i But the fellow was as persistent \ as a rag and bone man who wisheth ' to buy goods, and said : "Yea, verily I know ail that. Yet still it leaketh like a hose-pipe at a fire. Yea, it drippeth all over my wife's new rug, which I bought from the merchant who came from Smyrna on ; a camel. It cometh down like an ; April shower, yet when I go to the : door and look out, the weather is ; full of a clear sky. It remaineth a : puzzle." "I will look round in the morning," responded the landlord. For ; he knew he had a good tenant, and I hated to lose him ; so he added, "I j will bring along a New Thought book for thee, for I fear thou art falling a prey to melancholy and repining ; i thou needest brightening up with ; that sort of slop. It's very good for i the blues." But when the landlord arrived next . morning, lo ! there were the dew- ; drops percolating through the roof | as the tenant said ; and he marvell- ! ed. ; So they got a ladder made of hara- . boo strips', and, leaning it against ' the wall, easily mounted to the roof. | And there sat Simon bon Simon in [ his portable bathtub, which he had , brought, np through the skylightenjoying a bath and splashing at a great rate, just as a tourist had showed him. He was having the time of his life and cared not wiiere <he splashed. For was he not high up where none could see him ? I And the landlord was then exceedingly wrath, and protested, saying if he did not go off the roof he would : pitch the bathtub into the street. And the next day he repented and : sent, a plumber around to build it into th2 wall, and a carpenter to form a partition around it ; and issued an order that such a room should lie a bathroom and be used !for no other purpose. And the news ~f the incident being , noised abroad into the city, orders | were given that no man should : : henceforth take his bathtub into the roof, under pain of paying six bits lin ready money unto the subtreasurer. i Now, six 'nits seemeth not much, j and, can he said in a breath ; but the | loss thereof sometimes putteth a man !up against it. 3abe !