RUSSIANS LOVE BATHING.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17123, 26 October 1917, Page 6

RUSSIANS LOVE BATHING.

ABOUT THE LIFE OF THE RUS-

SIAN PEASANTS

By C. TEMPLETON STUART

"Please may I go and have a bath?" my Russian servant used to say to me every Saturday aiternoon, ana off ,ie would go with iiis clean linen bound up in a handkerchief, to the great city baths, stay, perhaps, for a couple of hours, and return shining with cleanliness. Everyone, even in the tiniest village, must have a steam, bath. Admission to the cheapest part is a penny farthing, while in the great towns there are luxurious establishments frequented by the lich.

Where a, village consists of twenty cottages there will be lound twenty bath-houses installed. Each of these contains a stove that heats the great stoves placed above it. Tliis stove is lit on bath nights, and when the stoves are sufficiently heated buckets of water are thrown, over them filling the place with steam.

The bather then lies on a bench, and after soaping himself, ends his wash in ice-cold water.

There is a strange custom connected with the bath which has given rise to the proverb, "What is health to the Eussian is death to tho German"— that is, they frequently rush straight from a suffocatingly hot bath inside a huge earthenware oven, and, naked and steaming, roll themselves contentedly and luxuriantly in the snow.

Russian villages are in advance of our English ones in regard to baths, but in other things they are far behind. THEY DON'T GET EXCITED. Their houses are built of logs; the interstices well plastered up with moss and clay keep out all cold air, the walls being thick enough to prevent the huts from becoming warm in the heat of summer or too cold in winter.

They mainly consist of two rooms barely furnished, principally with a stove in one corner, a big stove of whitewashed bricks and a. wide shelf extending all round the room, thus affording sleeping accommodation for the whole family.

They are a very methodical people even in their crimes; they do not get excited when anticipating an act against the law, they just make up their minds quietly and freely, as the following story will show : —

A man arrived one day at a village, where he commenced to lecture that all men were equal, and that the Government authorities had no right to exercise any authority ; thinking to add more power to his views, he decided to begin by disproving the existence of God.

Taking a holy Ikon or sacred picture, he said: , "There is no God. I will prove it immediately. I will spit upon this ikon and break it. If there is a God He wll send fire from heaven and slay me; if there is not, nothing will happen." Whereupon he took the picture and carried out his threat, saying when he did so: " You see, God has not killed me." THEY KILLED HIM. His audience talked quietly among themselves for a few minutes, and then one of them got up and said: "No, God has not killed you, but we will!" and they did without the slightest compunction.

They are, as everyone knows, a very hardy race. The weakly peasant child simply does not exist—he just ties. The child mortality amongst them is startling—over 50 per cent. But tlie remaining 50 per cent, are fit for anything; they are tireless.

They work all the summer, when the nights are hardly more than a mere interval.

I once .said to a peasant woman: "I've been wondering when you get your rest." She smiled brightly and answered: "In the winter,, sir." Then, of course, they have time for rest, since all outdoor occupation ceases.