his ease in his gorgeous attire and continue his
splendid smoke; for the mention of shampooing
and gossip forces me to describe a Persian bath
and bath servants.

A bath in the East, and especially in Persia,
is usually the chief gossip-shop of a city. Folks
go there as they go to a club in Europe. It is the
great excuse of everybody. " I want to go to
the bath," is in Persia, what " Brown's business,
you know, my dear!" or "The City!" is to
truant husbands in England. People pass the
whole day there. It is especially a ladies' club
and scandal-shop. The Anderoon politics all
go on at the bath, and the cruel murder of the
Ameer was planned there. The looties and
dandies call daily at the bath, if only for a few
minutes. When a physician asks his patient if
he has not been indulging too much in the
warm bath, he means to inquire whether his
nerves have not been shattered by debauchery.
The warm bath is merely another word for
dissipation; it is, in fact, a stew.

The bath is, perhaps, the principal feature of
every-day life in Persia. A trumpet is blown
early in the morning, to announce that it is
heated, and many people use this fact as a
pretext for sitting up all night carousing, lest they
should oversleep themselves and not hear the
sound. Folks go to the bath not because they want
to get washed, but because they want to know
the news of the town. If they wanted seriously
to become clean— an idea, by the way, which
never appears to enter into the imagination of
anybody in Persia—the bath would be the very
worst place they could go to for the purpose.
For, there exists an extraordinary notion among
bathmen that a certain quantity of water can
never become dirty. The bath, therefore, which
is merely a huge tank filled with steam, and a
reservoir for water, becomes glutted with
abominations, and the water grows as thick as pea-
soup. Rats and black-beetles and horrible
insects crawl about there; yet, inexpressibly
filthy, foul, and abominable as their baths are,
the Persians watch over them with jealous care;
the populace would probably rise in insurrection
if a Christian were allowed to bathe there. The
bath has almost a sacred character among them.
They believe that it even cleanses from the
impurity of sin.

In spite of all the precautions taken to
exclude strangers, I have bathed in a public bath
in Persia. It is a mixture of the Turkish and the
Russian bath; and notwithstanding the mania
for such things, which appeared to have seized
upon the town when I was last in London, I
will venture to say that I did not like it. I had
been travelling, and took it possibly at an
unfavourable time. The sun had blistered me, the
bath flayed me. Every inch of my body was
pealed of its skin with a species of currycomb,
and I was so sore for many days that I could
scarcely bear the contact of my shirt. But I
am bound to confess that it has its advantages.
In the first place, the bathman is usually a
wonderful fellow. The first thing which strikes one
is his extraordinary indifference to the changes
of atmosphere. He passes his life walking about
in draughts, parboiled, and yet he is healthy and
lives to be old. He is a good fellow, too; merry,
cheerful, and witty. He adapts himself with
wonderful ease and tact to the humour of his
customers. He is like a musical box. You can put
any tune you like into him, and he will go on playing
it till you are tired of listening. He is the only
bathman known to me who has really correct
ideas about champooing. He has, of course,
a keen eye to his own interest, and is sure to
resort to some laughable device for getting
more than his due out of his customers. My
bathman used gravely to apply to me always
for new razors, alleging that my beard was so
hard, it required a new blade every time he
shaved me; shaving being a part of his
duty.

If I could only have forgotten my skinning
(which I could not by any means), I am also bound
to confess that I came out from the bath a very
different man to the man I was when I went
into it. Europeans, after having lived for
some time in Persia, become dilapidated, like
the Persians themselves; and there is always
something dilapidated about Persians. Men
and horses, houses and walls, are never quite
sound: there is always a crooked tumble-down
look about them. In the human body the effects
of the climate and mode of life are
peculiarly marked. The hair falls off, the teeth
come out long before thirty. The terrible
results of fever show themselves in various
ways.

Now, it is the purpose and object of the
Persian bath to erase all these blots of time
and sickness from the person, and it succeeds
in a very remarkable manner. To be sure the
bald part of my head looks like a lump of
gingerbread; but what hair I have appears not
only to have been painted, but varnished too.
Having resigned myself passively to the bathman,
I find that he has also played wonderful
tricks with my eyebrows, and with my nose, and
with my ears. My beard looks like that of a
youngster of twenty-three. I am astonished at
my juvenile appearance, when I survey it in a
greasy looking-glass which he offers me for the
purpose, and I have some difficulty in repressing
a sudden desire to pay my addresses to my friend's
granddaughter.

Unfortunately there is no way of rubbing out
crow's feet and wrinkles. The skin is the tell-
tale. If we rub it off, it grows again, and is as
true an index of time as a sun-dial. The nose
likewise is as true as the dial's hand. If I
could have got a new nose, and a new
complexion, and new knees, and new toes without
any gout in them, I might have passed
for quite a jaunty gentleman a little too
semi-circular about the collar and waistcoat,
perhaps, and rather fishy about the eyes; but
still I might have passed muster by twilight,
when it is said all cats are grey. My friend's
granddaughter might (being very young indeed)
have had a sort of sensation at my appearance,
as if she beheld a merman, or something she