Bain-marie

“ A maid was stationed at the door, near which stood the fatal bath; but the husband returning with precipitation, suddenly forced it open, in spite of her feeble opposition, and discovered his wife in the arms of Equitan. The prince, under the first impulse of surprize and remorse, started from the bed, and, heedlessly plunging into the boiling bath, was instantly suffocated or scalded to death. ”

“ Every lady carries with her all the appliances of the bath, as well as providing her own servant; the inferior ranks alone availing themselves of the services of the bathing women, who, in such cases, supply their employers with every thing requisite.
These bathing-women, of whom I saw several as I traversed the great hall, are the most unsightly objects that can be imagined; from constantly living in a sulphureous atmosphere, their skins have become of the colour of tobacco, and of the consistency of parchment; many among them were elderly women, but not one of them was wrinkled ”

“ Frequently a lady is assisted by her husband in the cleansing process; and this is not necessarily a matrimonial compliment, as regular bathing-men are employed for the convenience of those who require such attention.
The favourite times for bathing are the middle of the day and the evening; but in the summer the bath-houses are always full. ”

“ The bath-house is like a club, a place of social resort; and women spend several hours, or the greater part of the day, steeping themselves in hot water, undergoing massage and friction, and lounging on divans in warm chambers. The bath is a principal rendezvous for the women of fashion in the higher classes.
Bathing is an almost painful process in Persia and Afghanistan, and foreigners shrink from the immersion in scalding water, the hot douches, and the drastic pounding and pinching of the flesh. ”

“ Devotions, the toilet and bathing occupy much of the women's time. They are very fond of the hot vapour bath and the heated chambers, and some of them will spend the greater part of the day at the hammam. ”

“ While I was looking at the place an honest-looking fellow came up to me, and asked me if I would like a bath. I said I would, and he opened one of the closets, and before long I surrounded by a crowd of young girls.
“Sir,” said the man, “they all aspire to the honour of attending you while you bathe; you have only to choose which it shall be. Half-a-crown will pay for the bath, the girl, and your coffee.” ”

“ The bath-room, with its warm pipes, its great wooden tubs, with the carved gilt garlands round them, its lounges for cooling, its little tables spread with a dainty supper, still preserved a souvenir of Roman luxury. People used to bathe in company, sometimes men and women together (as we still do at the sea-side) , their heads beautifully dressed and adorned with flowers, their bodies hidden up to the neck in their great cask-like baths, where the water was often thickened with scented bran or strewn with a dust of salutary herbs. ”

“ I should like to see all the folks in bathing. We might come down about eleven."
"Yes, let's!" replied Julia: "it's great fun. Let's come down in our bathing-suits, and go in too: it's ever so much more fun where there are a lot."
"We haven't any bathing-suits yet," said Sue: "mother's going into town in a day or two to get us some, and then we can have great times. You must come over and bathe with us, Ruth. Have you a bathing-suit?"
"No; but I sometimes put on an old dress, and go a little way into the surf with my uncle." ”

“ Guests dance and then return home, each carrying some of the jars.
22 While Līgī is bathing in river his headband flies away and alights on the skirt of a maiden who is bathing further down stream. The girl carries the headband home and soon finds herself pregnant. The child is born when she has the space between her third and fourth fingers pricked. With each bath the child grows a span and soon becomes so active that he hinders mother at her work. She decides to put him with his father during daytime. Uses magic and causes people of the town to sleep while she places child beside father. ”

“ It is well to be queen somewhere, even of a bathing establishment.
“The maids, Eleny, Maria, and Sophy, spread out our cushions in one of the niches upon the elevated platform, and as they modestly held up a towel as a screen, we proceeded to reduce ourselves to a state of nature. Enveloped from head to feet in our bathing habiliments, which hung about us in just such folds as they drape the statues—we willingly thrust our pedestrial extremities into the great clogs, inlaid with mother of pearl, entered the antechamber of the bath, and sat down on the marble platform to acclimate ourselves. ”

“ Sometimes a mother chooses a bride for her son from among the girls or women whom she chances to see in the bath. On many occasions, as, for instance, in the case of the preparations for a marriage, the bath is hired for a select party, consisting of the women of two or more families ”

“ The daughters of the great, generally having baths in their own houses, seldom go to the public bath previously to marriage. A bride of a wealthy family, and her female relations and friends, if there be not a bath in her house, go to the public bath, which is hired for them exclusively, and to the bridegroom’s house, without music or canopy, mounted on asses: the bride herself generally wearing a Kashmeer shawl, in the manner of a habarah. ”

“ In the garden flowed crystal-clear spring water.
"Why!" exclaimed the little woman, "the day is so warm, the sun is scorching, but the water is icy cool. See how it dashes! Couldn't we have a bath here?"
"No, no, I will not!" she replied. But at the same time she said to herself: "Why! there's no sin in taking a bath." ”

“ Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door—nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left. ”

“ All the bathers are prudent. It is rare to see any one swimming out or diving from a boat. A policeman presides at the public bathing place and there are three or four baigneurs and baigneuses who take charge of the timid bathers; one wonderful old woman, bare-legged, of course, a handkerchief on her head, a flannel blouse and a very short skirt made of some water-proof material that stood out stiff all around her and shed the water—she was the première baigneuse—seventy years old and had been baigneuse at Boulogne for fifty-one years. ”

“ The house being set in order, the best maid returned to the bride's house where a company of the bride's companions were met, and then occurred the ceremony of washing the bride's feet. This was generally the occasion of much mirth. And this was in all probability a survival of an old Scandinavian custom under which the Norse bride was conducted by her maiden friends to undergo a bath, called the bride's bath, a sort of religious purification. On the marriage day, every trifling circumstance which would have passed without notice at other times was noted and scanned for omens of good or evil. ”

“ Bath houses more than multiplied from the twelfth century, imitations of Oriental customs, due to the crusaders. Baths were run not only by men, but by old harridans and fast girls. No respectable woman ever entered a public bath-house; Christine de Pisan bears witness to that fact in the following lines: “As to public baths and vapor baths, they should be avoided by honest women except for good cause; they are expensive and no good comes out of them, for many obvious reasons; no woman, if she be wise, would trust her honor therein, if she desire to keep it.” ”

“ But notwithstanding this license, it is held to be a characteristic of a virtuous woman not to go to a bath even with her husband's permission: for the Prophet said, "Whatever woman enters a bath, the devil is with her." As the bath is a resort of the Jinn, prayer should not be performed in it, nor the Ḳur-án recited. The Prophet said, "All the earth is given to me as a place of prayer, and as pure, except the burial-ground and the bath." ”

“ They bathe at noon every day, and it's a great sight. I presume when I do go in, I'll have to go in with the employees, for I suppose I'll be classed with the nurses and children that generally bathe in the afternoon."
"You'll be classed with the children, if you babble on in this way, Angelina. But as to the bathing, you must ask mother."
"Well, I wish you had been going to that tea, Miss Martine; the young ladies looked just your style. I asked the nurse about it, and she said it was given by Miss Peggy Pratt of Philadelphia." ”

“ She had found the mother sick in bed and the three children almost spoiling for a bath. Jenny smiled as she recalled how she had taken them, one after another, down to the creek in the canon below the cabin, and had washed them, showing the oldest, Rosa, who was eight, how to give future baths to Sara, aged five, and Elmer, aged two. ”

“ But if we cannot make the bathroom what it ought to be, the supreme and perfect shrine of the supreme moment of the day, the one spot in the house on which no expense or trouble is spared, we can at least bring the bath itself up to date. I don’t now, as I did, lay much stress on having a bath with fifteen different taps. ”

“ When bathing at the end of the period a woman should see no other face but her husband’s; but as her husband is usually not present, she wears a ring with a tiny mirror and looks at her own face in this as a substitute. ”

“ The women are especially fond of the bath, and often have entertainments there; taking with them fruits, sweetmeats, etc., and sometimes hiring female singers to accompany them. An hour or more is occupied by the process of plaiting the hair and applying the depilatory, etc.; and generally an equal [182] time is passed in the enjoyment of rest or recreation or refreshment. All necessary decorum is observed on these occasions by most ladies, but women of the lower orders are often seen in the bath without any covering. Some baths are appropriated solely to men; others, only to women ”

“ Tell me your idea, please, Ambroisine! Mon Dieu! if you don't tell me anything, if you don't teach me a little, how do you expect me to know anything, when I am always shut up in this room and only go downstairs to dinner; when I see nobody but my father and mother, who hardly ever speak to me? Why do the fine ladies prefer to come to the baths alone? ”

“ It should be added that the artistic representation of a bath, with every suggestion of nakedness that the law as to decency allows, is one of the most familiar subjects of scenic art. From the Rhine maidens in Wagner’s Trilogy, and the bathers in the second act of Les Huguenots, to the ballets of water nymphs in our Christmas pantomimes and at our variety theatres, the sound hygienic propaganda of the bath, and the charm of the undraped human figure, are exploited without offence on the stage to an extent never dreamt of by any novelist. ”

“ Considerable attention was devoted to the care of the body. Washing and bathing were, of course, very common. Scenes from the bath are often represented on monuments; especially we often find in sculpture or painting representations of Aphrodite, or some beautiful mortal, stooping down while a maid pours water over her back from a jar. In the vase picture represented in Fig. 85, next to which a scene from the toilet is depicted, one woman is pouring water into a basin, while another has disrobed, and is arranging her hair before a mirror. ”

“ Men do not indulge in a similar practice, and I have never been able to understand why this different mode of bathing should obtain in reference to the two sexes. In houses possessing a bath-room the bath consists merely of a wooden tub with a stove to heat the water. The bath is used by the whole family in succession—father, mother, children, servants. Shampooing also forms an important part of the Japanese system of cleanliness. ”

“ In many baths both sexes have access to the bath by the same entrance, and it not unfrequently comes to pass, that a man meets a naked woman, and the reverse. Nevertheless, the men bind a cloth round their loins, and the women have a linen dress on, but this is open either in the middle or on the side, so that neither neck, nor breast, nor shoulders are covered. The women eat frequently in the bath itself, of dishes contributed by all, which are placed on a table floating upon the water, whereto the men naturally resort. ”

“ Women go to the bath oftener than men, and they go in groups of three or four or more, always taking their children with them. Boys over eight or nine years of age are not allowed to go to the women's bath, and even tall boys 232under that age are sometimes pushed back from the door by the manageress, who is always a stern and unbending personage. She usually says to such tall boys, "Good heavens! Is your father coming too?" and she will listen to no expostulations from the boy's mother as to his real age. ”

“ I hardly know a more curious or more beautiful sight than that of the healthy skin of a practised bather, spangled over with limpid drops of perspiration like dew-drops on the petals of a rose, or like beads of crystal, as I heard a Doctor of Divinity once call them, in the bath. ”

“ I have been talking in the bath, and talking is of doubtful propriety; the demeanour of the bather while in the bath must be tranquil, composed, calm; he must give himself up to the dissolving process without exertion of muscle or mind; he may rub his skin gently; he may talk gently, sententiously, like a Turk, but he must not allow himself to become animated, and above all, he must not be vociferous. The bath is a practice intended for the body's health, and therefore deserves all our consideration and respect. ”