That Saturday tubbing of my youth is now, I suppose, in these days of almost universal bathrooms, quite a forgotten function. Modern mechanical arrangements provide a more or less constant supply of hot and cold water, and children are very rightly brought up to regard a daily bath as one of the necessities of life, which was, of course, not the case in the days when can after can of hot water had to be laboriously carried all over the house from the kitchen. Saturday night tubbing was, indeed, a sort of regular English institution, dating, I believe, from the reign of King Henry VIII., who is declared to have performed certain partial ablutions on occasional Saturday evenings, on which occasions His Majesty’s barber, John Penne or Penn, was expected to be in attendance. This John Penn was an ancestor of the famous Quaker who bore the same name, and was a man of some importance in his day. In the famous picture by Holbein of Henry VIII. delivering a charter to the barbers and surgeons on the occasion of their amalgamation into one body, John Penn stands out as a prominent figure. There is a story, indeed, which, I fancy, rests upon no solid foundation, that the first Sir Robert Peel always expressed the greatest admiration for this painting on account of the fine portrait of the royal barber, and once actually offered the Barbers’ Corporation £2000 to allow him to have it cut out after a copy had been made to put in its place. An even more fantastic legend used to declare that Sir Robert had often expressed an intense desire to be allowed to have a bed made up upon the dining-table of the Barbers’ Company, in order that on awakening in the morning his eyes might rest upon his favourite Penn. The table in question, as a matter of fact, is an ancient dissecting table on which, previous to 1745, the bodies of criminals and malefactors were laid—the executions at Tyburn furnishing the Barber Surgeons’ Company with a constant supply of anatomical specimens. Up to comparatively recent years the country houses, as I have said, which could boast a bathroom were very few in number, whilst in the ’forties and ’fifties, and even later, such conveniences were practically unknown. In some houses, indeed, there were no big baths at all, guests being expected to perform their ablutions in the so-called foot-baths, which were a sort of cross between a wine cooler and a soup tureen. At the same time it must be added that people were probably not so very much dirtier than they are to-day, for the modern practice of lying in hot water need not necessarily be any more cleansing than the vigorous rubbing of a soaped flannel which, in old days, children were taught to apply. I remember going to stay at a country house, shortly after my marriage, where there were no baths at all. However, I determined not to be beaten; I sent to the laundry for a large wooden wash-tub, which was brought up into my bedroom, and answered its purpose uncommonly well.