_Some_ bathers with tough cuticles affect the use of towels bearing to the touch a strong resemblance to rasps or wire brushes, and affirm that everyone ought to use the very roughest that can be procured: there are others, on the contrary, possessing an outer epidermis so delicately soft and velvet-like, that very rough towels would, if used, cause insufferable agony, and almost flay them alive; what would be thought a rough towel by one, producing after use a full glow, would have no effect upon another. _The_ use of the flesh-brush, after a thorough rub down with towels, is to be commended for producing a more vigorous reaction; there are many persons, however, whose skins are too delicate to allow of the application of the flesh-brush, but this is of little moment, as a moderately rough towel will with them produce as strong a reaction, or as great a glow, as the flesh-brush would with those possessing less sensitive skins. [Illustration] _AFTER THE BATH._ A Bath-Room, if possible should certainly receive the benefit of the sun, and in warm and genial weather the enjoyment of the bath will be heightened if the window be opened wide at the top. _When_, however, the thermometer is in the neighbourhood of freezing point, the atmosphere of the bath-room is to many intolerably cold, and one may perhaps be sometimes tempted to raise the temperature of the cold water in the bath too high to produce the necessary shock with its pleasant and health-promoting reaction. It is better, by some means, in cold weather, to warm the bath-room and to keep the temperature of the cold water sufficiently low to produce the desired reaction. Drying and dressing may be comfortably gone through in front of a fire, the use of which for this purpose is a positive advantage, and will by no means, as might perhaps be imagined, tend to enervate or enfeeble, or in any way lessen the pleasure and benefits to be derived from the bath; a good fire on the contrary, will act as a help in laying in an agreeable and valuable supply of warmth, the advantage of which will be felt during the whole day. _Only_ a very weakly person should take the bath in the bed-room, as the air of the sleeping chamber must necessarily be more or less vitiated. Still, better there than not at all, and very likely, after a few trials, sufficient courage and energy will be found to enable the bather to get into fresher air. _The_ surface of the human body is protected by an oily film deposited by innumerable vessels, so that after a dip into water the skin is not thoroughly wetted, most of the water running from the body as from a duck’s back. After a _Soap-bath_, the bather will find himself thoroughly wet all over, the skin being apparently saturated as if it were blotting paper; both natural secretions and foreign matter will have yielded to the warm and cleansing bath of yellow soap and the after-application of cold water.