You have removed your night-dress, you are standing upon the centre of your bathing mat, with your mittens or bags upon your hands. Seize the soap, make abundant soap-suds, and go over every part of the skin. Rub the soap several times, that every portion of the skin may be thoroughly covered with soap-suds. Now, dipping your hands into the water, rinse off the soap, although if it is winter, and the free use of water chills you, you may apply very little water, and wipe the soap-suds from your skin. Indeed, with many persons, it is an excellent practice to leave a certain portion of the soap on the skin. It will continue the process of neutralizing the oil. I have myself derived advantage and satisfaction, during the cold season, by the free use of soap, with very limited quantities of water. BATH-ROOMS. The ordinary bath-tub is a humbug. That zinc coffin, in which you lie down, put your head upon a strap at one end, to keep yourself from drowning, and then balance yourself for a while in a sort of floating condition, is simply a stupid absurdity. You can't even rub yourself to advantage; and if you are determined to rub your body, you are sure to bruise your elbows against the sides of the coffin. With the exception of those baths which are given for some special remedial purpose, all baths should be hand baths. The bather should apply the soap and water to her own skin, and that she may use it freely and in her own comfortable bedroom, the bath-mat, which I have described, is indispensable. It never wears out, gives no care, and is on the whole, a most happy device. HOT AND COLD BATHS. The application of cold or hot water to the skin, produces two effects,--a primary and a secondary,--action and reaction. If the water be _cold_, the _primary_ effect is to make the skin cold. When the _secondary_ effect or reaction comes on, the skin becomes _warm_. If _hot_ water be applied to the skin, the _primary_ effect is to make the skin hot; the _secondary_ effect, or reaction, leaves it cold. The first effect is a momentary one; the second effect, or reaction, continues a long time. Timid girls exclaim:-- "_Cold_ water! of course you don't mean _cold_ water! What, _cold_ water, right _on_ me and _all over_ me? Why, Doctor, I couldn't stand it! it would kill me!" "Do you think you could take a hot bath?" "Oh, certainly; I could take a hot bath easy enough." This conversation occurs in January. My dear child, you are entirely mistaken. Everybody can take a cold bath, if properly managed, every day of the year; but, during the cold weather, it takes a strong constitution to bear a hot bath; for although the first, or momentary effect, is to make the skin warm and comfortable, the secondary effect, or reaction, which comes on very soon and lasts a long time, is to make the surface very cold.