Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 — John Shaqi
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920Various
General
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920
Various
English wit and humor -- Periodicals
The true sportsman attempts the feat just before dinner, because at
that time there are sentries posted in every corridor. Ostensibly they
are maids waiting to assist any lady who has a crisis while dressing,
but no real pretence is made that they are there for any other purpose
than to charge you for as many baths as possible. On my corridor
there is a post of no fewer than three sentries, and it is extremely
difficult to evade them. The only thing to do is to get to know three
nice ladies on the same floor and arrange for them to have a
dressing crisis simultaneously and go on having it for about a
quarter-of-an-hour.
This needs a good deal of organisation. However smoothly the operation
begins, one of the dressing crises nearly always collapses too soon,
and the sentry catches you on your return journey.
For the lady visitor the problem is comparatively simple. I should
mention that it is a perfectly legitimate manoeuvre to get your bath
put down to somebody else if you can do it; and the crack lady-player
usually wraps herself in an unobtrusive bath-wrap, shrouds her head,
modestly conceals her face, slips into a friend's room to borrow some
Creme-Limon and, after an interval, rushes noisily out of the friend's
room to her bath, which, with any luck, is charged to her friend's
account.
The beginner at the game contents himself with less complicated ruses.
Sometimes he has his bath late at night, when the sentries have been
taken off; but, as the lights go out _en masse_ at eleven, even this
operation has to be carefully timed. There is nothing much gloomier
than a bath by candle-light, except perhaps a bath in the dark.
Hundreds, however, of both sorts are endured in this hotel.
The more brazen or the more timid simply walk into the bathroom fully
dressed during the day, carrying a number of dirty golf-balls in their
hands, and towels in their pockets and sponges up their sleeves, and
issue later fully dressed with clean white golf-balls in their
hands. It is generally thought, however, that this device is _just_ a
little--I mean it's not exactly--_you_ know what I mean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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