We enter the Frigidarium; we divest ourselves of our clothing, which we hang on pegs fixed along the end of the room; this is the Vestiarium, or Apodyterium; and here we put off our shoes. We then dress ourselves for the bath: we wind a long strip of Turkish red twilled cotton around our hips, in the fashion of a cummerbund or kilt; it descends nearly to our knees; we fold another strip turban-wise around our head; and behold! we are ready to enter the region of heat. We need no wooden pattens, no _cob cob_; on the clean India matting of the Frigidarium, where shoe-leather never treads, there is no dust; on the floor of the Calidarium we shall find neither slop nor excessive heat; we may press our naked sole against Mother Earth as we would press palm to palm with our dearest friend. The question of precedence being settled, the double door is opened, and we enter the Calidarium. How deliciously the warm air seems to fold us in its soft embrace; we look at the thermometer: it is 135°. How very nice! How very agreeable! are the expressions which we hear softly breathed around us, for we are not alone: we are one of five or six "Companions of the Bath." The air is clear--no vapoury mists; it is fresh, for there is a free circulation of air through the room; but how marvellously soothing! All care, all anxiety, all trouble, all memory of the external world and its miserable littleness, is chased from the mind; our thoughts are absorbed in rapturous contemplation of the delights of the New World--the Paradise into which we have just been admitted. The tyrant PAIN, even, loses his miscreant power here; the toothache, where is it gone? the headache, gone too; the spasm no longer bides; the grinding aches of craving appetite, the pang of neuralgia, of rheumatism, of gout--all are fled; for this is the region where the suffering find a soothing relief from all their torments; and over the door is it not written:--THIS IS THE CALIDARIUM; PAIN ENTERS NOT HERE. Ten minutes slip away in an enjoyment that seems to last for a lifetime; and what is our condition now? The skin is warm, it is soft, it is moist, for sensible perspiration has commenced. Those parts perspire first which have been most exposed to the air--namely, the forehead, the head, the neck, the chest and shoulders, because these parts, from that very exposure, are in the most normal state. We are shortly, "like Niobe, all tears;" but our tears are tears of bliss. Tears of perspiration collect in beads at the apertures of the pores; tears glide down the surface, and fall from all the salient points of our frame, from our elbows, from our finger-ends; a sweet languor creeps over us, and we feel as though, like a heathen god of old, we were dissolving into a liquid stream. "Here Fluvius wept; as now a stream declares."