The bather should now put on his clothing slowly and composedly; no haste should hurry his movements, for haste might re-excite the perspiration, the skin might again become moist, and _then_ there would be danger of taking cold. But if the process be properly conducted, cold is impossible; even the sensation of cold is for the time lost. The bather feels renovated, restored, buoyant, good-tempered, strong, the _beau idéal_ of God's divinest creation--man. Let me illustrate the action of the bath by a recent experience of my own, and at the same time draw attention to the proper use of the bath, and its singular power of effacing fatigue and painful sensation of every kind--among others, the imperious craving of hunger. A few weeks back, after a day of severe labour, prolonged from six in the morning until after seven at night, I arrived hungry and weary at the house of my friend, Mr. Stewart Rolland. I was expected, but was late; and, as I entered his library, dinner was being served. "Will you sit down with us," was my host's salutation, "or will you take a bath?" "The bath!" was my answer. "_Ruat cœlum!_" I had only to step into the next apartment, after I had divested myself of my clothes, to find a temperature of 150°. I took my place on a couch covered with a soft Turkish sheet, and was soon covered with perspiration, first as a thick dew, and then as a dripping shower. The half-hour sand glass had nearly run out, when I entered the Lavatorium; I soaped myself thoroughly from crown to sole; I turned a tap, when a cascade of warm water poured over me, and rinsed away every particle of soap; a second tap, and I was in the midst of a sheet of cold water. The pores were now shut, and I returned to the Calidarium. A few minutes sufficed to warm the skin, and then, wrapped in a warm and dry mantle, I returned to the cooling room, and threw myself on a divan. In twenty minutes I was dry and dressed, and in a state fitting to return to my friends, and eat with appetite and with the certainty of digestion, anything that might be set before me. In the bath my fatigue had gone; the craving hunger which I suffered on entering had ceased; natural appetite had taken the place of morbid hunger; the tired stomach had regained its power, and was in a fitting state not only to receive whatever food was given to it, but, better still, to digest it. No wonder that the Arab of the desert prefers the bath to food, and even to sleep; it supplies the place of both.