Arizona weekly enterprise., 1889-05-25
THE TURKISH BATH.
AN INSTITUTION THAT IS POPU-
 LAR WITH THE LADIES.

Women Who Bathe to Increase Their
 Weight. and Others Who Do the Same
 to Make Themselves Thinner-Ladies'
 Day at St. Louis Bath House.
 While St. Louis cannot boast of any Turkish bath houses marked by Parisian or even Levantine luxury and elegance as to fittings and conveniences, she can claim to have large contingent of fresh looking, handsome women who give full credit to the beautifying influence of regular Turkish baths All the public Turkish baths have Ladies Days" and the register of the leading establishment yields on inspection long list of names of ladies prominent in societ, in the schools, in the churches-in a.. the sets and circles of the body social of our city On Ladies Days" this bath house can hardly accommodate the crowds of maids, matrons. children and school girls that are its regular customers.
 HAVE THEIR REGULAR DAYS
 The visitor as well as the attendants at the bath house soon learn to look for cer- tain classes on the same days of each suc- cessive week. Those who come by order of their physicians, or for some special physical ailment, are generally promptly on hand Tuesday; society women who come to recuperate their expended strength and for beauty baths, favor Thursday as the off day of their week, when the gayeties pause for breath and one is less likely to miss something" on that day. Saturday is the teachers day when they may stop to shed the dead skin of their spent forces and relax the taut muscles of discipline on the slab where the spray soothingly falls on the just and the unjust alike, for most often, too, some of their recalcitrant pupils come in gay. noisy little shoals and make the corridors ring with their laughter and little screams of merriment.
 The faith of many women in the vir- tues of the Turkish bath is Iimitless. Those who are too thin believe that they will attain the plumpness of their stand ard of perfection by continuing the baths. Those who groan with flesh think the bathing and the rubbing will make the burden roll away; those whose com plexions are too pale or too sallow seek there color and clearness. The pimpled face expects to grow smooth, the flushed face pale-in sooth, they think the Turk ish bath the real fountain of eternal youth and beauty. Women as ugly and old as the Witch of Endor have parboiled themselves until the sap of life has left their skins like parchment, and they have finally dried up and blown away on the way from their tri-weekly trips to the Turkish baths, where they hoped to grow fat, fair, and 40 at least. when l scragginess and the seventies had seized | them ten years before.
 One entire fat family of social as well | as personal magnitude in this city never fails to send it's ample supply of daugh- ! ters for douche and a pounding every | Thursday; but pounding only seems to make them more pulpy. Then there are three thin sisters who go to gain sym ] metry; and three other sisters who have l the natural rotundity and rosiness of stocky girls only one generation removed i from the farm life of their mothers pa rental precincts, go for-well, for what? Perhaps to get elongated; perhaps to ac- quire O little etherealization heaven knows for what-perhaps only for the fun of it. Then there comes a tall girl neither too thick nor too thin, too rosy nor too pale, and, as is natural. she in clines to the stout, short girls, and they compare notes on the advantages of Turkish baths.
 SOUNDING THE MAN ALARM.
 The mother of nine children, whose friends tell her she doesn't look day older" (than whom or when?), comes reg ularly, and says, tits the Turkish bath does it." The phrase may be a little promiscuous. but it seems to be under stood by her friends and fellow bathers. After her will come beautiful matron of ten years standing, who never had any children. and her acquaintances will tell her she never looked so beautiful and strong, and congratulate her on the good times she has going around the world and having no children to keep her at home. and wind up by saying she looks younger than ever. and she says, it is all the Turkish bath.
 Then a widely known teacher, wise and learned, will be heard telling a pale little Dante woman that nothing so helps to clear the brain and put spring into the vertebra and make keen the nerves, which. unclogged. aid all the faculties to digest the learned dissertations of the doctors now expounding doctrines of the flesh and the devil as given forth by Goethe at the guild rooms of St. Georges, as thorough massage of the physical woman.
 A suffragist, tossing wildly on hard couch near by, from which she can see the clock, whose warning hour hand stands at half-past 12, notes tho fact that tive must all be getting out of here pretty soon for those selfish men, who want the place at 1 o'clock. When women car vote we'll change all this" "I hope you won't vote to let the men in during the women's hours," exclaimed the mortified woman of calculus and belles lettres "No! wait till l get my corsets on" cries beauty from her dressing room who has only heard linen" mentioned, anc she immediately applies the rabbits fool to her cheeks, ties down her lace veil anc goes out with last injunction to hel bather to take care of my terry blanket and things"-and with her face toward the door to get the first glimpse of any of those "horrid men, who may be com ing, she looks over the register as sht signs her name and reads therein lis of the best known names in the city, St. Louis Republic.
 There has been beclln in Paris q cam