The Democratic advocate., 1890-11-22
Cur Q9liu.
BEAUTIES IN THE BATH.

Mary J. iiSn.ns in the ST. Louis Globe Democrat
The Turkish bas-- America is far
from being the Turkish pa.%,7.,;, eAr away
Conslantinople. Every Turkish house in
the best society here has its private bath,
that is used on certain days and hours by
women of the family, and on other days
by the men. Others again have two sets
of baths, one for the women and the other
for the men. These baths are heated with
hot air, which comes from large furnace
situated at quite distance from the house,
and fed by wood and charcoal. The heat
is carried in s4ch way as not to make a
moist atmosphere. and the air in the DIFF
ferent rooms is hot, but dry, which is not
so unpleasant and suffocating as the So
called Turkish baths in America The
three rooms being passed, the ladies go
into the last, where there is q fountain of
perfumed water, and where the last part of
the cleansing takes place. The baths in
the palace at QolmebaktGhee, on the Bos-
phorus, are very beautiful, but it would
require a volume to describe them, for the
luxury of a Turkish house is centered in
the bath, where the people seem most to
enjoy themselves.
Just outside the limits of Constantine
pie, up in the Golden Horn, is Aga-Ham-
nam. bath frcquented by many ladies of
the highest position, not because they haYe
no baths of their own, but because they
are sure to meet their friends there with
out restriction, and have a good time, 1t
has always been a great place for mothers
to take their marriageable daughters, and
other mothers to 90 to choose bride for
their sons, and, as wives are not chosen for
their mental, but physical beauties alone,
certainly this is the place to choose, where
beauty is quite unadorned, and, therefore,
of this bath we will speak.
The ladies arrive, each one attended by
her own personal servant, and another who
bears very substantial lunch basket and
a handsome gold bofdered bathing wrap
The eunuchs remain outside or go away,
and come back at the hour the bath is
ended, as it occupies several hours,
BEAUTIES IN THE BATH.
First the ladies are divested of their
clothing and receive Grape sheet, which
they drape about them while they sit the
regulation time in the first room. During
this time they chat with each nther
though not very familiarly, and they keep
up the pretense of the drapery until they
reach and pass the next room, after which
the sheet and modesty are thrown off, and
with their abundant hair streaming loose
and unconfned they walk erect into the
last room as Eve did about the Garden of
Eden. There they stretch themselves out
upon the marble slabs while two attendants
rub them and lather them and pour hot
water over them until it seems as if they
would be boiled Each lady is laid upon
marble slab which is slightly inclined,
and two attendants begin their lahors, one
at the feet and other at the head. They
use sort of clay called pilo, which raises
thick white lather which sometimes
grows several inches thick. The atten-
dants use nothing but this soapy clay and
their hands to cleanse their subject with,
and they rub and knead and punch until
it seems they would reduce the flesh to a
pulp, all the while leaving this lather to
accumulate until the bather looks like
SNOWFALL
Another kind of soap is used for the
hair, and another again for the face, but the
lather is always left to gather thick, as the
worker rubs and tolls, the perspiratiOn roll
ing in streams down her own glistening
body. Sometimes these attendants are
white, sometimes black, and some Of the
ladies of the harem are as black as any
negro in cur own country, as it is quite
common thing for man to make a wife of
his Abyssinian slave. These inky ladies
wear the Turkish veil as religiously as do
the white wives, and, indeed, the color line