The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-08
From the Springfield Republican.

From the Springfield Republican.
 4HIS has been called the age of
 9 electricity, although it might
 seem that the title showed a heartless disregard for predige1ced break fast foods, cheap magazines and new religions. But it remains for some hum ble investigator in the realm of ethnol- ogy to present an argument to show that it Is really the ago of the bath tub. Here, it may be contended, is one of the great and serious facts of the day. The old New England parlor with horse-hair sofa and chairs may have gone out simulta- neously with the saying of grace before meals, but meantime the tub has cer- tainly come in. Not that there were no tubs before, but 1t is as certain that there are now at least two tubs where there used to be only one tub as 1t is that anybody ever made those proverbial two blades of grass flourish in the place of one that fourished formerly, If you doubt it consult the wealth of that heaven-favored class the plumbers, who have been busy tearing out the old fashioned tin affair familiar with boyhood recollections of the Saturday night soak and replacing 1t on the a-'erage wlth1two or three of those glistening modern ere ations which look so distressingly like white stone sarcophagi and which prove actually to be so treacherously slippery to the unwary. If cleanliness bears that intimate relation to godliness which we used to be severely informed that it did, when acutely suffering under inspection to see if we had washed "behind the ears,' then the multiplication of tubs ought to go some distance at least to- ward balancing the diminution in the saving of grace and toward saving an unrepentant generation. The matter calls for thought.
 The invasion of the tub has been gen. eral and not merely local. The English man travelling with the unwieldy tin con- traption that might have been taken for a portable family altar, ceases to arouse quite the derision he once did, partly because the idea no longer seems so pre- posterous to a continental mind and part ly because as matter of fact the Eng lishman no longer needs to carry his tub with him, unless he goes well off the highways of the tourist. Incidentally, thanks to the demands of Americans, the English themselves are putting real in- stead of toy tubs in their own hotels. Du Maurier in Trilby has given an immortal description of Svengali's first discovering Little Billee,' and then '"raffy'' at their morning ablutions, after which he recount ed about the Latin quarter the amazing story of the 1.-two Englanders' and their absurd performance in getting them selves clean. As for a collapsible Amer ican tub of rubber-"name of a sacred pipe!"m memory serves to recall the ejac- ulations which it called forth, as in days long after Little Bllee' and "Taffy' it had to be explained again and again to worthies who dwelt not far from that same Pace de lOdeon, and who were embarrassingly eager to see it operated. Yet while ago the old Latin quarter heard a more wonderful thing still; name of thousand devils" this time, but a. student had actually installed tub of the white porcelain, and what by all the four winds of Paris would happen next!
 Who then will rise and dare to deny that the habit of the bath Is increasing?