Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1908 — MANHATTAN'S BATH [ARTICLE]

MANHATTAN'S BATH

Billy Was Enthusiastically In Favor of Icy Plunges

“Now you listen to me,” Billy Manhattan is fond of saying to his friends “let me hand you a bit of advice about this bathing thing. Cut out the warm baths you’ve been in the habit of taking every morning. Fill the old tub up to the vent notch with the, coldest kind of water that will run opt of the faucet. Then jump in, swash around for about two minutes with a big cake of soap and a sponge, and then jump out and rub a coarse crash towel over your body. If you don’t feel like a brace of fighting cocks, I don’t want a cent.” •

That’s the way Mr. Manhattan has been talking for years. He says it doesn’t make any difference how many times a young fellow has crooked his elbow the evening before or how many strong cigars he may have burned up in the course of the session—if he’ll just tumble into that cold brooklet that flows into every well regulated home there’ll be nothing tp it. “Makes you a new man,” he’ll tell you. “Freshens you up for the rest of the day. After you get through, you go into the dining-room and the way you mutilate the country sausage and flannel-cakes is enough to make your wife gfve you a hard look. Don’t slip me any of that stuff about nc< being able to eat in the morning. Nothing in it, son, take it from me. Everybody can eat in the morning if they’ll play the game I play. Look at mA Don’t look exactly like an understudy for the party of the first part in a necrological contract, do I? Bebcher life I don’t. I’m hard as nails and twice as sharp, I’m here to promise you. Got a string of life Insurance writers lined up in the hall leading to my flat fighting among themselves to make me a policy. No chance for the company to lose for another hundred years or so. And cold baths have done it, son, cold baths and nothing else.”

As a matter of fact, Mr. Manhattan took a cold bath in th® autumn of 1905. He got Ih the tub one morning the hot water tubes weren’t working, and after he had got over sputtering and was out on the cork mat again rubbing himself dry, he wasn't at all sure he hadn’t enjoyed the novelty. He told himself he'd take a cold bath every morning of his life after that. He took the plunge next morning and emerged radiantly. He took it for a week or so and began to feature himself in his talk with his friends. He allowed there was only one way for a grown-up man to start the day, and that was to scuse his person in water ftiat was just one degree removed from the temperature of an ice cream freezer after the cream had been friz. Then along came a cold morning, a proper cold morning, and as Mr. Manhattan regarded the frigid bath it seemed to sneer at him. He shivered and put his hand in the tub. Then he turned back to his shaving. Suddenly he laid aside the razor and reached over to the tub. He switched the faucets. The hot water poured in. “I ll just take the air off this bath,” said Manhattan. A week later be was going at the bath as he had gone at it most of his life —a tub filled with warm water in which he could recline and doze and enjoy himself thoroughly. He has never taken a cold bath since.

Every morning Mr. Manhattan has taken his bath and finished shaving he turns on the same sort of water for Mrs. Manhattan. Only he doesn’t tell her it is the same style.“Gee,” be says to her. “I don’t see how you can go against that game, • honest, I don’t. It gives me the Willies just to think of soaking my brtiins in that sort of soup. Why don’t you be sporty and take a flop in the cold stuff?” Mrs. Manhattan tells him that in the first place she doesn't necessarily soak her brain when she takes a bath, and in the second place she isn’t so constituted that a cold bath seems good to her. Mr. Manhattan took the big sleep the other night, after he had put in about ten hours at two dollar limit, and quit so far to the bad he was disgusted. Mrs. Manhattan, contrary to usual custom, got up first that day, and after she had bathed thoughtfully turned on the cold water for her mate. When Mr. Manhattan reached the bathroom he shaved abstractedly, thinking all the while of the game of the night previous, and paying no attention to the full tub. This he accepted without question. He had forgotten he had not turned the water on himself, and when he had made his face presentable be sank leisurely into the water.

Mrs. Manhattan, in alarm over the shriek of agony which her husband emitted, knocked fearsomely at the door. Manhattan, now out of the Icy plunge and shivering on the mat, scowled so furiously Mrs. Manhattan would have fainted had she been able to see through the door. “What's the matter,*dear?” asked the lady, who boasts of Billy’s cold bathing.propensities almost as much as be does himself. . V , “Mmatter," said Manhattan, his teeth chattering so be could hardly form the words, “you put a t-t-tut-tack in the b-bath and I stepped on It.” Mrs. Manhattan pleaded lack of intent and begged forgiveness, which Manhattan reluctantly granted. He hasn't stopped starring himself as a cold-bath performer, but he takes mighty good care tfi draw the water himself after the cruel and inhuman experience.