Mike and Pat were telling stories. During the conversation a fly lit on Pat’s nose.
“What kind of a fly is that, Moike?” asked Pat.
“Begorra, Moike, and what’s a horse-fly?”
“Why, a horse-fly, Pat, is a fly that lights on a horse’s neck.”
“You don’t mean to say O’im a horse’s neck, do you, you dirty blaggard?”
_In this article, Reverend Morrill tells of the “royal baths” of East India, where men and women recognize no sex. In the February number of the WHIZ BANG, the traveler-author will take our readers on a brief expedition to South America, which, “Golightly” assures us, is “the white slave market of the world.” Night scenes in Rio de Janeiro, “the Gomorrah,” and Buenos Aires, “the Sodom of South America,” will be depicted as only Reverend Morrill can do._
Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
Though the River of Time may wash away most of my India memories, there is one thing that will remain as long as I live--my royal bath at Delhi, and the time, the place, and the girl.
Bathing has not only been a fad with me, but an article of faith. At home I take a cold plunge every morning, and on shipboard it is the thing I look forward to with pleasure. A country is known by the baths it gives, and in Constantinople, Moscow and Budapest I learned that every little movement had a meaning all its own. The bath, that like Moses’ rod swallowed up all others, was the one at Delhi, where cleanliness is not always next to godliness.
India is a hot and sticky place for fleshy people, and like Falstaff I was larding the lean earth as I walked along. After hours of dusty driving and hard sight-seeing I asked my guide if I could have a bath, and he said, “Yes, Durbar bath.” I had missed the royal pageant, but hoped to get the splash, so we drove off the crowded street to a building which invited us with shady walks and flowers. The native proprietor ushered me into a darkened room and handed me a napkin. I had been in India long enough to know what to do with that square of linen, so I used it for a loincloth.
When I stepped into the bath I was “horrified” to find a beautiful Mohammedan maiden standing there before me with nothing on plus a bracelet. In agitation I rang. The master came, and I told him I did not want that woman there with the bath. He seemed surprised, because she was part of it, shrugged his shoulders, ordered her out, and beckoned to two stalwart natives. They seized me, threw me down on the marble, put a wooden pillow under my head, and then splashed, massaged, pounded, twisted and kneaded me, worked my arms like a windmill, rolled me like a log, used me as a punching bag, went through a whole course of gymnasium exercises on me, then grinned and said, “Not finished.” I felt I was, when back came the “sweet sixteen” smiling like Spring, and with less covering than September Morn. I sprang up, but she grabbed a towel and basin and laid me low, then soused me and began to put on the finishing touches. In broken English she tried to tell me all her physical, mental and moral charms, which I admitted because she was a woman, but I knew her Koran didn’t square with my Old Testament, so thanking her, I fled, like Joseph from Potiphar’s wife, to my room, where my guide “Kim” came to the rescue, helped me to dress and rushed me to the train or I might have been there yet.