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Alas, the hour ! and ah ! how sad the day, 

 When to a Turkish Bath I took my way. 



A Turkisli Bath, reader — did you ever experience one? If you 

 answer in the affirmative, you need not peruse the history of my sufEer- 

 ings; if in the negative, and a morbid tendency to adventure lu-ge you to 

 such a dangerous experiment, then hear my warning voice. It was in the 

 1279th year of the Hegira, in the month of Ramadan, which by common 

 computation brings you to the year 1863, that, having perused many 

 brilliant testimonials, each jDurporting to be somebody's experience, and 

 being deluded thereby, I, in an evil hour, dreaming of the Sublime Porte 

 and its proverbial luxuries, gave up my body to the manipulations of 

 strangers. It was thus : upon my entrance, the door was noiselessly shut 

 behind me, and the proprietor, apparently a guileless man, led the way 

 into the undressing room, furnished I presume somewhat in the fashion of 

 the East — i.e., with low stuffed couches upholstered with dimity, in 

 wonderful kaleidoscope patterns, and very favourable to a reclining posi- 

 tion. Here it was that an attendant abruptly roused me from a temporary 

 fit of musing, by requesting me to undress; at the same time he presented 

 me with a mysterious-looking primitive sort of scanty apron (I learnt the 

 name afterwards). I was about to ask for a private explanation, when he 

 vanished "like a guilty thing." I soon found myself like Adam in Eden; 

 in other words, like a Nileometer at low water; and the use of the novel 

 garment presented to me by the attendant, dawned upon me. Whilst I 

 was waiting, coolly considering what next, a man unattired, like myself, 

 beckoned me to follow. Come, thought I, this rather smacks of the 

 Arabian Night stories; and amidst a flood of reminiscences thus called up, 

 I entered into a warm cmrent of air, which led me into a room. The 

 heat generated there was, to use an Americanism, " a caution." Well, I 

 shall content myself with saying that my sufferings were rendered more 

 tolerable by the society of a number of gentlemen quite as well dressed as 

 myself, and who had disposed themselves into the varied attitudes 

 suggested by overheated brains. I had not been very long in my new 



