,^86 The Book of the Horse. 



A closed porch, making a double entrance to the hall, divided from it by a glass door, 

 is the first essential for making a house snug, for no amount of heating-power will keep a 

 house warm if every time the entrance-door is opened a current of cold air is allowed to 



rush in. 



The rooms required on the ground-floor may (according to the opinion of two eminent 

 Masters of hounds, one of them noted for his simple yet excellent hunting dinners) be limited 

 to— 



1. A drawing-room, which will also be the library. 



2. A dining-room, which will also be the breakfast-room. 



3. A third room, which may be a billiard-room, a smoking-room, or anything else. 



On one side of the hall should be fitted or built a dressing or rather undressing-room, in 

 which the house-party and their friends can take off their boots, and, in wet weather, all their 

 garments, before ascending to their bed-rooms, repose, and to dress for dinner. This arrangement 

 will save servants an immense amount of time and labour. Tliis room should be provided 

 with a cocoa-nut, cork, or other carpet that dirty boots will not spoil, half a dozen sensible 

 boot-jacks (see Engraving, p. 493), enough rails and hooks for hanging up coats, a long table 

 for hats, whips, and gloves, a few /otu chairs and a long ottoman for seats when pulling on 

 boots, and half a dozen good-sized basins, fixed in frames, with at least one tap of hot water. 

 One intelligent boy — half page, half groom — will make the arrangements of this preliminary 

 dressing-room complete. 



BATHS. 



If cash and accommodation can be found for making a bath-room next to the general 

 dressing-room, that will be a wholesome luxury. This room should be provided with several 

 hot and cold water taps, with a douche, if a fall of water can be obtained. To have full-sized 

 hot baths for half a dozen persons is simply impossible, but with a simple arrangement of 

 portable screens half a dozen persons can take sponge baths — hot, cold, or tepid — according 

 to taste, at the same time. 



An easier plan is to provide a hot-air bath, which can be built in most situations for a 

 hundred pounds. To sit from a quarter to half an hour after hunting in a temperature of 

 120° Fahrenheit, then to use a sponge bath, with a douclie to follow (the shampooing is 

 not essential), will be found extremely refreshing, and less trouble to servants than as many 

 hot-water baths. 



The advantage of having a hot-air bath on the premises is that the same air may be 

 utilised for drying the clothes and boots of men and the saddles and cloths of horses. 



Such small and simple hot-air baths are very common round Rugby. As to morning 

 ablutions in tb.e dressing-room, it is not every one who can bear, without ill-efi"ects, a cold 

 tubbing in winter. To such the sitting-bath, warmed to 70° Fahrenheit, may be recommended 

 as a morning restorer and refresher, taken with or without a cup of cafe an lait and a pipe. 

 The sitting-bath is also very comforting after long hours on a wet saddle. 



Another most valuable bath for the worn-out or much-bruised fox-hunter — as, for instance, 

 after a roll under a horse in a ploughed field — is the sheet bath, which has the advantage of 

 requiring no other apparatus than a couple of sheets, a big tub — say a pig-scalding tub — and 

 three buckets, the first filled with water as hot as can be borne by the hand, the second 

 heated to about So° or 90", and the third to 60". 



