The Recreations of a Country Parson eBook

Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 487 pages of information about The Recreations of a Country Parson.

The Recreations of a Country Parson eBook

Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 487 pages of information about The Recreations of a Country Parson.
of which we had heard so much.  We shuddered with terror.  William saw our trepidation, and said, benevolently, ’Yew vill soon like him mosh.’  He spread out the wet sheet upon the thick blanket, and told us to strip and lie down upon it.  Oh! it was cold as ice!  William speedily wrapped it around us.  Awfully comfortless was the first sensation.  We tried to touch the cold damp thing at as few points as possible.  It would not do.  William relentlessly drew the blanket tight round us; every inch of our superficies felt the chill of the sheet.  Then he placed above us a feather bed, cut out to fit about the head, and stretched no end of blankets over all.  ‘How long are we to be here?’ was our inquiry.  ‘Fifty minutes,’ said William, and disappeared.  So there we were, packed in the wet sheet, stretched on our back, our hands pinioned by our sides, as incapable of moving as an Egyptian mummy in its swathes.  ’What on earth shall we do,’ we remember thinking, ‘if a fire breaks out?’ Had a robber entered and walked off with our watch and money, we must have lain and looked at him, for we could not move a finger.  By the time we had thought all this, the chilly, comfortless feeling was gone; in ten minutes or less, a sensation of delicious languor stole over us:  in a little longer we were fast asleep.  We have had many a pack since, and we may say that the feeling is most agreeable when one keeps awake; body and mind are soothed into an indescribable tranquillity; the sensation is one of calm, solid enjoyment.  In fifty minutes William returned.  He removed the blankets and bed which covered us, but left us enveloped in the sheet and coarse blanket.  By this time the patient is generally in a profuse perspiration.  William turned us round, and made us slip out of bed upon our feet; then slightly loosing the lower part of our cerements so that we could walk with difficulty, he took us by the shoulders and guided our unsteady steps out of our chamber, along a little passage, into an apartment containing a plunge bath.  The bath was about twelve feet square; its floor and sides covered with white encaustic tiles; the water, clear as crystal against that light background, was five feet deep.  In a trice we were denuded of our remaining apparel, and desired to plunge into the bath, head first.  The whole thing was done in less time than it has taken to describe it:  no caloric had escaped:  we were steaming like a coach horse that has done its ten miles within the hour on a summer-day; and it certainly struck us that the Water Cure had some rather violent measures in its repertory.  We went a step or two down the ladder, and then plunged in overhead.  ‘One plunge more and out,’ exclaimed the faithful William; and we obeyed.  We were so thoroughly heated beforehand, that we never felt the bath to be cold.  On coming out, a coarse linen sheet was thrown over us, large enough to have covered half-a-dozen men, and the bath-man rubbed us, ourselves aiding in the operation, till we were all in a glow of warmth. 
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The Recreations of a Country Parson from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.