Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/30

18 virgin. This, I admit, is only pushing the matter a step further back, and we are still left with the question : Why is it that the English are so fond of the open ? Largely, T imagine, because their climate is so damp that an indoor atmosphere is always a little oppressive to them.

Whatever may be the reason, however, there is no doubt that the keen, clean chill of an English April day, especially when the wind is in the cast (pace Mr. Jarndyce), brings to us an exaltation of spirit that surpasses the exhilaration of wine, and at the same time renders us impatient with mustiness and fustiness, intolerant of domestic stuffiness, and frankly disgusted with the pungent, prickly vapours of intimate humanity in the mass. The wind on the hilltop is our aspiration, our ideal. Hence, maybe, the Public Health Acts, and also the national tub.

The use of the domestic bath is, we must not forget, a social revolution of our own day and generation, Our grandfathers ventured upon a bath only when it seemed to be called for—by others. Our grandmothers, with their clean, white cotton or linen undergarments, had, or thought they had, even less need for it. Besides, in their prim and bashful eyes the necessary denudation antecedent to total immersion would have amounted, even when they were alone, to something like gross indecency. Before their