Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/77

 day is a daily worry, whereas if you receive mail but once a month your worries are greatly reduced. You are always expecting important mail which never arrives, and a daily mail, they say, is really a nuisance One of the baths here is known as a Spout bath. You go down into a cave, and water falls on you from six feet above. The water comes from one of the boiling springs, cooled to an endurable temperature by the addition of a stream from a cold lake. Water is conducted from the lakes in trenches to the baths. The water in the Spout bath has a good deal of oil in it, and is said to be particularly good for rheumatism. But the worst case of rheumatism I ever saw was in front of the Spout bathhouse. A native man was so crippled with it that he moved as slowly as a snail, and was a pitiful object There arrived at this hotel today a man and wife I had known on the "Sonoma." He is a fine old gentleman who lives in a country town in Ohio, but he has at least one habit to which his wife seriously objects. They sat opposite us in the dining-room, and I noticed that the old gentleman parted his hair behind, in the old-fashioned way. And it seemed, also, that he used hair oil, for regularly three times a day I heard his wife mumbling a protest because of this hair-oil habit. And tonight at dinner the wife appeared alone, and was seated at our table, as the manager knew we were acquaintances. Presently the old gentleman appeared; he had been indulging in his favorite dissipation, hair oil, and his wife at once noticed it, and mumbled a protest. The old gentleman pays no attention to her; indeed, he does not pay much attention to anyone, as he is a very quiet