Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: till they appeared to glitter again with all the rich green hues of the beetle’s back?the Rhine itself shining where the beams fell full upon it like a sheet of crumpled golden foil. Modes Of Cleaning, And Habits Of Cleanliness And Decency.
Cleanliness, says Dr. Viron, the quondam Editor of the Constitutionnel, in his Mdmoires d'un Bourgeois,
was imported from England into France at the beginning of the present century. From our own observations we should say, that no German voyager has yet introduced the British luxury into Rhineland. A Rhenish professor, whilst discoursing to us of the difference between the towns and the villages in his own land, assured us, that when he lived in the country he only washed himself once a-week, and was not then dirty.
But in Cob- lenz, said he,
my hands and face I am obliged to clean once every day. A better illustration, however, of the ideas popular among Prussians concerning the proprieties of the toilet is afforded by the following anecdote:?Two German Professors were once speculating concerning some anomalies in the Physiologic du Goandt.
How is it, inquired one of the
PhilosopJis
that we eat hares and not foxes?
OhI it is merely habit, answered the other;
you might as well ask the reason why we wash our hands and not our feet! After this it is, of course, idle to tell the reader that suchthings as baths and wash-houses for the poorer classes are unknown in the Rhenish capital; though it still may throw some light upon the subject if we say, that no hotel-keeper on the Rhine thinks it necessary to supply the traveller with soap in addition to water in his bedroom ? that foot-baths are comparatively unknown ? that a gentleman is considered as a wild Engliinder who thinks of sponging himself with cold…
