es of daily use--some one almost always would exclaim,
"Look in Bethesda!" or "I left it in Bethesda!" Bethesda was one of
those household words that you use without thought of its original
significance or of the amused query that it raises in the minds of
strangers.

Like most New England houses built seventy-five years ago, the farmhouse
at the old Squire's had been planned without thought of bathing
facilities. The family washtub, brought to the kitchen of a Saturday
night, and filled with well water tempered slightly by a few quarts from
the teakettle, served the purpose. We were not so badly off as our
ancestors had been, however, for in 1865, when we young folks went home
to live at the old Squire's, stoves were fully in vogue and farmhouses
were comfortably warmed. Bathing on winter nights was uncomfortable
enough, we thought, but it was not the desperately chilly business that
it must have been when farmhouses were heated by a single fireplace.

In the sitting-room we had both a fireplace and an "air-tight" for the
coldest weather. In grandmother Ruth's room there was a "fireside
companion," and in the front room a "soapstone comfort," with sides and
top of a certain kind of variegated limestone that held heat through the
winter nights.

So much heat rose from the lower rooms that the bedrooms on the floor
above, where we young folks slept, were by no means uncomfortably cold,
even in zero weather. Grandmother Ruth would open the hall doors an hour
before it was time for us to go to bed, to let the superfluous heat rise
for our benefit.

In the matter of bathing, however, a great deal was left to be desired
at the old house. There were six of us to take turns at that one tub.
Grandmother Ruth took charge: she saw to it that we did not take too
long, and listened to the tearful complaints about the coldness of the
water. On Saturday nights her lot was not a happy one. She used to sit
just outside the kitchen door and call our names when our turns came;
and as each of us went by she would hand us our change of underclothing.

Although the brass kettle was kept heating on the stove all the while,
we had trouble in getting enough warm water to "take the chill off."
More than once--unbeknown to grandmother Ruth--I followed Addison in the
tub without changing the water. He had appreciably warmed it up. One
night Halstead twitted me about it at the supper table, and I recollect
that the lack of proper sensibility