legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don't you know how to soap
your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and
soap your back--soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it
quick--quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get
it off. Don't act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord,
you act as though you had all day--as though you had never taken a bath
in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect
me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you
were made of bone! Quick now, move!"

The noble jurist did as demanded--that is, as quickly as he could--only
the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the
others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in
this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to
one's dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old
poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told
that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant.
Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously
rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when
shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one
other spot--the back of his left forearm.

Mine host seemed enraged. "Well, well!" he exclaimed irascibly, watching
him as might a hawk. "Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one
spot? For God's sake, don't you know enough to rub your whole body and
get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your
belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!"

When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he
was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were
some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before.
He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp
how it was done, let alone please his exacting host.

"Come on!" insisted the latter finally and wearily. "Get out from under
the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been
on the bench for fifteen years you're the dullest person I ever met. If
you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry
yourself!"

The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an
exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. "Such
language!" s