I was going to have a long, comfortable,
and utterly lazy and drowsy hot water and steam bath, you know.
I fastened a piece of clothes-line round and over the head of the
bath, and twisted an old toilet-table cover and a towel round it where
it sagged into the bath, for a head rest-also to be soaped for where I
couldn't get at my back with my hands.
I went up to my room for some things, and it struck me to arrange two
chairs by the bed--candle and matches and tobacco on one side, and a
pile of Jack London, Kipling, and Yankee magazines on the other, with
the last _Lone Hand_ and _Bulletin_ on top.
Going down with pyjamas, towel, and soap, it struck me to have a
kettle and a saucepan full of water on the stove to use as the water
from the copper cooled.
I took a roomy, hard-bottomed kitchen chair into the bathroom; on it I
placed a carefully scraped, cleared, and filled pipe, matches, more
tobacco, tooth-brush, saucer with a lump of whiting and salt, piece of
looking-glass--to see progress of the teeth--and knife for finger and
toe nails. And I knocked up a few three-inch iron nails in the wall
to hang things on. I placed a clean suit of pyjamas over the back of
the chair, and over them the towels.
I arranged with the landlady to have a good cup of coffee made, as she
knows how to make it, ready to hand in round the edge of the door when
I should be in the bath. There's nothing in that. I've been with her
for years, and on account of the canvas it would be just the same as
if I were in bed.
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