"Everything always goes just that way with me!"
CHAPTER X
BETHESDA
If anything was missing at the old farmhouse--clothes-brush, soap, comb
or other articles 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.
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