Now, to live in a _cold_ bath,
in our climate, and in my own state of preternatural sensibility to
cold, was not an idea to dally with. I wish to mention, however, for
the information of other sufferers in the same way, one change in the
mode of applying the water, which led to a considerable and a sudden
improvement in the condition of my feelings. I had endeavored to
procure a child's battledore, as an easy means (when clothed with
sponge) of reaching the interspace between the shoulders; which
interspace, by the way, is a sort of Bokhara, so provokingly situated,
that it will neither suffer itself to be reached from the north, in
which direction even the Czar, with his long arms, has only singed his
own fingers, and lost six thousand camels; nor at all better from the
south, upon which line of approach the greatest potentate in Southern
Asia, viz., No.--, in Leadenhall Street, has found it the best policy
to pocket the little Khan's murderous defiances and persevering
insults. There is no battledore long enough to reach him in either way.
In my own difficulty, I felt almost as perplexed as the Honorable East
India Company, when I found that no battledore was to be had; for no
town was near at hand. In default of a battledore, therefore, my
necessity threw my experiment upon a long hair-brush; and this,
eventually, proved of much greater service than any sponge or any
battledore; for, the friction of the brush caused an irritation on the
surface of the skin, which, more than anything else, has gradually
diminished the once continual misery of unrelenting frost; although
even yet it renews itself most distressingly at uncertain intervals.
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