The Expedition of Humphry Clinker - Tobias Smollett - Bog

Excerpt: ...within being stripped, opens the door to the sea-ward, where he finds the guide ready, and plunges headlong into the water - After having bathed, he re-ascends into the apartment, by the steps which had been shifted for that purpose, and puts on his clothes at his leisure, while the carriage is drawn back again upon the dry land; so that he has nothing further to do, but to open the door, and come down as he went up - Should he be so weak or ill as to require a servant to put off and on his clothes, there is room enough in the apartment for half a dozen people. The guides who attend the ladies in the water, are of their own sex, and they and the female bathers have a dress of flannel for the sea; nay, they are provided with other conveniences for the support of decorum. A certain number of the machines are fitted with tilts, that project from the sea-ward ends of them, so as to screen the bathers from the view of all persons whatsoever - The beach is admirably adapted for this practice, the descent being gently gradual, and the sand soft as velvet; but then the machines can be used only at a certain time of the tide, which varies every day; so that sometimes the bathers are obliged to rise very early in the morning - For my part, I love swimming as an exercise, and can enjoy it at all times of the tide, without the formality of an apparatus - You and I have often plunged together into the Isis; but the sea is a much more noble bath, for health as well as pleasure. You cannot conceive what a flow of spirits it gives, and how it braces every sinew of the human frame. Were I to enumerate half the diseases which are every day cured by sea-bathing, you might justly say you had received a treatise, instead of a letter, from Your affectionate friend and servant, J. MELFORD SCARBOROUGH, July 1. To Dr LEWIS. I have not found all the benefit I expected at Scarborough, where I have been these eight days - From Harrigate we came hither by the way of...