On Saturday evening an unusual movement may be seen among the lower classes in St. Petersburg. Whole companies of poor soldiers who have got a temporary furlough, troops of mechanics and labourers, whole families, men, women, and children, are eagerly traversing the streets with towels under their arms, and birch-twigs in their hands. From the zeal and haste manifested in their movements, they would seem to be engaged on important business, as in fact they are, the most important and agreeable of the whole week. They are going to the pubhc baths, to forget, in the enjoyment of its vapours, the sufferings of the past week, to make supple the Umbs stiflPened with past toil, and invigorate them for that which is to come. The Russians are such lovers of vapour-baths, that Petersburg contains an immense number of these establishments. Those for the poor are mostly in the suburbs. Before the door, the words " entrance to the baths" in large letters, invites the eye ; within the doorway, 80 narrow that only one at a time can work liis way in, sits the money-taker, who exchanges a ticket for the bath for a few copeks, and has generally a whole saclful of large copper coin by his side. Near him sit a couple of women selling " schnaps" and kalatshi, wlille the people are thronging in and out as at a theatre. The Plotniks who make a holiday at an earlier hour on Saturday that they may not lose their bath ; the servants and coachmen who have been lucky enough to get leave from their masters ; the poor worried soldier, to whom this joy is sweeter than to all, because it falls so seldom to his share ; men, women, boys, girls, all hurry to secure their tickets as if they were proceeding to some favourite show.
Let us also take one, and follow them, to see what is going on. In general the passage is divided into two parts behind the check-taker's post, one for the maJe and one for the female guests. In the bathinghouses for the peasants in the country, the bath is often in common for both sexes, and some travellers maintain that the same thing takes place in St. Petersburg. I can only say I have visited many, and always found the baths for the sexes divided from one another.
We first enter an open space in which a number of men are sitting in a state of nudity on benches, all dripping with water and perspiration, and as red as lobsters, breathing deep, sighing, puffing, and gossiping, and busily employed in drying themselves and dressing. These have already bathed, and now in a glow of pleasurable excitement, are puffing and blowing like Tritons in the sea. Even in the winter I have seen these people all melting from the hot bath, drying and dressing in the open air, or at most in a sort of booth, forming an outhouse to the baths. Round it are the doors leading to the bathing-rooms, large wooden apartments, in which a heat of 40^ to 50^ (Reaumur) is mahitained. A thick cloud of vapour conceals at first what is going on Avithin ; "rfbr nothing is at first visible but the feeble glinnner of the lamps, breaking through a thick atmosphere, and the flame of the heated ovens. To remain here clothed is evidently impossible, neither would it be advisable for a well dressed )erson to risk an appearance here as a mere spectator. I entered therefore in the costume of Nature, in which we are as much alike as one eg;cr is like another. In any other costume the naked people would infallibly liave ejected me speedily. Under this disguise I pursued my observations unmolested, the bath being by no means my object.
When the doin is opened, as before observed, no object is at first visible. The vapour is raised by the entrance of the cold air with the new comer, which nuikes that visible, which existing before in a half gaseous state, was nearly transparent. In winter one must enter like Jupiter to Semele, in clouds and tMnj)est ; the cold atmosphere brought by the new comer, freezing the vapour within, and causing it to descend inflakes of snow.
^hd sensation at first Is very singular. There are a number of persons, from fifty to a liundred, employed, apparently, in the most extraordinary manner in the world, namely, in inflicting torture on themselves. On the platforms, raised in the form of an amphitheatre, lie a number of bodies on their backs or stomachs ; if not dead, they certainly seem struggHng ■with death ; for the air they are breathing can only serve to stifle. Other persons, their tormentors, are employed in scourging them with birchen rods, steeped in cold water, as if to increase the smart. Here and there a father is holding his little boy between his knees, and diligently employed in flogging him. Others are standing by the g-lowing stoves, as if they wished to be roasted, and others again, descending from the upper platforms, steaming at every pore, have ice-cold water poured over them by the pailful, of which there are tanks at hand for the purpose.