Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther
on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every
day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all
sorts of things for people who haven't anything to do with their time,
which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places.
Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been
there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy's
slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got
over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very
much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for
rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for
them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal
of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play
tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion
listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can
see, are just as important as the baths. I don't know whether you ever
saw a bath-chair, madam, but it's a comfortable little cab on three
wheels, pulled by a man.
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