"Taking the bath is quite a ritual."

HERE WE ARE, suh, sho nuff, and ready to tell you-all about it. And, shut my big mouf, the first thing you might like to know is that while San Diego was having the first snow in its history, the Texas grapefruit was all pink with the frost, and Florida was booking the Ice Follies for an appearance on the gulf, here was the Mrs. and li'1 ole me soaking up sunshine and 79 degree temperature, with green grass growing all around and making me wonder if I might find a sucker somewhere who would like to buy a fleece-lined heavy overcoat to spread fleece side up in front of the fireplace.

Hot Springs is an unusual city. For instance, taxi fare for two, with luggage, for a distance of about two miles, was three dollars, which struck me as being on the high side. On the other hand, bus fare to any part of the spa is six cents, which impresses me as being on the low side.

Hotel rates currently compare favorably with those in the north. For eating it is possible to hit both ends of the line. There are swanky places, and there is a favorite place of mine, spick and span and air-conditioned, where it is possible to put away a satisfying breakfast for less than fifty cents.

The visitor is a choice morsel at the depot. Competition among the taxi drivers is so keen that the police are present to keep them in order. The drivers are required to stay back of a line on the platform, no doubt to keep the traveler from being crushed in the rush.

What is called "the Season" down here lasts for ninety days-from January 15 to April 15. Business volume during "the Season" must be sufficient to permit "coasting" for the rest of the year.

The auction houses here are a unique type of business. Merchandise that is sold at sessions each afternoon and evening is largely what is found in city jewelry stores. Seats are provided in the center of the store, the merchandise is attractively displayed at the front, and skilled-very skilled-auctioneers work in shifts of about a half hour each. One of these auction houses has on display a table service that is said to be sterling silver, gold plated. It is also said to be insured for $110,000, and the highest bid to date has been $20,000, but the owners didn't let it go. I happened to come without my billfold that day so I didn't bid.

A new governor was inaugurated at the state capitol in Little Rock on Tuesday. He is Sid McMath and a native of Hot Springs. So the local people were quite proud about it all and sent a large delegation over to the ceremonies. McMath, in true Horatio Alger style, once sold newspapers on the streets of Hot Springs. The local daily gave full coverage. Here's part of it: "Two hours before inaugural time, clouds perched atop the capitol dome. Committee men in charge of the event moved huge floral pieces--gifts from all over the state--into the building. They moved them out to the steps again. Radio engineers set up equipment on the front steps. They took another look at the skies and connected emergency equipment in the house chamber-just in case.

"The joint session of the house and senate began at 10 a. m. on the dot. Lieutenant-Governor Nathan Gordon, presiding, called for the swinging of the national anthem with organ accompaniment. The hushed body sat waiting for the strains of the music. Nothing happened. The organ was just outside the chamber but it wasn't working."

After that nothing happened either, except they called on Rev. Clyde Hart to lead the invocation and it developed he was not present. Then the new governor was ready to speak and the specially typed manuscript of his speech couldn't be located. This held up proceedings eight minutes. However, I guess he finally made it with honor and glory to himself and Hot Springs.

Two things I would like to have seen-that cloud perched atop the capitol dome and the crowd when they got to swinging the national anthem. But I had to stay here to take my bath.

ONE EVENING THIS week Mrs. Martinis and I found ourselves quite a distance from "home" with a heavy rain falling. This necessitated the luxury of a cab ride, and we secured places in one that already had some passengers. To start the conversation the Mrs. remarked to the driver, "I suppose that this kind of weather makes business good for you." He gave the matter some consideration and finally replied, with what seemed to have some trace of sarcasm: "Yeh. Just as soon as the water starts running over their shoe tops the people start calling for taxis."

This was just another example of what water does for this city. Whereas in some sections water is that colorless stuff that runs under bridges and at times comes to a useful purpose as ice, down here it is the beginning and may some day be the end of the economic, social and political life of the community. Water is used here not only for bathing and drinking but also is bottled after the manner of some expensive liquids, and shipped to all parts of the nation. Wherever you go someone is setting beside your plate a bottle of water with miracle powers.

Most prized of all the water is that which comes from the hot springs from which the city derives its name. There are 47 of these hot springs, all located within an area of about 20 acres at the base of Hot Springs Mountain. If you had an idea that it was a recent idea for the government to be in business, you will be surprised to know that these springs and the water therefrom are the property of the government, which exercises strict control over the distribution, use, and the charges made for service, and has since 1877.

Taking the bath is quite a ritual. Having removed your clothes and selected a sheet for emergency covering, you enter a room that is filled with bath tubs of various shapes and sizes, each in a separate compartment. The attendant, who must be impervious to heat, tells you the water is just right and to hop in. My impression at first touch is that the water is just right to do a two-minute egg. As soon as the patient is in the water the attendant starts passing the drinks-of more water. Then you are left to relax for 20 minutes, or until the proper pinkish glow is acquired.

Then the attendant leads you gently to the warm room, which is said to be slightly cooler than the water. Here you lie on a table wrapped tightly in a sheet, drink some more water, and perspire until you expect shortly to see the attendant moving around in a boat. About the time you are beginning to wonder how many days have elapsed since you came in, you are released from the sheet and given a needle shower.

From this you skip blithely to the "cooling" room which is about 95 degrees cool. Here you can remain as long as you wish, and if and when you are able to walk, you proceed to the massage room. There you get a rub-down, as complete and thorough as that given a prize horse after he has won a $100,000 purse. Then the custom is to nap awhile, but not so long that you miss the crowd on the porch and the chance to tell them all about how the bath went today.

THE CITIZENS OF Hot Springs as a group are courteous, kindly and cordial. They have a faculty for making you feel they remember distinctly when you were here before and have more or less just been marking time waiting for the pleasure of your return. My good friend, King, an attendant in the bath room, actually had me convinced he did remember me, until after about four days his curiosity got the better of him and he asked me my name and where I was from. Leon, the other attendant, converses at length on religion, politics, economics and horses.

The difficulties involved in the current effort to bring a lasting peace to the world by uniting all the nations and races in one organization are illustrated in miniature in this city where men and women come from all parts of the nation for one common objective-health by way of the thermal waters. Pride in nationality and faith in one's own creed remain strong, if not immovable, even among those who have come through several generations of the melting pot that is supposed to make citizens of the United States the most broad-minded of any in this big, rapidly revolving sphere.

People are here from Chicago, St. Louis, New York, New Orleans, Detroit, and from Texas, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Mississippi and Gawgia. The business of getting acquainted, as among guests at any establshment, follows an almost fixed pattern. There is the period of reserve-waiting for the other one to speak first. Then a casual "Good morning." Then some remarks about the abominable weather. Then some more silence and feigned reading before moving into the stage of "Where do you come from?" Then the converational lid is off. Whether one is from New York or Appleton, Biloxi or Minneapolis, Chicago or Centralia, for each individual the world's center is that home town, and the rest of the world must stand the test of comparison with it. People regard others with strikingly different backgrounds from their own as foreigners.

If it develops that a new-found acquaintance is from Chicago that marks the removal of the iron curtain and the beginning of a beautiful friendship, even if the conversation becomes no more intimate than naming certain streets and big buildings. The next common ground over which two or more persons will walk to friendship is a common nationality, and this in turn often indicates a common religion. Perhaps there is a lodge membership that gets into the picture somewhere.

No matter how much of the initial reserve is broken down, however, provincialism always remains. The citizen of Kansas City reserves the right to say he wouldn't trust a guy from Nashville, any further than he could throw a Kansas City election without the help of a Pendergast. If the Nashvillian happens to have come from Ireland, also, and to belong to the same church, he is undoubtedly better than the average run, but he still bears watching.

With all this going on under one's nose, it is not surprising that the peoples of the world, so much more divided by skin color, geography, stages of civilization, education, superstitions, suspicions and nationalism have so much trouble reaching the mental state where they are ready to put their destinies in charge of their traditional enemies.

THERE IS SURE a lot of horse talk going on around here now. The reason for it is that the "racing season" opens on February 21, and continues until about the first of April. And while it is still about two weeks away, if there is anything more important going on in the world, it will have a hard time breaking in on the local consciousness.

As near as I can make out without extensive research, the Oaklawn race track is a locally owned and highly developed plant that is under state supervision and control. The governor appoints a racing commission that sets the dates for the meet and no doubt fixes the rules and regulations both for the racing and the betting. It takes out fifteen per cent of each bet paid off and this runs into quite a lug of money.

The local populace and the visitors are not concerned about the details of administration, but they are now certainly horse-conscious. In the hotel lobbies, in the eating places, in the bath tubs, on the tables in the warm rooms, the talk is about the races. If one wants to look a part of the sophisticated scene, it is almost compulsory to go around with a copy of The Racing Form sticking out of a conspicuous pocket. Even in the fast crowd with which I find myself most of the time, and which includes an elderly lady knitting a mitten for her grandson on one side and another one who quit knitting shortly after the Civil War on the other side, the talk is about the races.

In spite of the fact that the racing season is the BIG SEASON and brings thousands of people who fill up the eating and lodging places and make it possible to raise prices straight across the board for all services during that period, there is a division of sentiment in the city over whether or not it all is a good thing. Some say the gambling is a bad influence and should be stopped. Others hold that a little gambling is not a dangerous thing, and that the entertainment it provides, along with the funds it brings in, are among The Spa's most valuable assets.

One local man who thinks the betting is all right as a pastime says that the last time he went out to the races with a friend, the friend said: "Man, I hope I break even today because I sure need the money." And don't we all. Sho'nuff.

WELL, THE VACATION in Hot Springs is over. This is fair warning to those who see me coming that I will probably start telling about it at the drop of a hat. So on to the loose ends.

Mrs. Martinis and poor li'l me made this trip by rail. Concerning train travel I will say that Mr. Pullman might have done much to make overnight jaunts more enjoyable. Also I understand that he did quite well in building up a family fortune, capitalizing on the dream that people could sleep horizontally while riding on trains. Perhaps people who do a lot of train traveling are able to cope with it. But as for me, my little man, who could count the number of personal experiences with berths on the fingers of one hand, and it could have a couple of fingers missing, Mr. Pullman didn't do much to make life more comfortable or restful.

It can be admitted that after the berth is made up and you actually get changed from your day clothes to your night clothes and settled down between the sheets, it is quite comfortable. All that one has to do then is to listen to the clickety-clack of the car wheels, the snoring of the guy across the aisle, the high-pitched laughter of the lady in the party in the compartment at the end of the car, wait for daylight, and try to figure out some way of making the ordeal of dressing again a little less difficult.

It's the job of getting ready for sleep that slays me. If you want to practice up on it sometime, the best way would be to set your bed down in a piano box, closed on three sides, with a curtain on the fourth side. Put the whole thing out on Miles Street say, when a good-sized crowd is coming out of church. Have your clothes in two or three large bags on top of the bed, and try to change to your pajamas without at some time sticking a vital part of your anatomy out through the curtain for the crowd to see. If you can do it without an accident or without feeling self-conscious about it, I would say you are equipped for a long train trip. Maybe there is a book on "How to Undress in a Berth" but it hasn't come to my attention. So I still do not know how to put my pajama bottoms on under my long underwear before I take the underwear off. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be that ground rules be set up for each sleeping car. That at a given hour each passenger get in his berth. Then at given intervals, each takes a turn, hollers "King's X" and is allowed five minutes in the aisle to change clothes standing up and free from prying eyes. If you konw some better way, write the railroads.

Another place that isn't much fun after a rough night is the car's washroom. It must be that the management doesn't care much whether the passengers are very clean. The room isn't much bigger than a telephone booth and with three or four washbowls, mirrors, towel racks, waste baskets, and ten to twelve men with toilet cases, clean shirts, tooth brushes, soap and brush and electric shaving outfits it gets slightly crowded-and intimate, too. In the mixture of flying arms it isn't uncommon to find someone else brushing your teeth. This reminds me it is a fortunate thing that few men use those long, wickedlooking straight edge razors any more, because I am sure that some time or other one man with one of those razors might run amuk, with good reason.

Surprisingly, it seems to eventually work out and everyone gets out alive. The shirt I came out with, however, I am sure, was cleaner than the one that I went in with and it was tighter around the neck band.

From Chicago to Hot Springs we went by what is called the Alton route. This included several railroad systems, the Chicago and Alton, The B.M.&O., and the Missouri-Pacific lines. I think the reason they lumped them under one name is so that no one system would have to take all the blame for the condition of the roadbed. If you are going south where they hold rodeos, this would be a good way to go because if you manage to stay on without being bruised, and without spurs, you will be fully qualified to ride the wildest bucking broncho.

This feeling about the roadbed may be due to the fact that in this part of the country we are accustomed to better things. The Milwaukee's Hiawatha from Chicago runs so smoothly that it is necessary at times to look out the window to realize you are moving, and usually at about 100 miles per hour.

On the trip from Chicago to Minneapolis a curling team got on at Portage, Wisconsin. They were on their way to participate in a national event at St. Paul. They spent their time on that trip profitably, I would say, in the club car. By the time they reached St. Paul they were all comfortably curled.

So endeth the saga of my most extensive travel.