When we enter the bathing-room we are confused by a babel of sounds--shrill voices of women, hoarse voices of attendants, wailing and yelping of children, and rushing of water.

At the same time we are smitten by the heat of the room and nearly suffocated by clouds of steam.

We find at last an empty bench, and surround ourselves with a semicircle of wooden pails, collected from all around the room.
Sometimes two women in search of pails lay hold of the same pail at the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and undesirable connections, living, dead, and unborn; until an attendant interferes, with more muscle than argument, punctuating the sentence of justice with newly coined expletives suggested by the occasion.

The centre of the room, where the bathers fill their pails at the faucets, is a field of endless battle, especially on a crowded day.

The peaceful women seated within earshot stop their violent scrubbing, to the relief of unwilling children, while they attend to the liveliest of the quarrels.
I like to watch the _poll_, that place of torture and heroic endurance.