The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress • Paragraph 639
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They were going to put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we objected. Each of us had an Italian farm on his back. We could have felt affluent if we had been officially surveyed and fenced in. We chose to have three bathtubs, and large ones--tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real estate, and brought it with them. After we were stripped and had taken the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of Italy and France --there was no soap. I called. A woman answered, and I barely had time to throw myself against the door--she would have been in, in another second. I said: