STRANGE BEDS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1500, 7 March 1887, Page 3

STRANGE BEDS.

A strange bed ia one of the diaoomforta of travelling. If some enterprising ge.iiaa would only invent a comfortable bed whioh could ba carried iv a shawl-trap, things would be much simplified. A strange bed never fits right. When you get into it you feel as if you had never been introduced. It Bmelfs strange. It feels strange. The crack with which the spring gnes off when you get on it is not a familiar sound, The hollows aud depressions m the mattresses were not worn by your own familiar flesh and bones. Your head settles down at the wrong angle, and your feet are not aimed at exactly the right point of the compass. Th.9 sheets are Htrange and so are the blankets. The head-board has a vile habit of snapping, every time you turn over, as if it felt offended' at so much familiarity on the part of a stranger. Ycu wonder who slept there last 1 You wonder if anybody had a fever on tfiat bed. You wpnder if ever anybody died on it. Then you turn over on the other eid«. and try to go to sleep. You say you wil', go to Bleep. Yes, you will. And you olose your ey_B, and you think (vf everything you ever did, and of everything all your relatives ever did, and of everything else you expeot to do, and you count a hundred and you npeit over the mnltiplication table, lf you know it, and you recite Borne poetry, and you fl _p over on the other side, and wish you had . ome laudanum or chloroform, or something that would make you sleep. In a strange bed all the Bounds about the house are etrauge. It seems to be absolutely essential to the content of most of ua that we shall bo abe to determine the nature and cause of every noise we hear about the house. It* it is only the oat sn eezlnp-, we want to know where Bhe is, and what she Is sneezing for. If it is OD.y Biddy pounding the steak into rags, we want to be sure about it. It is strange how much craving af er knowledge there is m the average human mind. We know a good woman who never hears a co >v open or shut m the house at any time of the day or night without stopping work to determine what particular d or it is, and who is taking suoh liberties wl h it. The windows m the room where your bad ia are never ln the light pi. c_ . After the lamp is extinguished they are all wrong Ihe light appears anywhere else thm where it belongs, It shines m your eyes any way. ' You ccc it, no matter how muoh you try to avoid it.

You sit up and thurqp your pillows. You haye great hopes from thumping your pillows, and for a moment you feel quite somnolently inolined. Bat it Ib soon over and ynu are as wakeful as ever. _

And so you toss about all night, and get up twp hours earlier than usual io the morning ; and when your hoste.s asks you how you slept, and if your bed Buited you, yon tell her that you had a beautiful night's rest, and that the bed waa oharmIng. ' so ty was, no doubt ; for generally fn spch oases it is not the bed which Ib to blame, it la our own miserable, disobedient, wicked, undlsoipllned nerves that are at fault ; and who oan help it ?