"GOING TO BED."

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 197, 26 August 1870, Page 2

" GOING TO BED."

.UPEfiSTiTioNS have the life of a poly„~ cu i. them in two and they will not die. !_fo with the stories among the vulgar about the Oneida Community, i here arc certain stories about our customs and domestic arrangements not half so prob.ble as that the moon is made of green cheese, which arc always in circulation and come round to us fresh as new laid esa'a every visiting season, having dono so for twenty years past. One of these stories is that we distribute ourselves at bedtime by lot. j^~ other is that our children do not know their pirenfs. Another, that we bury our dead secretly. Another that we all sleep in one bed—one great circular bed—is a particular particular ver.-ion of litis story. A gentleman from a neighbouring village,and notastranger to our place, called yesterday with a lady v \_ 0 had never been here before' a clergyman.. wife we understood. After going the usual round, the gentleman asked the guide if it would be proper to go where they could see some of our bedrooms, " for," said he, aside "the lady with me has most damnable ideis about your arrangements for the night; she believes you all sle p in one bed ;" then, in a apologetic tone " she was once an old maid." Are all old maids demented ? Nobody of any sense could believe such a thing. Imagine it anybody who can ! In order to be comfortable at all, the bed should be fifty feet square j and, to have decent ventilation, there ought to be a dome over it 100 feet high. Well how do we sleep ? We inquire of our attendant for this department how many beds wo make up this morning ? She says 189 here and at Willow place. Substracting from this fifteen beds for the children who sleep two together or one with an adult, and five for spare beds, we have 169 beds for onr adult population, which numbers about 200. This it almost a bed apiece. Where two sleep together they are of the same sex. The beds are mostly in ono room. There are ten or a dozen rooms perhaps in which they are two. We believe in the right of retirement as one of the most sacred rights of existence. We have respect to the command, " When thouprayest enter into thy closet," and mean to provide for easy obedience in our home arrangements, by giving all rooms by themselves So instead of huddling into one bed, as the story goes, we rather carry our refinement to the standard of royalty. The king has his own apartment and the queen has hers. In the etiquette of high rank it would be a vulgarity for husband and wife to occupy the same bed-cham-ber.— Oneida Circular.