The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-18
SOME AMENITIES OF RUSSIAN

Nay, how much has not been written already? Even in decent country houses in Russia, the sleeping place is often merely a couch or the top of a chest of drawers covered with rug. But in the towns, and especially in the | hotels in the towns, there are beds, and such beds! The German bed, as most
 people are aware, If not from personal experience, from MT. Jerome K. Je rome's description of it, is placed in a | deep box, into which you climb, and | then pull the bed on top of you. The | whole contrivance is so designed as to | keep one-half of the body perspiringly hot and the other half shiveringly cold, | and to suffocate you if you are not con- stantly on the alert. Its grand redeem ing feature is that you cannot tumble l out of 1t, however much you toss about | The Russian bed, on the contrary, is an | affair out of which, or rather off which, | you cannot possibly help tumbiing. l however still you lie. It is an iron or | wooden frame, perfectly destitute of | rails, and about the width of an ordi- nary coffin. Upon this is placed a mat | tress, and the entire arrangement is de- | posted in the middle of the room. To | get on to it Is easy enough, for it is quite low. But to fall asleep on it is l inevitably to fall on the floor. It is too | narrow to turn in. and there is nobody | who does not turn in his sleep, unless | he Is Russian, who, one may assume, | has been weaned from the habit by countless flops in the days of his youth | when he didn't mind that sort of thing l He has brought himself into harmony with his environment, as the evolu- | tionists say, and is comfortable. The stranger has not, and suffers accord ingly.
 Most people before they enter the land of Nod are apt to dream that they have fallen over precipice, and are going down. down. down; and just as they are about to touch the bottom they wake with a start, and have a sigh of relief as they realize that they are on nothing harder than feathers. In Russia that dream has terribly ac- tual termination. The visionary wakes with start to find that he has gone l over" in a very literal sense, and is wallowing among his trunks. A cum ming man will shift his bed from the center of the room to the wall. That saves him on one side. But he is still open to disaster on the other; and a | bedroom companion of mine at Moscow | used to fall out of bed three times reg l ularly every night, and after the third l time lie talking in his sleep until day. l light, dreaming, fancy, that he was about to break the record by falling out | again. The narrow bed is general 1 where beds are employed at all Even | the imperial residences are furnished with them. and the couch upon which l the murdered Alexander breathed his last, still shown to visitors to the Win | ter Palace, is of the same type. The Russians, like their Teutonic neigh bors, have a good deal to learn about Bedfordshire.
 But what about the bedclothes?" it
 will be asked We'll, they are much
 more easily described than the bed, the fact being that they are invariably
 conspicuous by their absence. It is not the fashion in Russia to supply bed clothing. even in the best hotels. The traveller is expected to bring his sheets
 and blankets with him if he requires
 them, and the same is the case in pri- i vate houses. A Russian would no more think of offering you secondhand bedclothes than you would of offering him secondhand tooth- brush The
 railway officials now supply one pillow, one sheet and one blanket to each first 1 class passenger. Elsewhere, however as stated, the stranger, let him be invi- ted guest or paying lodger, is under
 stood to provide his own bed clothing,
 There are considerations which render the system highly desirable. But it is
 not without it's drawbacks; and, when
 we remember that fhe mean annual 1 temperature of northern Russia is be-
 low freezing poirt, 1t will be admitted
 that no one should be left in ignorance
 of the custom. Its discovery created
 no small consternation among the Eng fish tourists, who were quite unpre- pared for it, and who arrived at Mos-
 cow at midnight tired to death, and found themselves with nothing to sleeI
 in, and with next to nothing to sleer | upon. How did they manage? One
 slept for eight days in his topcoat; an
 other wrapped himself up in his digni-
 ty and his dressing gown; while a third reposed in borrowed railway rug.
 l Guests at Russian hotel, or in a
 private house for that matter, ought, il
 they are particular, to fasten their bed
 room doors before engaging in serious
 ablutions. Russian servants and wait
 CTS, male and female, give no warning
 of their approach. It is no more the
 custom to knock at 8 door than it is tc
 supply bedclothes; and a boots or 8
 chambermaid will invariably enter 2
 room without any intimation, "as if,
 as one writer has expressed it, "inten-
 tionally ignoring such obstacles tc
 movement as doors" The fact that
 the room is bedroom makes no differ.
 ence whatever This free-and- -easy
 style may not annoy Slav; but it i:
 apt to provoke embarrassing situation:
 among Englishmen, whose morning
 toilet is a very extensive affair, em
 bracing every part of the man from tht
 crown of his head to the soles of hi:
 eet.-Correspondence Newcastle (Eng.
 Chronicle.