The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-08-18
gan to see the humorous side to it and
was heard to chuckle little to himself.

! E ~ &.
Charles B. Wolf Of the, Alton, Iowa,
Democrat has caught the reminiscing DIS
ease and has been recalling in, his paper
his grandmother's old-fashioned feather
bed, the one that always stood in the
corner in the spare" room, with a bright,
large patterned quilt on 1t like a temper
ance lecturers jimjam chart. Mr.. Wolf
describes the incident Of sleeping in one
Of these beds as follows:
Did you ever sleep in one of those old-style
four-story feather beds? They are made up ON
an ancient four-post cord bedstead and were SO
high that you had to look at them with long
distance telescope. If the one you required
to sleep in happened to be under the hatchway
to the garrett, SO you could go up into the attic
and strip and then drop into 1T, it wasn't so
bad, but otherwise you had to strip in the mid
die of the floor and then spit on your hands
and laboriously shin up the bedpost. When
you reached the top you crept along the foot
board to the middle and there balanced yourself
by bracing your head against the ceiling while
you peered over into the bed to see If any one
had beat you into it, If you saw no signs Of
life, you diyed off into the feather tick with a
gladstone cry and a little schoolgirl flourish Of
your pnkish heels, and that was the last of you
till the aroma of sausage and buckwheat cakes
came up thru the stovepipe hole In the morning.
When you hit the tick of such bed you go
down into 1t about nine feet and the tick closes in
you from all sides, much after the manner
of water flowing into bucket sunk into tts
midst. It's just like jumping Off a sky-scraper
into a soft-shelled balloon. When you once
get settled down into the tick you can't see
nor hear nor think, and can only lie there and
feathers and sneeze till the ROXY dawn
when Uncle Henry comes up and prizes you out
of the hole with a clothes prop and tells you
breakfast has been ready for two hours.
Having once got going on the bed sub
ject MIR. Wolf tells of hard bed ne once
slept on at the hotel. ''It Was he says,
like sleeping on the soft side Of stone
quarry without sheet The bed they
gave me was actually SO hard that the
bedbugs had to muffle their feet with
cotton batting so you couldn't hear them
coming. One of the features of this bed
was lumpy- jawed mattress which looked
like schoolmam's first attempt at mince
pie. There were large, irregular gobs Of
stuffing thrown around prorniscuously in
spots till the bed looked at a distance like
a cluster of South African kopjes. You
could take your choice Of sleeping on the
hilltops or in the Valleys. =
| Mr.. Wolf is especially strong in describ-
| ing the bed out of which the Stats drop
| at quite regular intervals. He says:
| Ny brother and kept bachelor hall one year.
| and we had a bed which kept time for us while
we slept. There were just twelve Stats in the
bed and one dropped out every hour. r., when
| the last one had dropped and were sleeping on
| the floor with the bedstead around like
| a calf-pasture fence we knew it time to
get up. We didn't mind the Stats dropping out
so much did their peculiar way Of doing
| it. They never dropped twice alike in success
| sion. Sometimes they would drop out in rota-
ton, beginning at the head of the bed, and leave
us hanging to the last slat- by our heels; and
sometimes they would start at the foot and pro-
| coed toward the head. Then again they would
| begin in the middle and drop out both ways
/ alternately. In such cases we slept part of the
night doubled up like jackknives with heads
| between our hoofs and our spnes calmly repos-
ing the floor. This is not very good way
| to sleep in warm weather. Sometimes the Stats
would drop time about from each end and leave
us at last hanging over the middle slat like
| a dish rag a garden fence.
We hear a good deal about the fold
| ing beds of to-day, but there is one good
thing about folding bed. It will shut
| up and that is the end. The old fash
toned beds kept at it all night long. No
wonder our ancestors found some advan-
pose in church. .- -s-.-9,. .---..-,...
| ..r... r.. 49, ..-. A T r