The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1911-07-20
SLEEPING OUTDOORS,
Appeals to the imagination, but Has
Its Drawbacks.

Appeals to the imagination, but Has
Its Drawbacks.
Sleeping outdoors Is practice
about which there Is no such thing as
a lukewarm opinion. Either a per-
son thinks there is nothing like 1t or
he couldn't be hired to do 1t. The au-
thor OF Lorna Doone" states that
horse sleeps best in n closed barn,
and a good many people are like that.
What with the croalIing of frogs, and
the chirping Of wakeful birds and the
rustling of the trees, and other sounds
that nothing but a belief in ghosts
can explain, night out In the open Is
not, in the opinion OF such people, all
it's cracked up to be.
All the same, there's something at
tractive in the notion of being oxidized
while one sleeps, and nowadays there
are so many stories going about OF
people who were cured of whatever
allied them by sleeping out of doors
that 1t seems worth trying. One mid
dle-aged woman who has just made a
great hit with a novel-her first-at-
tributes her success to inspiration
gained by sleeping out Of doors. She
has cot on an open porch at her
home, up the Hudson, and there she
sleeps in all weathers. The porch has
q roof and screens to be drawn when
it rains, but save in hard storms she
never draws them.
"When / slept indoors she says,
81 used so often to get Up in the
morning feeling heavy and logy-per-
fectly idealess. It never entered my
head to write a book in those days.
/ always had my bedroom windows
open, but anybody who has slept out
of doors will tell you that no matter
how wide your windows are opened 1t
isn't the same thing at all.
81 hadn't been using my porch bed
month before my brain began to
wake up, and I'm firmly convinced
that the fresh night air wrote my
book. AS for physical health, from
a bundle of bones I've become a crea-
ture bursting with rlotous health"
But even a porch bedroom has its
limitations. Some people can't feel
that they are sleeping out Of doors
unless they have the sky above them.
There is something inexpressibly
beautiful and calming about 1t.
To secure this, along with adequate
protection from the weather, speci-
ally constructed outdoor room is nee
essary In a certain yard near GER
tain American city, under some big
sycamores, is an. outdoor sleeping
room which seems almost ideal. The
floor is raised two feet above the
ground. to guard against dampness,
and there is a wainscoting three feet
high. But the great feature is the
roof, which, except for a cap of wood
on either side of the ridge pole, is
of glass-ordinary greenhouse sashes,
so fitted that they slide up and down
the rafters, being operated by sash
cords and pulleys. When the night
is fair they are drawn up under the
wood cap, and the sleepers' faces are
open to the sky. Even when 1t storms
| the view is not interfered with, and
the people who occupy that sleeping
house say 1t is perfectly delightful to
/ lie and watch the rain beating upon
the glass and the trees tossing their
arms above. The projecting caves
keep any ordinary rain from beating
in at the sides, but to guard against
emergencies there are heavy curtains
of duck which may be drawn and
fastened down at the bottom if the
storm is very bad.