the trouble of dressing, and the more one thinks about that the more
one wants to put it off.

It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch our
tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. "O
bed, O bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," as
sang poor Hood, you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls.
Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly
lap and hush our wayward crying. The strong man full of care--the
sick man full of pain--the little maiden sobbing for her faithless
lover--like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, and
you gently soothe us off to by-by.

Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us.
How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those
hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie,
like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that
drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more
hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire
startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of
the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching.

But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have kept to them too long, even
for an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That wastes
time just as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been a
blessing to us idlers. What the civil-service clerk before Sir
Walter's time found to occupy their minds with it is hard to imagine.
I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men
entirely to the want of the soothing weed. They had no work to do and
could not smoke, and the consequence was they were forever fighting