t one, just in line with
the eyes, with gilt front winking in the firelight. A decayed Gibbon, I
had thought, proclaims a grandfather. To what length, then, of cultured
ancestry must not this Bell give evidence?

[Illustration]

THE DECLINE OF NIGHT-CAPS

[Illustration]

THE DECLINE OF NIGHT-CAPS

It sounds like the tinkle of triviality to descend from the stern business
of this present time to write of night-caps: And yet while the discordant
battles are puffing their cheeks upon the rumbling bass pipes, it is
relief if there be intermingled a small, shrill treble--any slightest
squeak outside the general woe.

There was a time when the chief issue of fowl was feather-beds. Some few
tallest and straightest feathers, maybe, were used on women's hats, and a
few of better nib than common were set aside for poets' use--goose
feathers in particular being fashioned properly for the softer flutings,
whether of Love or Spring--but in the main the manifest destiny of a
feather was a feather-bed.

In those days it was not enough that you plunged to the chin in this hot
swarm of feathers, for discretion, in an attempt to ward off from you all
snuffling rheums, coughings, hackings and other fleshly ills, required you
before kicking off the final slippers to shut the windows against what
were believed to be the dank humors of the night. Nor was this enough. You
slept, of course, in a four-post bed; and the curtains had to be pulled
together beyond the peradventure of a cranny. Then as a last prophylaxis
you put on a night-cap. Mr. Pickwick's was tied under the chin like a
sunbonnet and the cords dangled against his chest, but this was a matter
of taste. It was behind such triple rampart that you slept, and were
adjudged safe from the foul contagion of the dark. Consequently your bed
was not exactly like a little boat. Rather it was like a Pullman sleeper,
which, as you will remember, was invented early in the nineteenth century
and stands as a monument to its wisdom.

I have marveled at the ease with which Othello strangled Desdemona.
Further thought gives it explanation. The poor girl was half suffocated
before he laid hands on her. I find also a solution of Macbeth's enigmatic
speech, "Wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep." Any dream that could
get at you through the circumvallation of glass, brocade, cotton and
feathers could be no better than a quadruplicated house-breaker,
compounded out of desperate