s were all the sweeter for the breeze that
blew across her bed--loaded with the rhythmic memory of the words she had
heard within the night.

It was vanity killed the night-cap. What aldermanic man would risk the
chance of seeing himself in the mirror? What judge, peruked by day, could
so contain his learned locks? What male with waxed moustachios, or with
limpest beard, or chin new-reaped would put his ears in such a compress?
You will recall how Mr. Pickwick snatched his off when he found the lady
in the curl papers in his room. His round face showed red with shame
against the dusky bed-curtains, like the sun peering through the fog.

As for bed-curtains, they served the intrigue of at least five generations
of novelists from Fielding onward. There was not a rogue's tale of the
eighteenth century complete without them. The wrong persons were always
being pinned up inside them. The cause of such confusion started in the
tap, too much negus or an over-drop of pineapple rum with a lemon in it or
a potent drink whose name I have forgotten that was always ordered "and
make it luke, my dear." Then, after such evening, a turn to the left
instead of right, a wrong counting of doors along the passage, the
jiggling of bed-curtains, screams and consternation. It is one of the
seven original plots. Except for clothes-closets, screens and
bed-curtains, Sterne must have gone out of the novel business, Sheridan
have lost fecundity and Dryden starved in a garret. But the moths got into
their red brocade at last and a pretty meal they made.

A sleeping porch is the symbol of the friendly truce between man and the
material universe. The world itself and the void spaces of its wanderings,
together with the elements of our celestial neighborhood, have been viewed
by man with dark suspicion, with rather a squint-eyed prejudice. Let's
take a single case! Winds for a long time have borne bad
reputations--except such anemic collateral as are called zephyrs--but
winds, properly speaking, which are big and strong enough to have rough
chins and beards coming, have been looked upon as roustabouts. What was
mere humor in their behavior has been set down to mischief. If a wind in
playfulness does but shake a casement, or if in frolic it scatters the
ashes across the hearth, or if in liveliness it swishes you as you turn a
corner and drives you aslant across the street, is it right that you set
your tongue to gossip and judge it a son of Belial?