t whatever that the man who
made the first bed was so charmed with it that the practice of lying in
bed in the morning began immediately; and it is probably a conservative
statement that the later Pliocene era saw the custom well developed.

One wonders what the Neanderthal man would have thought of a de luxe
4-room outfit, or complete home, for $198.

Even to-day, however, there are many fortunate persons who are never
awakened by an alarm-clock--that watchman's rattle, as it were, of
Policeman Day. The invention is comparatively recent. Without trying to
uncover the identity of the inventor, and thus adding one more to the
Who's Who of Pernicious Persons, we may assume that it belongs naturally
to the age of small and cheap clocks which dawned only in the
nineteenth century. Some desire for it existed earlier. The learned Mrs.
Carter, said Dr. Johnson, 'at a time when she was eager in study, did
not awake as early as she wished, and she therefore had a contrivance
that, at a certain hour, her chamber light should burn a string to which
a heavy weight was suspended, which then fell with a sudden strong
noise; this roused her from her sleep, and then she had no difficulty in
getting up.'

This device, we judge, was peculiar to Mrs. Carter, than whom a less
eager student would have congratulated herself that the sudden strong
noise was over, and gone sweetly to sleep again. The venerable Bishop
Ken, who believed that a man 'should take no more sleep than he can take
at once,' had no need of it. He got up, we are told, at one or two
o'clock in the morning 'and sometimes earlier,' and played the lute
before putting on his clothes.

To me the interesting thing about these historic figures is that they
got up with such elastic promptness, the one to study and the other to
play the lute. The Bishop seems a shade the more eager; but there are
details that Mrs. Carter would naturally have refrained from mentioning
to Dr. Johnson, even at the brimming moment when he had just accepted
her contribution to the _Rambler_. For most of us--or alarm-clocks would
not be made to ring continuously until the harassed bed-warmer gets up
and stops the racket--this getting out of bed is no such easy matter;
and perhaps it will be the same when Gabriel's trumpet is the
alarm-clock. We are more like Boswell, honest sleeper, and have 'thought
of a pulley to raise me gradually'; and then have thought again and
realized that even a pulley 'wou