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A Sermon on Beds. 
lichold how good and how pleasant 
a thing is a well-aired, well-made, 
clean bed. 
You crawl into it dead tired, but as 
you draw up its coverings you shut the 
door on all the plagues of a whole day 
and lie down in this soft, dark, quiet den, 
which is full of sweet air and the essence 
of the sunshine. Every muscle relaxes; 
nothing binds you; nothing galls and 
plagues you. You peacefully chew your 
mental cud for a few minutes and then 
you are gone—no one knows where—but 
the next morning you come back fresh 
and early as from a vacation. 
Now behold how bad and how cursed 
a thing is a poorly-made bed. 
You crawl into it for comfort and you 
find none. 
You draw up its coverings to shut the 
door on all the plagues of a whole day, 
and you land plunk in the midst of the 
worse plagues of a whole night. 
Confound the man that didn’t shuck 
out all the cobs when he filled the husk 
mattress! Plague take the stingy blanket 
that just reaches up to the cold spot be¬ 
tween your shoulders but does not cover it. 
Oh, for a clothespin to straddle your 
nose and shut out the faint but unholy 
smell of aged perfumery that hangs about 
the pillow. 
But you must calm yourself. Think of 
pleasant things. Go to sleep. “Once two 
Don’t have the room a loafing place 
during the day. 
Don’t have grasses and mosses and Au¬ 
tumn leaves and ribbons and home-happy 
things in it. If you’ve got all these 
things heaped up in your sleeping room 
take a ball bat or a broom and shatter 
these idols for the sake of simplicity and 
absolute cleanness. 
About mattresses' no rules can be given. 
A mattj-ess is a personal thing like a 
toothbrush. You have got to be just 
suited with it or you are not suited at all. 
Journals of hygiene, those disseminators 
of useful misinformation, lay down rules 
for everyone and are particularly strenu¬ 
ous for hard beds. Hard or soft, the bed 
must be perfectly comfortable—comfort¬ 
able for your particular bones, that is— 
or it is not worth the name of bed. 
Think of it. You spend, or ought to 
spend, from a third to a quarter of your 
lifetime lying on it. You are supposed 
to “rest” there. But you cannot “rest” 
lying on a side hill, cross-wise of it, you 
can’t “rest” with a corncob sticking into 
your short rib, you can’t “rest” on any¬ 
thing that galls you where your bones 
stick out. 
And now about the bed-clothes and the 
care of them. 
I don’t care much what they are. It 
is the airing and making of the bed that 
I am particular zealous to have rightly 
done. 
For 20 years of my life I was the vic¬ 
tim or the slave of boarding-house keep¬ 
ers. I am still at times the victim of 
a hotel. And there is no sin in bed¬ 
making or airing with which I am not 
familiar and from which I have not suf¬ 
fered. 
There is the unaired bed which reminds 
OWNING FELIX. 
is two, two times two are four, three 
times two are six.”—and when your mus¬ 
cles begin to relax with this sing-song you 
roll into the hollow in the middle of the 
mattress. 
Repeat Scripture. That’s great to go 
to sleep on, and there’s merit in it be¬ 
sides. “Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac 
begat Jacob and Jacob begat'Salmon and 
Salmon begat Phares.” You wonder if 
you wound your watch. Fp you get and 
hunt your vest in the dark to find it. and 
find that you did wind it. Then you got 
a drink of water and crawl back and 
fight that bed while the town clock calls 
the rounds till you finally conquer it and 
force yourself to sleep. 
Next to good wholesome food and 
drink, a family needs for its health and 
comfort moderately soft, absolutely clean, 
and perfectly made beds. 
In these days it is possible to get them 
without great outlay. 
Consider them a minute. The bed¬ 
room itself ought to be very simply furn¬ 
ished, with little in the way of decora¬ 
tion and very little which can hold dust 
or odors. The ideal sleeping room should 
have bare walls and a nearly bare floor 
without cracks and chinks in it. with a 
bit of rug on the floor perhaps, just 
large enough to say your prayers on, but 
small enough to remind you to make your 
prayer concise; and light enough so that 
you can swing it in one hand and bang 
the dust out of it. The only excuse for 
any but the simplest furnishings, is that 
the sleeping room must sometimes be 
used for mild illnesses. Yet even then, 
when you lie sick and weak, a bare wall 
is pleasanter to look at than one covered 
with a large-figured paper. 
you of the time when you must lie down 
in the dust; it smells so like a charnel 
house. 
There is the pillow made of new feath¬ 
ers which smell 10 times worse than the 
charnel house. 
There is the pillow on which some per¬ 
fumed head has lain, or under which a 
perfumed handkerchief has passed a night. 
That pillow is henceforth good for noth¬ 
ing but to be cast out and trodden under 
foot of men. 
There is the pillow which looks plump 
and promises well, but when you put 
your head on it it goes as flat as a pan¬ 
cake. 
There is the bed made up roughly with 
wrinkles iu the sheets and blankets which 
torment one used to better things. 
Then there is the abomination of the 
double woolen blanket with the ends 
tucked in at the bottom and the double of 
it under your chin. The double blanket 
is just too warm. Ilalf-awake. you pick 
and pick to separate the two, and call 
yourself all kinds of an improper fool be¬ 
cause you can’t do it, and at last, fully 
awake and in a most unregenerate frame 
of mind, you find that the blankets are 
one at the top and must be used as one 
unless you get up. light your lamp, and in 
the midnight watch, at the risk of wak¬ 
ing the household (including the loud¬ 
mouthed dog), tear the whole thing to 
pieces and make it up properly with the 
double at the foot, where anyone with 
the brains of a hen would have put it 
in the first place. 
And lastly, there is the bed the cover¬ 
ings of which are simply tucked in be¬ 
tween the mattress and the foot-board; 
not turned under the mattress several 
Would You Like a Short Course at an Agricultural College? 
Y OU might like to take the course but do not see your 
way to meet the expense. In this situation we can 
make a suggestion to help you. We are prepared 
to pay your entire expense for a short course at any agri¬ 
cultural school, in exchange for work that you can do in 
your own neighborhood in spare time. If you want to 
make it a full college course, we will even arrange for that. 
Or if you do not care to take the college work, but would 
like an educational or pleasure trip, let us know your 
preference, and we will arrange to pay the expense for 
you. The proposition is open to young or old, male or 
female. 
Address Subscription Department, 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
333 West 30th Street New York City, N. Y. 
inches and pressed down flat # as it ought As these lines are being written the 
to be. Such beds sometimes are fair to copy for the enlarged Woman and Home 
look upon and even promise well when 
you lie down to sleep. But towards 
morning you become cold and uncomfort¬ 
able. You dream of traveling in the 
Arctic, of wading in ice water, of hav¬ 
ing your throat bandaged for diphtheria, 
of a halter about your neck, and of being 
choked by an anaconda. You roll and 
toss and finally wake to find little or 
nothing over any pavt of you except your 
head, neck and shoulders, and there you 
are, sitting up in bed, wearing the whole 
blessed outfit—sheet and blankets and 
counterpane—about your neck and look¬ 
ing like a South Sea Islander who has 
robbed a missionary and is posing as 
Queen of the May. 
Is it for this that you pay $10 a week 
as a regular boarder or $1.50 per night 
as a transient? I trow not. To name 
these experiences is to suggest to any 
reasonable mind the things which re¬ 
quire attention in making up the bed. 
First of all. air and sunlight—as much 
as can be of them—for the bedclothes. 
The ideal thing is to leave the bed airing 
all day and not have it made up till 
evening. Air and light are after all the 
great antiseptics and disinfectants. The 
more of them your bedding gets the sweet¬ 
er and safer will be your sleep. 
Do my hearers, have the blankets and 
counterpane long enough to come up to 
one’s ears, when well tucked in at the 
foot, and the sheet ample for a long turn 
over the edges of everything else. Then 
if you wake with anything in your mouth 
it will be a cotton or linen sheet and 
not a woolen blanket. Neither of them 
is nutritious, but a- blanket is maddening. 
And finally, dearly beloved brethren 
and sisters, hear the conclusion of the 
whole matter: 
Tuck ’em in at the foot. 
E. H. JENKINS. 
Owning Felix 
My father said a while ago— 
And he’s a man who ought to know— 
That every boy should own a pet, 
A dog or cat or better yet, 
A gentle pony, colt or horse, 
The one he’d like the best, of course; 
And then, to prove that this is so, 
He gave me Felix Brown, you know. 
Some men will give a colt away, 
And let you feed him every day; 
You’ll rub him down and make him shine, 
Until his coat is soft and fine; 
You’ll teach him tricks and stunts galore, 
You’ll ride him twice a day or more; 
The best of friends you’ll grow to be; 
But here’s a thing that puzzles me— 
When horse or colt or other pet 
Has grown as big as he can get, 
Along will come a man some day, 
And he will peek and stare and say— 
“Yes, Farmer Smith, I’ll take that horse, 
And pay you well for him, of course.” 
Now, will you tell me. if you can, 
Who owns that pet, the boy or man? 
My father’s not a bit like that, 
He wouldn’t even sell my cat; 
Anfl when he gave my colt to me, 
He wrote it all right out, you see. 
So I don’t worry, not a bit, 
I’ve got a paper proving it; 
And Felix Brown and I will be 
The greatest chums you’ll ever see. 
—Alice Annette Larkin. 
Department is being prepared, selected 
and approved. Much is being discarded, 
and all is being subjected to the general 
test of The R. N.-Y. standard for its 
truth, its purity and its benefit to the 
reader. The forms or pages are also be¬ 
ing laid out. As yet we see only in im¬ 
agination what you who now read see 
in material form. Just how the pages 
will finally look, and how well we have 
selected and provided in reading matter 
we can only know after the work is fin¬ 
ished and the printed pages are complete. 
It is our first experience in this de¬ 
parture ; and whatever the result we feel 
safe in promising that the future will 
show improvements. We have well-fixed 
ideals for this department. We have am¬ 
bitions to make this department of The 
R. N.-Y. a means of great service to the 
women of the American farms, and a 
source of inspiration and edification to 
them. 
But we cannot do it all. If we are 
to reach our ideal, it will be left to us 
only to plan and direct. You must help. 
We want you to tell us frankly the feat¬ 
ures of the department that do not in- 
terest you. which features you like best, 
and the things you would like but do not 
find in it. 
Then we have exceptional literary tal¬ 
ent in The R. N.-Y. family. Some of 
the best letters we have ever read come 
direct from the farm home. We would 
like to edit the department entirely 
thi'ough our own readers. Some write 
stories and others tell of their home ex¬ 
periences. We have women skilled in 
the art of letters and of the brush. We 
have teachei’s in the schools, doctors and 
nurses in the sick room, and lawyers in 
the courts. We have women in clubs, the 
Grange, in church work and in the social 
circle. Better than all we have cultured 
women and devoted mothers in the home. 
All of these have messages of interest 
and value for other women. Such mes¬ 
sages are always eloquent because they 
express personal feeling and the sorrows 
or joys of human sentiment. We invite 
these contributions. We not only invite 
them, we appeal to you for them. We 
believe that this help will come; and this 
confidence inspires us to the assurance 
that with this cooperation we will have a 
department that will be unique in this 
field of journalism. 
Country women will be interested in 
the subject of the Housewives’ League in 
this issue by Mrs. Julian Heath, Presi¬ 
dent of the National Housewives’ League. 
The annual fee of members is only 10 
cents. Any woman of good standing in 
her community may become a member 
and local leagues may be organized in 
any community. Full information may 
be secured by addressing Housewives’ 
League, 175 West SSth Sti’eet, New York 
City. 
First Burglar: “Any luck lately?” 
Second Burglar: “No. Worked all night 
on a safe, and when I got it blowed open 
it was a folding bed.”—Puck. 
Reporter (to womaxx’s rights agita¬ 
tor) : “And do you honestly believe that 
a woman should get a man’s wages?” 
Agitator (grimly humorous) : “It depends 
upon whether she’s marx-ied to him or 
not.”—Sydney Bulletin. 
