I say there are people, and the best kind of people too, who much prefer this style of entertainment; but they should not rest there. They should inaugurate something better in their place, instead only of retiring in disgust under the shelter of their own roofs, and living only for their own family circles. They owe a duty also to society, and it should be paid by setting a sensible example of old-fashioned simplicity in hospitality, which in time may reform this matter. People who value their brains want them in decent condition for the next morning, and the next morning after that, and cannot afford to waste them in this manner. It is a matter of dollars and cents with them, I'd have you to know, as well as a matter of taste; if, indeed, I may be pardoned for putting forward an idea so practical. They wish to retire early, for one thing; they prefer out-door air for another, when they are off duty with the pen, instead that of a close, stifled room, and the spectacle of feeding and drinking till sense and wit give out. This is plain talking, but it won't hurt you, my friends, to have a little occasionally.
A SLEEPLESS NIGHT.
You know what it is to lie awake at night, I suppose, while every lumpish human creature in the house is sleeping, regardless of the perspiration standing in drops on your bewitched forehead; regardless of your twitching fingers, and kicking toes, and glaring, distended eyes; regardless of your increasing disgust at each miserable moment at the monotonous tap, tap, tap, of solitary heels on the forsaken sidewalk; regardless of your meditated vengeance on the morrow, should you perchance survive to see it, upon the owner of that flapping-blind across the way, which has been slamming fore-and-aft all night, and yet never dropped, as you hoped it might, on somebody's or anybody's head—you didn't care whose, so that you might have been delivered from the nuisance.
In vain have you tried the humbugging recipe of saying the Multiplication Table; in vain have you repeated poetry by the yard, or counted one hundred; in vain have you conjugated verbs, or done any of the foolish things recommended in such cases. Two o'clock has just struck, and no somniferous result has followed. Well—if you can't sleep, you won't sleep, that's all. You'll just get up, and strike a light and read. You do it; but the fire is low, and cold shivers run up and down your back-bone. You're hungry! yes—that must be it. You'll go to the closet, and get a bit of cold chicken you wot of. Good heavens! if those lumpish, snoring wretches haven't devoured it before going to bed. You go look at the creature vindictively; you know just who would be capable of such a meanness. She has slept there these three hours, on the strength of that bit of purloined chicken—your chicken—while you haven't closed an eyelash. She will sleep comfortably till daylight; and get up with a clear head, and refreshed limbs, to breakfast. Then she will eat, like a great healthy animal, while food looks perfectly nauseous to you, who will then be too exhausted to be hungry. You look at the creature again, and think of Judith and Holofernes; and don't wonder as you used at Judith. Indeed, she seems to you at that moment rather an estimable person than otherwise; and as to pitying Holofernes, why should you pity anybody who could sleep?
You walk to the window. It is some comfort that the stars have to wink all night as well as you. And there's a policeman, dragging up and down in the cold, and clapping his hands across his breast to keep warm. Good! you're glad of it. Four o'clock! Gracious! how you will feel to-morrow. If you only had a bottle of ale to make you stupid and drowsy. And sure enough, now you think of it, there is just one left. You seize it! Why—somebody has unwired the cork. Merciful man! it is only Ink. Now, that's a little too much for a tired soul. Suppose you should begin and run from the top of the stairs to the bottom, as fast and as loud as you could, and wake up the whole family. And as the vision of terrified night-gowns rises before your mental vision, you commence grinning noiselessly like a maniac; then laughing hysterically; then crying outright; and the next thing you know it is eight o'clock in the morning, and coffee and rolls and beefsteak are awaiting your advent.
And as to musquitoes. Ah! you too have suffered. You have lain, hour after hour, listening to that never-ceasing war-song, till you were as nervous as a hump-backed cat face to face with Jowler in a corner. You have "turned over;" you have lain on your side, lain on your back, lain on your face, spite of your prominent nose. You have doubled your fists up under your arm-pits, and twisted your feet into hard knots under your night-clothes, to no avail. You have then fallen back on your dignity and the pigmy-ness of your tormentors, and folding your arms resolutely over your chest, and looking fiercely up to the ceiling, exclaimed:
"Come one—come all—this bed shall fly
From its stout legs as soon as I!"