Naturally persons of such airy inclinations and fervid temperament wouldn't want to be burdened with a whole lot of blankets and quilts when they go by-by. Obviously you can't take a really truly "beauty sleep" with several layers of bed-clothes piled up on you like the roof of a dug-out. The thing isn't done—not in any pictures that we have seen, that is. As a pious and embarrassed bachelor, of course, we speak of such matters purely from report and from such evidences as we have gleaned from the movies and from those bed-room scenes now so popular in stage-performances. Stage-beds never have any blankets. Their appointments always are of pink silk, and no conscientious actress would dream of pulling them up any higher than the lace-work on her nighty.
But consider the case of the modern husband. He, poor devil, is not hardened by going around the streets with his shirt laid open so as to expose everything from his collar-bone to his solar-plexus. Also his pants are of wool—or so the tailor claims—and they extend to his feet. If they were made of georgette (we got this from a department-store "ad") and cut off at the knee so as to display about three dollars' worth of transparent silk stocking, they might help to harden his constitution—also his nerve. But, as a matter of fact, he would probably get double pneumonia while the first policeman he met was dragging him off to the station. If he didn't get double pneumonia, he would certainly get three months.
Naturally such a man is soft and sensitive to cold. If he lets any draught into his room at night, he wants a nice, tame little draught that will coil up quietly under the dresser and stay there. His wife on the other hand, accustomed to the rigors of the open street with hardly any other defence than her natural beauty, insists on letting into the room one of those northern zephyrs that play about exposed street-corners in the month of January. That is where the trouble starts, and—well, when we finally get a divorce court in Canada, this will probably be regarded as one of the statutory causes.
Of course, it isn't only a man's wife that drives him into nightly cold storage. There is the pressure of public opinion, for instance. The same absurd force of custom which drags a man out of bed in the morning, blue and shivering, and plunges him into a tub full of icy water, directs that he shall leave his window open all night for fear of what the neighbors would think of him if he didn't.
We are a coward like everyone else, and we do it. We don't believe the health-hints we see in the magazines. We have no wife to bully us in the matter of the aeration of our boudoir. And yet we cower miserably under the clothes all winter long, while icy gales leap in through the window, chucking our garments off the chair where we pile them up, blowing the undress portraits of our favorite characters in ancient history, Helen of Troy, Venus, and Phryne, about the room, and reaching under the clothes to tickle our feet with icicles.
It isn't good for us. It isn't good for any man to spend the night with his head under the pillow instead of on top of it. But what are we to do about it? We don't dare keep our window closed—what would our landlady say, if she found out? She'd probably decide we had measles, and throw us out to prevent the house being quarantined.
And next morning! Great guns, but that room is cold! It would be just about right for a little Esquimau, but we are not a little Esquimau. We don't rub ourself all over with train-oil or whale-blubber. We don't even know how to induce a whale to blubber on us. Neither do we sleep in fur pyjamas, which also serve for business and social purposes. Little Esquimaus don't even have to put their hats on when they get up. They are all dressed as it is.
The terrible predicament of a civilized man dressing in a cold room is that he has to take off what little he has on before he can put on anything else. One's flannelette nighty may be no great shakes as a protection, but at least one has been able to warm it up a little during the night. And then to take it off, while your teeth chatter and your blood congeals—there are few sadder partings than this.
One's only safety lies in speed. If you could only see us as we leap—oh, with a chaperon, of course, dearie—no, no, we don't mean that we leap with a chaperon, but that it would be all right for you to see us if you brought a chaperon—oh, well, anyway, we certainly leap.
But it must be admitted that civilized male habiliments are not adapted to speedy dressing. Neither are female, for that matter, judging by the length of time we have to wait whenever we take anyone to the theatre. If they would only devise some sort of clothes—for the winter months, at any rate—that a man could jump into and fasten with one or two buttons! You know how a firehorse runs into his harness. Well, something along that line would do.