Here’s a body—there’s a bed!
There’s a pillow—here’s a head!
There’s a curtain—here’s a light!
There’s a puff—and so Good Night!
It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.
How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,—as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber: nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster—or rather I must have slept “like winkin,” for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a voice cried “Sleep no more!”
It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon—but somehow I’ve oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by!”
“The devil it is!—then I have lost my place!”