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the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to coldfrom fire to ice. They are "haled" out of their "beds," says Milton, by "harpyfooted furies"-fellows who come to call them. On my first movement towards the anticipation of getting up, I find that such parts of the sheets and bolster, as are exposed to the air of the room, are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that meets them is my own breath rolling forth, as if in the open air, like smoke out of a cottage chimney. Think of this symptom. Then I turn my eyes sideways and see the window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the servant comes in. "It is very cold this morning, is it not?" "Very cold, Sir." "Very cold indeed, isn't it?" "Very cold indeed, Sir." "More than usually so, isn't it, even for this weather?" (Here the servant's wit and good-nature are put to a considerable test, and the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) "Why, Sir.. I think it is." (Good creature! There is not a better, or more truth-telling servant going.) "I must rise, however-get me some warm water." Here comes a fine interval between the departure of the servant and the arrival of the hot water; during which, of course, it is of "no use" to get up. The hot water comes. "Is it quite hot?" "Yes, Sir." "Perhaps too hot for shaving: I must wait a little?" "No, Sir; it will just do." (There is an overnice propriety sometimes, an officious zeal of virtue, a little troublesome.) "Ohthe shirt-you must air my clean shirtlinen gets very damp this weather." "Yes, Sir." Here another delicious five minutes. A knock at the door. "Oh, the shirt-very well. My stockings-I think the stockings had better be aired, too." "Very well, Sir." Here another interval. At length everything is ready, except myself. I now, continues our incumbent (a happy word, by the bye, for a country vicar)-I now cannot help thinking a good deal-who can?-upon the unnecessary and villainous custom of

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shaving: it is a thing so unmanly (here I nestle closer)-so effeminate (here I recoil from an unlucky step into the colder part of the bed.)-No wonder that the Queen of France took part with the rebels against the degenerate King, her husband, who first affronted her smooth visage with a face like her own. The Emperor Julian never showed the luxuriancy of his genius to better advantage than in reviving the flowing beard. Look at Cardinal Bembo's picture-at Michael Angelo's at Titian's-at Shakespeare's -at Fletcher's-at Spenser's at Chaucer's at Alfred's-at Plato's-I could name a great man for every tick of my watch. Look at the Turks, a grave and otiose people. Think of Haroun Al Raschid and Bed-ridden Hassan. Think of Wortley Montagu, the worthy son of his mother, a man above the prejudice of his time. Look at the Persian gentlemen, whom one is ashamed of meeting about the suburbs, their dress and appearance are so much finer than our own. Lastly, think of the razor itself-how totally opposed to every sensation of bed-how cold, how edgy, how hard! how utterly different from anything like the warm and circling amplitude, which

Sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

Add to this, benumbed fingers, which may help you to cut yourself, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a ewer full of ice; and he that says there is nothing to oppose in all this, only shows, at any rate, that he has no merit in opposing it. Thomson the poet, who exclaims in his Seasons

Falsely luxurious! Will not man awake? used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no motive in getting up. He could imagine the good of rising; but then he could also imagine the good of lying still; and his exclamation, it must be allowed, was made upon summertime, not winter. We must proportion the argument to the individual character.

A money-getter may be drawn out of his bed by three and four pence; but this will not suffice for a student. A proud man may say, "What shall I think of myself, if I don't get up?" but the more humble one will be content to waive this prodigious notion of himself, out of respect to his kindly bed. The mechanical man shall get up without any ado at all; and so shall the barometer. An ingenious lier in bed will find hard matter of discussion even on the score of health and longevity. He will ask us for our proofs and precedents of the ill effects of lying later in cold weather; and sophisticate much on the advantages of an even temperature of body; of the natural propensity (pretty universal) to have one's way; and of the animals that roll themselves up, and sleep all the winter. As to longevity, he will ask whether the longest life is of necessity the best; and whether Holborn is the handsomest street in London.

We only know of one confounding, not to say confounded argument, fit to overturn the huge luxury, the "enormous bliss" of the vice in question. A lier in bed may be allowed to profess a disinterested indifference for his health or longevity; but while he is showing the reasonableness of consulting his own or one person's comfort, he must admit the proportionate claim of more than one; and the best way to deal with him is this, especially for a lady; for we earnestly recommend the use of that sex on such occasions, if not somewhat over-persuasive; since extremes have an awkward knack of meeting. First then, admit all the ingeniousness of what he says, telling him that the bar has been deprived of an excellent lawyer. Then look at him in the most good-natured manner in the world, with a mixture of assent and appeal in your countenance, and tell him that you are waiting breakfast for him; that you never like to breakfast without him; that you really want it, too; that the servants want theirs; that you shall not know how to get the house into

order, unless he rises; and that you are sure he would do things twenty times worse, even than getting out of his warm bed, to put them all into good humor and a state of comfort. Then, after having said this, throw in the comparatively indifferent matter, to him, about his health; but tell him that it is no indifferent matter to you; that the sight of his illness makes more people suffer than one; but that if, nevertheless, he really does feel so very sleepy and so very much refreshed by- Yet stay; we hardly know whether the frailty of aYes, yes;

say that, too, especially if you say it with sincerity; for if the weakness of human nature on the one hand and the vis inertia1 on the other, should lead him to take advantage of it once or twice, good-humor and sincerity form an irresistible junction at last; and are still better and warmer things than pillows and blankets.

Other little helps of appeal may be thrown in, as occasion requires. You may tell a lover, for instance, that lying in bed makes people corpulent; a father, that you wish him to complete the fine manly example he sets his children; a lady, that she will injure her bloom or her shape, which M. or W. admires so much; and a student or artist, that he is always so glad to have done a good day's work, in his best manner.

Reader. And pray, Mr. Indicator, how do you behave yourself in this respect?

Indic. Oh, Madam, perfectly, of course; like all advisers.

Reader. Nay, I allow that your mode of argument does not look quite so suspicious as the old way of sermonizing and severity, but I have my doubts, especially from that laugh of yours. If I should look in to-morrow morning

Indic. Ah, Madam, the look in of a face like yours does anything with me. It shall fetch me up at nine, if you please-six, I meant to say.

1"Force of inertia."

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DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE

CHARLES LAMB

Charles Lamb (1775-1834), one of the best loved of English essayists, has a delicate, subtle humor and a charmingly intimate style. Much of his work has a tender whimsicality, as in "Dream Children" (1822) or a kindly humor, as in "Poor Relations" (1823). Lamb's literary life was an escape from the difficulties of his everyday. He was devoted to the care of a sister who was periodically insane, and poverty made it necessary for him to serve an irksome clerkship in a London counting-house. Notwithstanding, Lamb's home became a rendezvous for the literary spirits of London-and of England, for that matter. As an essayist he wrote under the pseudonym of Elia, and the famous essays with a few exceptions first appeared in the columns of The London Magazine during the short period between 1820 and 1825. A first series, which contained "Dream Children," was published in 1823 in a volume entitled Elia. "Poor Relations" was printed in a second collection, The Last Essays of Elia, published in 1833 only a year before Lamb's death.

CHILDREN love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary greatuncle or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field,' who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene-so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their greatgrandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by every body, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and

This essay is largely autobiographical. Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother, was for fifty years housekeeper for the Plumer family in Hertfordshire, where Charles often spent his vacation.

yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry, too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer-here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till upon my looking grave, it desistedthe best dancer, I was saying, in the

county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said "those innocents would do her no harm"; and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she-and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grand-children, having us to the great house in the holydays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Cæsars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out-sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then-and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me-or basking in the crangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening, too, along with the oranges. and the limes in that grateful warmth

or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings,-I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of children. Here John slily deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them. for the present as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L,1 because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him over half the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out-and yet he loved the old great house and gardens, too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries—and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy-for he was a good bit older than me-many a mile when I could not walk for pain;-and how in after life he became lame-footed, too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there

1John Lamb, Charles's elder brother, who had recently died.

is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterward it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice Wn;1 and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and

1Ann Simmons, with whom Lamb had fallen in love on his visits to Hertfordshire.

denial meant in maidens when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech; "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name"-and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly. seated in my bachelor armchair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget' unchanged by my side-but John L., (or James Elia) was gone for

ever.

2 Charles's sister Mary.

POOR RELATIONS CHARLES LAMB

A POOR Relation-is the most irrelevant thing in nature,-a piece of impertinent correspondence,-an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity, an unwelcome remembrance, a perpetually recurring mortification,-a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, a drawback upon success,—a rebuke to your rising,-a stain in your blood, a blot on your 'scutcheon,—a rent in your garment,-a death's head at your banquet,-Agathocles' pot,-a Mordecai in your gate,-a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path,-a frog in your chamber,—a fly in your ointment,

a mote in your eye,—a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends,-the one thing not needful,-the hail in harvest, the ounce of sour in a pound of

sweet.

He

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr. -." A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and, at the same time, seems to despair of, entertainment. entereth smiling and-embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and -draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time-when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have company, but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your

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