Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1920 — “ON DOWNY BEDS OF EASE” [ARTICLE]

“ON DOWNY BEDS OF EASE”

Oldtimera May Recall, With Thia Writer, Their Experience With the Old Feather Mattress. Steeping Id a featherbed used to be easy for me. I did it very fluently.' I used to be able to sleep with one under me and one over me. That was in the upper and unfinished half-story of our country house that was fitted with a better air-cooled system than any air-cooled car you ever rode in! The only heat ip the house was In a big fireplace 40 feet- or so from where some of us slept in the coldest weather. The tin cup of water sometimes set in the window in case a feller got dry in the night would freeze solid and have a frappe white wart in the center, come morning. And all over the part of the upper featherbed where my breath had been distributed was a fine skating rink. A little sloping, it is true, but with ice thick enough to bold. These ticks were filled with geeseWhTskers that mother and I had extracted from the epidermises of reluctant honkers, a bunch at a time, through the spring and summer and early fall months. — - Sometimes when an inexperienced goose-barber would jerk out some of thd meat atoHg’with file basement of the feathers, the result was an unsavory condition in the tick, which nothing would eradicate except a lofig pendulous time over the palings. The air would get in its work in that way, and the sleeper on or under said bed would not have so many dreams about roosting tn a glue factory.

A few years ago when I had become mattress broke, I was parked in a small room at a country hotel and sicked onto a large embonpoint featherbed. I looked at it a long time before taking the plunge. Finally I jumped in and at once went beyond my depth. I sent up downy bubbles, trod feathers, swam little-dog fashion; used the breast stroke and the Australian Crawl, and finally, just as I was about to go down for the last time, I was guided to the surface by the smell of the seven-skunk-power oil stove, whereupon I took a deep and much-needed breath, grabbed a bedpost for safety, and got out. Then I tied two pillows to me for life-preservers and re-embarked, with an old pair of candle-molds I found In the closet as a breathing tube and periscope combined. That was years ago, and even yet I sneeze feathers every once in awhile. —Farm Life.