Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1873 — “ Cording " the Bedstead. [ARTICLE]

“ Cording " the Bedstead.

It is a little singular why your wife’s mother will persist in sleeping on a cord bedstead. But she does. You don’t think so much of this until you are called upon to put it up, which event generally takes place in the evening. The bedstead has been cleaned in the afternoon, and having been soaked through with hot water is now ready for putting up, Your wife holds the lamp and takes charge of the conversation. The rope has been under water several times in .the course of the cleaning, and having swollen to a diameter greater than the holes in the rails has also got into a fit of coiling up into mysterious and very intricate forms. You at first wonder at this, but pretty soon wonder ceases to be a virtue, and you scold. The thread which has been wound around’the end of the rope to facilitate its introduction into the holes has come off, and you have to roll it up again. Then, after you have pulled through eight holes, your wife makes the discovery that you have started wrong. The way that rope comes out of those holes again makes your wife get closer to the door. ■ Then you try again, and get it tangled in your legs. ‘By this time you notice that this is the smallest bed-room in the house, and von call the attention of your wife to the fact by observing! “Why on earth don’t you open the door? Do you want to smother me?” Stfe opens the door and you start again, and she helps you with the lamp. First she puts it on the wrong side of the rail, then she moves it so the heat comes up from the chimney and scorches your nose. Just as you need it the most you lose sight of it entirely, ancLlurning around find her examining the wall to see how that Irfan has put on the whitewash. This excites you, and brings out the perspiration in greater profusion, and you declare you will kick the bedstead out of doors if slie doesn’t come around with.that light. Then she comes around. Finally the cord is laid all right, and you proceed io execute the \ery__ delicate job of tightening ft: The lower* ropes are first walked over. This is done by stepping on the first one and sinking it down, hanging to the head-board with the clutch of death. Then you step with the other foot on the next line, spring that down, lose your balance, grab for the headboard, miss it. and come down in a heap. This is repeated more or less times across the length of the bed, the only variety being the new places you bruise. The top cords are tightened in another way, and you now proceed to that. You first put one foot on each rail, which spreads you some, and as you do it the frightful thought strikes you that, if one of these feet should slip over, nothing on earth would prevent you from being split through to the chin. Then you pull up the first rope until vour eyes seem to be on tbe*point of rolling out of their sockets, and tire blood in your veins fairly groans, and on being convinced that you can’t pull it any further without, crippling yourself for life, you catch hold of the* next rope and draw that up, and grunt,. Then xou movc along to the next, and pull that tip, and grunt again. Just as you have got to the “middle and commence to think that you are about through, even if your joints will never again set as they did before, you some way or other miss the connection, and find that you have got to go back and do it all over. Here you pause for aT few minute^.of oracular refreshment, and then slowly and carefully work your way back. You don’t jump down and walk back, because you are afraid to spread out in that way again. You sort of waddle back, working the way inch by inch, and with consummate patience. A man thus stretched across a bedstead never becomes so excited as to lose his presence of mind. It would be instant death if he did. Then he goes over it again, waddling and pulling, groaning and grunting, while his wife moves around with the lamp, and tells him to take it easy, and not scratch the bedstead any more than he can help, and that she can’t tell which creaks the most, he or the bedstead. And after he gets through she has the audacity to ask him to bring in the feather beds. In the dead of night that man will steal up to that room and look at the bedstead and swear. —Banbury Neirs.