Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1874 — The Boys In Bed. [ARTICLE]

The Boys In Bed.

Whoever has lifted the curtains of boys’ alcoves, soon after their inmates have gone to bed, and has looked lovingly in, has seen a pretty sight. Generally their faces are lying most restfully, with hand under cheek, and in many cases look strangely jmHnger than when awake, and often very infantile, as if some trick of older expression which they had been taught to wear by day had been dropped the moment the young ambitious will had lost control. The lids lie shut over bright, busy eyes; the air is gently and evenly fanned by ♦coming and going breaths; there is a little crooked mound in the bed; along the bed’s foot, or on a chair beside, are the day clothes, sometimes neatly folded, sometimes huddled off in a hurry; bulging with balls, or, in the lesser fellows, marbles; stained with the earth of many fields where woodchucks have been trapped, or perhaps torn with the roughnesses of trees on which squirrels have been sought; perhaps wet and mired with the smooth black or gray mud from marshes, or the oozy banks of streams where muskrats have been tracked. Under the bed's foot lie the shoes —one on its side—with the gray and white socks, now creased and soiled, thrown across them; and there, in their little cells, squared in the great mass of night, heedless how the earth whirls away with them or how the world goes, who is thinking of them or what is doing at home, the busiest people in the world are resting for the morrow.— From Lowell'B li Antony Blade.”