CHAPTER III.
BEDS AND BEDDING.
HEN we discuss a bedroom, the bed
I ought certainly to be the first thing
considered. Here at least, is a
great improvement within even the
last forty or fifty years. Where
are now those awful four-posters, so often
surmounted by huge wooden knobs or plumes of
feathers, or which even offered hideously carved
griffin's heads to superintend your slumbers?
Gone, "quite gone," as children say. At first we
ran as usual into the opposite extreme, and
bestowed ourselves at night in frightful and vulgar
frames of cast iron, ornamented with tawdry gilt or
bronze scroll-work, but such things are seldom seen
now, and even the cheap common iron or brass
bedstead of the present day has at least the merit
of simplicity. Its plain rails at foot and head are
a vast improvement on the fantastic patterns of
