Nightcap

“ These pepper-fogeys used to be unmercifully ridiculed, and told to pull down a nightcap over their ears and toddle off to bed, and many are the doggerel verses in which the nightcap147 figures. Yes, fun was poked at the pepper-fogeys with their nightcaps, just because they were so little known. And why should not one wish for a nightcap? ”

“ All craftsmen wore aprons, but these were different; the blacksmith had a leathern apron, the grocer a white apron, the vintner a blue apron, and so on. One could formerly recognise a man’s trade by his dress and appearance.
I find that this century introduced the use of the nightcap, perhaps for the sake of quiet, because, with the bawling of the watchman, the cry of the chimney-sweep, and the noise of the laundresses, who began about midnight, there was almost as much noise at night as by day. ”

“ The punishment is to wear your nightcap all the next day, even in chapel. In this kind of weather it is very pleasant and good for the health, and though the nuns you meet cry 'Shame! shame!' that hurts nobody. If in the course of a fortnight you have worn many nightcaps, the Superior threatens not to allow you to go out on the next holiday, but she either forgets or forgives you at the request of your parents. When you have worn the nightcap so long that it seems to have grown on your head, you are locked up for a day. ”

“ Before either spoke, a head, in a nightcap so large and beruffled that it looked like a cabbage, popped out of a room farther down the hall, and an astonished voice exclaimed
"What in the world are you doing about so early?" ”

“ If you get a nightcap, you may consider yourself lucky above all mortal men. You go to bed, but sleep there is none, for you have to rise [Pg 189] next morning long before the usual hour, and the anticipatory sense of what you have to go through that day fills every nook and cranny of your mind. You awake to a rush of children and servants on the stairs ”

“ In Boston we had three hours to spare; so we sent our luggage,—that is, my trunk—to the Worcester Depot, and walked leisurely ourselves. I had a little shopping to do, to complete my outfit for the journey,—a very little shopping,—only a nightcap or two. Ordinarily such a thing is a matter of small moment, but in my case the subject had swollen into unnatural dimensions. Nightcaps are not generally considered healthy,—at least not by physicians. Nature has given to the head its sufficient and appropriate covering, the hair. ”

“ Who could have thought of a ghost in a Kilmarnock nightcap!”
At the Leipsic fair, lodgings are often very scarce, and on one occasion a stranger, who had arrived late in the evening, had some difficulty in finding a bed. ”

“ Since everyone in the days of our grandfathers wore a nightcap, and fancied he could not go to sleep without one, so the modern substitute is a glass of spirits just before retiring, with a view to making him feel drowsy ”

“ There is an old notion, quite likely to be true, that a nightcap carries in it the dreams of its first owner, or that anything laid over a sleeper's head will bring away the dream. One of the stories which used to put a lump in my throat as a child was of an old backwoodsman who by that means found out that his dog stole hams from the storeroom. ”

“ Experience proves, that it neither protects the wearer from disease, nor allays pain.
Nightcaps destroy the hair, cause its premature decay, and have an injurious tendency to those troubled with congestion in the head, head-aches, etc.; such people cannot have their bedrooms too cold. There is much sense in the old adage—“Keep the head cold, and the feet warm.” Previously to sleeping without a nightcap, and washing my head every morning with cold water, I was constantly tormented with cold in the head, from which I am now perfectly free. ”

“ Can't you get to sleep? Awful nuisance, insomnia, I know."
"Well, when people are so tactless as to sit up on deck just over one's head, stamping and shouting out ribald songs...."
But before his indignant fellow-passenger could finish his sentence, Peter Oiland was in his berth and snoring—snoring so emphatically, indeed, that he of the nightcap, after having listened to this new melody for three solid hours, got up in despair and went off to lie down on a sofa in the saloon. ”

“ A nightcap deck’d his brows instead of bay, A cap by night—a stocking all the day! ”

“ It might prove a serious thing for one to be frightened by a nightcap on a bedpost, for a fright affects unfavorably the nervous system, but a nightcap on a bedpost is in itself a very harmless thing.
The sixth evening closed with an original poem by Mr. Beal.
[184]
CHAPTER XI. COLOGNE. Bonn.—Holy Cologne.—The Story of the Mysterious Architect.—“Unfinished and Unknown.”—Visit to Cologne Cathedral.—The Tomb of the Magi.—The Church of Skulls.—Queer Relics.—The Story and Legend of Charlemagne.—The Story and Legend of Barbarossa. ”

“ If slightest cause for uneasiness about bank, withdraw at once and keep in own rooms like good chap.
"A. J. R. "P. S.—Other reasons, as you shall hear."
There was a nice nightcap for a puzzled head! I had made rather an evening of it, what with increase of funds and decrease of anxiety, but this cryptic admonition spoiled the remainder of my night. ”

“ As soon as one of their boys can walk, he is provided with a long bright red nightcap; and one of their men would as soon think of going afloat without his head, as without that indispensable appendage to it. ”

“ I thought with horror of the inn at Chasseradès and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house. ”

“ I was very glad to see most of our own people at school and prayers, but I believe some have reserved the ‘nightcap’ till nearer bed-time. When the drowsiness is over I believe a craving for food results, and then the appetite is appeased even if it be in the middle of the night. Certainly, however, a man is never quarrelsome over his cups, but a drowsiness and torpor creep over the most quarrelsome and irrepressive after the draught. ”

“ The old myth of "night air" being injurious has long since been exploded, and thousands of people of delicate health, especially those who have weak throat or lungs, are regaining health by sleeping out of doors or with the windows wide open. The only essential in sleeping out of doors or in a room with a low temperature is that the body be kept warm and the head be protected from strong drafts by a nightcap or hood. ”

“ Many persons have been cured of the same complaint by sleeping in woollen nightcaps. The morbid action in these cases is always of a feeble nature. With this remedy, tonics, particularly the bark and cold bath, will be proper. ”

“ They are not all pretty, but they are particularly clean and neat. There is nothing remarkable in the men’s dress, only that I observe on a Sunday they wear white nightcaps: every man that I can see now out of my window has one on ”

“ Often and often, when allowed to sleep in the Open air at night-time, instead of experiencing all the horrors of a night in the common cell, the cool night-air would send me off into a sound sleep, from which I would start up from some confused dream of old days, and, looking up to the sky, would wonder to myself, half awake and half asleep, which was the dream and which the reality, the old loved scenes, or the prison of es-Saier at Omdurman. ”

“ He returned to the inn and closed the window without fearing to make a noise, and went to bed at once. His moral and physical lassitude was certain to bring him sleep. In a very short time after laying his head on his mattress, he fell into that first fantastic somnolence which precedes the deepest sleep. The senses then grew numb, and life is abolished by degrees; thoughts are incomplete, and the last quivering of our consciousness seems like a sort of reverie. "How heavy the air is!" ”

“ The night camp is made beside a singing stream or a bubbling spring; the night horses are caught and staked; there is a roaring, merry fire of fragrant cedar boughs; a side of fat ribs is roasting on a spit before the fire, its sweet juices hissing as they drop into the flames, and sending off odors to drive one ravenous; the rich amber contents of the coffee pot is so full of life and strength that it is well-nigh bursting the lid with joy over the vitality and stimulus it is to bring you. Supper eaten, there follow pipe and cigarette, jest and bandinage [Transcriber's note: badinage?] ”

“ In older times, when houses were not well heated, many persons very sensibly wore night caps. Now that a return to cold fresh air in the sleeping room has come many will have to resume the old night-cap habit in spite of cosmetic objections to it. These may seem little things, but they count very much in relieving disturbed sleep. The curious thing about them is that patients themselves seldom realize that certain common-sense regulations are more important for sleep than formal remedies. They want to be "cured" of their insomnia, not relieved by suggestion. ”

“ A cold perspiration broke out all over me; the firing had now reached the very door of the hotel. I hastily blew out my night light (I always like to sleep with a light in my room, it seems such company, if one should happen to wake in the night) , lest its glimmer should attract the attention of the foe; I then ventured to creep out of bed, and cautiously to draw back about an inch of the window-curtain, and to peep out. ”

“ How disappointing it is in such a night to wake after a short doze, thinking it must be near morning, and to find that it is just eleven o’clock, then dozing again, waking up with a start, and discovering by the dim light of the cabin lamp that it is not yet one. And how glad one feels when the morning dawns through the thick little pane of [27] glass, and the scrubbing of the deck is heard overhead. Now it is day; the terrors of the night are passed, fear vanishes like an uneasy dream. ”

“ Almost everywhere I went in England I used to go up to bed to find the windows of my room closed and locked under the drawn blinds—part of the housemaid's preparations for the night; whereas I am accustomed to sleep with three wide open, and to wish that roof and walls could be dispensed with. Although I adjusted myself so easily to the feather-bed, I drew the line at the shut-up room; the fresh night air was indispensable. But I would sometimes find the bedclothes damp in the morning, and the clothes I had taken off too clammy to put on again. ”

“ On my return to the inn, I have the great square all to myself save for a rising moon,—in fact, I wonder whether I have not the whole of Beauvais to myself, for I have not met a dozen of my kind since I started out,—but as the air is cold [171] and the moonlight seems very old to-night, let us to bed, where I, at least, dream of disjointed churches and queer round towers when I dream of anything at all,—which is not often, for sleep after these rushing rides is as profound as death. ”

“ A night arrival at a strange hotel is always more or less depressing—on this occasion it is especially so; we pass from the dim obscurity of the streets without to a still greater obscurity within. Preceded by a wisp of a lad we ascend the stairs and pass through a dimly-lighted corridor; not the ghost of a sound follows us, the echo of our footsteps is muffled in the thick carpet, and swallowed up in the brooding silence. ”

“ Those who go to bed at midnight or thereafter use several hours of daylight in the early morning for sleeping. I realize that there are nocturnal animals and that the human race has developed nocturnal habits to a certain extent, but the human race and the animal life of the world generally have followed the habit through the ages of sleeping at night. Without doubt a revolutionary change in this habit has more or less effect upon the restful character of our sleep. ”

“ Just keep your ears open any time after midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone attic of a dark night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things seem to be alive. ”

“ Nevertheless, he now added the table and chair to the barricade within the cupboard, put the lamp down on the floor by the window to burn itself out, and went back to bed, to again fall asleep.
But now he dreamed a dream which was so consequent in its happenings, and which remained so clearly impressed upon his mind next morning, that he could call it up with absolute accuracy of detail across the intervening years.
In this dream he stood in the sordid attic, and a man, either himself or another, lay sleeping in the bed. ”

“ The dim little lamp at the entrance burns night after night--often far into the small hours, sometimes till daybreak--and the solemn citizen who has been belated at some Christening feast or other great festivity, and now walks home with wife and daughter in the silent night through the deserted streets, and past the city cellars, often sees a dim light shine through the unwashed windows, and hears perhaps low confused voices, which seem to rise from the bowels of the earth and make an uncanny impression at that hour and in that place. ”