In these days of public wash-houses, public laundries, and water supply, few know the discomfort of a washing day in a workman's home, or of the feuds of a party pump. One pump in a yard had to serve several families. Quarrels arose as to who should first have the use of it. Sir Edwin Chadwick told me that more dissensions arose over party pumps in a day than a dozen preachers could reconcile in a week. Now the poorest house has a water tap, which might be called moral, seeing the ill-feeling it prevents. So long as washing had to be done at home, it took place in the kitchen, which was also the dining-room of a poor family. When the husband came home to his meals, damp clothes were hanging on lines over his head, and dripping on to his plate. The children were in the way, and sometimes the wrong child had its ears boxed because, in the steam, the mother could not see which was which. This would give rise to further expressions which kept the Recording Angel, of whom Sterne tells us, very busy, whom the public wash-houses set free for other, though scarcely less repugnant duty. In that day sleeping rooms led to deplorable additions to the register of "idle words." The introduction of iron bedsteads began a new era of midnight morality. As a wandering speaker I dreaded the wooden bedstead of cottage, lodging-house or inn. Fleas I did not much care for, and had no ill-will towards them. They were too little to be responsible for what they did; while the malodorous bug is big enough to know better. Once in Windsor I selected an inn with a white portico, having an air of pastoral cleanliness. The four-poster in my room, with its white curtains, was a further assurance of repose. The Boers were not more skilful in attack and retreat than the enemies I found in the field. Lighted candles did not drive them from the kopje pillow where they fought. In Sheffield, in 1840, I asked the landlady for an uninhabited room. A cleaner looking, white-washed chamber never greeted my eyes. But I soon found that a whole battalion of red-coated cannibals were stationed there, on active service. Wooden bedsteads in the houses of the poor were the fortresses of the enemy, which then possessed the land. Iron bedsteads have ended this, and given to the workman two hours more sleep at night than was possible before that merciful invention. A gain of two hours for seven nights amounted to a day's holiday a week. Besides, these nocturnal irritations were a fruitful source of tenemental sin, from which iron bedsteads have saved residents and wayfarers.