Persons, too, are said to "die hard," to quote a popular phrase, or, in other words, to have a painful and prolonged death, when there are pigeons' feathers in the bed. Hence, some will not allow dying persons to lie on a feather bed at all, maintaining that it very much increases the pain, and retards the inevitable crisis of their departure. Many, on the other hand, have a superstitious feeling that it is a great misfortune, nay, even a judgment, not to die in a bed. Many are the anecdotes illustrative of the former superstition, one or two of which we will quote. Thus a Sussex nurse one day told the wife of her clergyman that "never did she see any one die so hard as old Master Short; and at last she thought (though his daughter said there were none) that there must be game-feathers in the bed. She, therefore, tried to pull it from under him, but he was a heavy man and she could not manage it alone, and there was no one with him but herself, and so she got a rope and tied it round him and pulled him by it off the bed, and he went off in a minute quite comfortable, just like a lamb." Again, one day, when an old woman near Yarmouth was speaking of the burning of game-feathers as a precaution in case of death, her neighbours said to her, "Of course we don't believe that can have anything to do with a hard death," whereupon she replied, "Then you yourself use such feathers." "Oh, no; we always burn them, unless we want them for a chair-cushion." The same notion prevails in Yorkshire with regard to cocks' feathers. According to another popular fancy a person cannot die comfortably under the cross-beam of a house, and we are told of the case of a man of whom it was said at his death, that after many hours' hard dying, being removed from the position under the cross-beam, he departed peaceably.