One of the worst and silliest things I know is to go back into the middle ages for those very articles that used to make our foremothers--I don’t think our forefathers troubled much about their houses--miserable, and when I see tiny diamond panes of glass, for example, when invention has given us large sheets of glass through which light comes, and by throwing open which we can admit as much air as possible; or when I hear of the wooden bedsteads, I feel like a Philistine entirely, and long to uplift my testimony on the great superiority of this present nineteenth century of ours, when we are nothing if we are not sensible, and ought to know enough to make use of all the beauty of past days, while we reject unconditionally the futile, unhealthy nonsense that clings to them. Still, after this no one will be surprised to hear that I consider a brass or iron and brass bedstead a _sine quâ non_. Nothing is so clean, so cheerful-looking, and so healthy. There are no draperies to catch dust or to give the sleeper a headache, and, moreover, I never have a valance--never will allow one. Why should there be one? Not one single thing of any sort or description should be put under the bed, which, in a servant’s room, or the room of an untidy person, serves as a regular hiding-place for boots, boxes, even soiled linen, and if there be nothing to hide there is no necessity that I can see for a valance. A brass and iron bedstead can be bought, full size, at Maple’s for 3_l._ 10_s._, and, of course, very much handsomer ones can be procured; but plain beds are much the best, for they can be rubbed free from dust in a very few moments, and always look clean because they are so. I do not think any one who has ever tried it can for one moment doubt that a spring mattress made entirely of finely woven chains is the very best and healthiest sort of bed that one can have, it never seems to get out of order, it is quickly made softer or harder by being wound up tighter or unwound, and, above all, it is easily kept clean, and is as easily disinfected, should any fever or other infectious disease attack the owner thereof.