25. _Beds and Bed-rooms._—A German sleeping-room presents a real paradox—beds that are at once plural and singular—plural in number, but singular in office. One would suppose that all the men in that country were monks, and all the women nuns. You look in vain for the large and comfortable bed, on which John Bull and his spouse are accustomed to repose when at home. Nothing of the kind will you see here! From the moment that a married couple set foot on the Continent, the wife is divorced, if not “_a mensa_” at least “_a thoro_.” I have said that the German beds are _singular_. They are so in every sense of the word! In other countries, they are designed to promote rest and sleep. In this they act like strong coffee or green tea taken at ten o’clock. In a German bed, the two extremities of the victim are “perched up aloft,” while the body is “under hatches.” The only personage who can attain anything like horizontality in these cribs, is the corporation gourmand after a good eight o’clock table-d’hôte. If he turn in, or rather turn _over_ on his face, with his feet on the taffrail, and his stomach stowed in midships, he will be able to bring his head, his spine, and his heels into something approaching a right line. In this position he will have the great advantage of sleeping on his supper, and thus evading the pressure of the night-mare. When the woolsack is laid over the traveller’s body, the whole resembles the old moon in the lap of the new. It is very fortunate for John and Jane Bull that before they sojourn long in Germany their travelling constitutions will have begun, like new clothes, to suit them—and, which is of greater consequence, they will have got rid of the most inconvenient article, by far, of their luggage—(and that is saying a good deal, when a lady’s baggage is in transit)—namely the—idea of COMFORT—an article which even the douanier never searches for, as being not only out of his beat, but out of his mother tongue!