STRANGE SLEEPING PLACES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9711, 5 January 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

STRANGE SLEEPING PLACES.

Sons people can sleep only when warmly ensconced in their own beds, and cannot obtain any sleep elsewhere. Sometimes even a strange bed is enough to banish their repose. Other people, however, can sleep almost anywhere, and compose themselves to rest almost as placidly in a railway train during a long journey as in a comfortable arm-chair for an after-dinner nap. Noise and racket of any kind whatever seem to hare no effect on such conveniently gifted individuals, and sleep appears to come at their call, even without the exhaustion of fatigue, which most people find necessary before they can go to sleep in unusual positions or circumstances. A more remarkable position ill which to fall asleep can hardly be conceived than that assumed by a workman engaged in slating the roof of some new building. He was seen in full daylight, after having taken his midday meal, to lay himself down on the sloping roof only a foot or two from the eaves, at a height from the ground of fully GOffc, and then go to sleep quite composedly. When spoken toon the subject he said he did it regularly, whenever he felt inclined for a nap, and that he was not in the least afraid of falling over, as the moment he moved he at once awoke, and he was so accustomed to moVing about in such positions that there was not the slightest danger. One could not help shuddering at the bare idea of going to sleep, or even ot lying down, in such a precarious situation. Not many such freaks can be recorded of men in their sober senses, but the pranks of men under the influence of liquor in the matter of sleep are innumerable. The drunken man sets out for home, and presently imagines he has arrived, and proceeds to take off his clothes, so that he is often found lying fast asleep in some extraordinary and frequently dangerous position. One man was found asleep ou the parapet of a bridge, a stone ledge not more than eighteen inches wide, and, accordingly, very unreliable considered as a bed. His clothes were all neatly folded up on the pavement, and had he not been seen by a late chance passer-by, there was every likelihood that he would either have caught his death of cold or have toppled over into the river beneath. \ Less precarious, though'nob much more comfortable, was the position taken up by a townsman, who was found by the early policeman sound asleep in an area, into which he had climbed, at some risk and certainly with difficulty, after carefully depositing his garments 011 the pavement and hanging his watch on a convenient hook on the wall. He got a rude awaking, and paid for bis open-air lodging by a police court fine.

Many a drouthy farmer has fallen into a ditch, wet or dry making little odds, on his way home from market), and slept, there where he lay until morning. Sometime? it strikes his muddled wits that he is going to bed in the usual way, ao off come his clothes. A cornfield is not quite such a bad resting-place, but who would, for choice, select a turnip-field? But it is all one to the tired tippler, homeward bound with rather more than he can carry under his belt. A belated youngster making bis way home very lato one evening saw a countryman of his acquaintance also homeward bound, but with very unsteady steps, taking a short cut across a field, when he was brought up by a five-barred gate. Taking this evidently for bis own house door, he began to knock, but getting no reply lie composedly sat down on a convenient stone, and the amused spectator heard him mutter, as he proceeded to untie his boots, " Well, well, if they won't let me in, I must just make the best of it where I am." Had he been left alone he would no doubt have taken off most of his clothes and laid himself down to sleep where he was, but this proceeding was, with some difficulty, stopped, and he was got home to more comfortable quarters. A variation of this prank of going to sleep in the open air was recently recorded in an Edinburgh newspaper. Shortly after four o'clock one morning a policeman found lying on the bulwark at Trinity, close to the pier, a suit of tweed clothes, socks, shoes, necktie, a watch and chain, pipe and tobacco, and a shilling. The pocket of the coat contained an address in a street in Edinburgh, and when the police called there thay found the mau lying in bed fast asleep, having walked all the way—some two or three miles at —minus his clothing. Nob infrequently some poor tramp, attracted by the warmth of a lime-kiln, has laid down to sleep there, only to moot his death from the suffocating fumes.