STRANGE SLEEPING PLACES.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1933, Page 7 (Supplement)

STRANGE SLEEPING PLACES.

“The Swiss beds are good and so are the Swedish, but that, I daresay, is because they are often no different from English ones,” states an overseas writer. “At The Hague my old-fashioned bed was in a recess in the wall, and though I seemed very near to the man next door, nevertheless the recess was very snug and protective. I felt: ‘Now I have truly retired and can in no circumstances be disturbed.’ “I was told that this ‘bed in the wall’ idea is a fashion, in Holland and that, indeed, families go to sleep in, as it were, drawers pulled out from the wall, and that they lie in tiers, father at the bottom and baby at the top; which must be most awkward, I should think, when baby cries, and mother has to climb over the rest of the family. “In Madeira I was offered a mosquito net but rejected it and was bitten for my folly. Of beds I detest (though I don’t detest any of them much) are those which make the bottom sheet serve also as pillow slip for the bottom so that, if you. essay to put your watch underneath (as' I do); you are apt to dream you are sleeping on Stonehenge.”

English Pronunciation. A story is going the round in theatrical circles of a certain Hollywood “star” sent over to England recently by her directors for the purpose of improving her accent and idiom. She studied assiduously, and with a view to acquiring all those little tricks of speech that convey “bon ton” in English society. She grappled with, and overcame, perplexities of pronunciation provided by the aristocracy in such name as Wemyss, Marjoribanks, Colquhoun, and Cholmondeley, and she was beginning to congratulate herself upon her proficiency. Another month or so, she thought, would do it—and she began to figure out the value of her learning in units of a thousand dollars weekly. Then, taking up a newspaper in an idle moment, she glanced through the screen news. Her eyes caught the heading, “Dinner-at-Eight Pronounced Dynamic Achievement.” She packed her trunks and left London by the next boat train.