HOW NATIONS SLEEP.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 20, 14 May 1892, Page 492

HOW NATIONS SLEEP.

The European or American in order to sleep well, ordinarily requires a downy pillow under his head ; but the Japanese, stretching himself upon a rush mat on the floor puts a hard, square block of wood under his head and does not sleep well if he does not have it. The Chinese makes great account of his bed, which is very low indeed—scarcely rising from the floor—but is often carved exquisitely of wood ; but it never occurs to him to make it any softer than rush-mats render it. While the people of northern countries cannot sleep unless they have plenty of room to stretch out their legs, the inhabitants of the tropics often curl themselves up like monkeys at the lower angle of a suspended hammock, and sleep soundly in that position. The robnst American often covers himself with a pair of blankets and throws his windows open to the air, even in the winter time, and he does not complain if he finds a little drift of snow across the top of his bed in the morning. The Russian, on the contrary, likes no sleepingplace so well as the top of the big soapstone stove in his domicile. Crawling out of this blistering bed in the morning, he likes to take a plunge in a cold stream, even if he has to break through the ice to get into it. The Laplander crawls, head and all, into a bag made of reindeer skin, and sleeps, warm and comfortable, within it. The East Indian, at the other end of the world, also has a sleeping-bag but it is more porous than the Laplander’s. Its purpose is to keep out mosquitoes more than to keep the sleeper warm. While the American still clings to his feather pillow, heissteadily discarding his old-fashioned featherbed in favour of the hair or straw mattress. The featherbed is relegated to the country, and many people who slept on it all through their childhood find themselves upon it in their maturity. The Germans not only sleep upon a feather-bed, but underneath one. The feather-

covering used in Germany, however, is not as large or thick as the one which is used as a mattress, and the foreigner who undertakes to sleep beneath it often finds his feet Buffering from cold, while his shoulders are suffering from heat.