I was visiting my friend Nicholas von Spoopendyke over in New York. He
has a splendid mansion away uptown, very handsomely furnished. One day
he took me all over the house. His bedroom was beautiful indeed, all
furnished with rich old mahogany polished like a looking-glass. I was
admiring the bed. It was a very old "Napoleon," most finely veneered and
carved, and the bed was faultlessly made up, with a spotless white
counterpane, level as a board and not a wrinkle in sight. Beautiful!
"That's my white elephant," said Spoopendyke. "I always walk round it
and keep my distance. When I was first married and before I knew the
rules of the house, I sat down on the side of the bed to take off my
shoes--once. I've never done that since. Say--that's a mighty fine bed,
ain't it? For one thing, it always tells me when I'm sick. If I lay down
on that bed in the day-time, and pull the white cover over me, and my
wife doesn't say nothing--then I know I'm a sick man, and the doctor'll
be there in twenty minutes."
"Say ----" continued Spoopendyke, growing quite confidential, "I had a
queer experience the other night. My wife she says I snore. Well, mebby
I do. Most men do. But women snore, too, and you can't never get 'em to
confess it. Well, I was lying wide awake thinking of some bills I had to
pay--and had no money to pay 'em with--and beside me lay my wife snoring
like all creation. She got higher and louder and louder and higher, till
she waked herself up with a tremendous whoop. Then she kicked
me--thinking it was me that was making the racket. I said nothing, and
she sailed in again--up, up, up she went, higher and higher till she
woke up again at the top and said, 'Nick--stop your blame snoring.' I
said nothing, and she went to work at once again blowing her bugle-horn
till she waked up again. This time she was mad. She got up and said
something about 'getting the fire-extinguisher and turning it loose on
him,' and went off to bed in the next room. I lay still listening and
laughing, as I heard her blowing the fog-horn again. I laughed till I
forgot all about those bills and went to sleep. And the next morning at
the breakfast table when she told me how I kept her awake all night with
my awful snoring--and how even in the next room she couldn't sleep for
the racket I kept up--I just laughed. Tell her? Not a bit of it. What's
the use? She wouldn't believe me, and I couldn't prove it."