The Works of Thomas Hood

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE MORNING CALL. I Cannot conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller than the approach to Bedfordshire. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blanket.-;, the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. . He dreams of dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a nightcap, the coach lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard's horn plays Lullaby. Every flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up-stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread all before him where to choose his place of rest. It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog- day's journey, that I entered the Dolphin at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room, yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been a pint of nappy, surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine. Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster: Great Nature's second course was spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace ! Here 's a body ? there s a bed ! There's a pillow ? here's a head ! There's a curtain ? here 's a light! There '3 a puff? and so Good Night! ...