he other. That, also, is charming for the moment, but has a similar
tendency to tire very readily. Your elbow--the one on which your weight
is thrown--soon gives signs of boredom. 'I don't like this at all,' it
says virtually; and perhaps you turn round and try the other for a
spell. But in these matters one elbow is very like its brother, and
before long you are on the look-out for another attitude.

What may be called the last infirmity of the determined reader in bed is
his final decision to sit up and read in that fashion. Nothing could be
better--for a certain more or less brief period. At the expiration of a
few minutes, you realize that you are getting a sort of cramp in the
knees; moreover, there is a disagreeable strain on your head; you are
stooping too much, and bending your spine, and altogether making a toil
of pleasure. The situation, it need hardly be said, is still less
attractive when the weather is cold, and the effort to keep warm is
added to the endeavour to read. You have wrapped yourself up, but
apparently not to much purpose. You are conscious of growing chillier
and chillier every moment. And, indeed, a very low temperature is
usually fatal to the cultivation of bedside books. Even if you lie down,
and almost smother yourself in the clothes, you are bound to obtrude one
hand out of shelter, or how is the book to be held up? And how quickly
that hand gets cold--and how often one's two hands have to be alternated
for the purpose in view--and what a nuisance it is to have to make the
continual change! One begins to think that, under the circumstances,
reading is not so pleasant as one fancied, and that sleep (as the poet
says) is the only certain knot of peace.

One thing is incontrovertible, and that is, that bedside books, if they
are to be acceptable, must be, in the first place, small in size and,
therefore, not very weighty. The hand must be asked to hold as little as
possible. Bed is not the place for heavy tomes; it is the appropriate
_locale_ of the duodecimo. And yet the type must not be too small, or
the eyesight will suffer, unless the reader can command plenty of
illumination--which is not always the case. And the book must be not
only fairly diminutive, but bound and stitched in such a way as to allow
the hand to clutch it and hold it with ease. There must be no
unnecessary extension of the palm and fingers, for it adds so much to
the fatigue. Unhappily, every volume does not fulfil thi