26 DECEMBER 1874, Page 3

The cold has brought a great lot of suggestions for

warmth to that Confessor of the English public, the Times, most of which are not less familiar to everybody, and much older, than the Times itself,—as for instance, " Sleep in calico sheets, they are not so cold as linen sheets, and don't make your feet so cold if you pro- ject them into any new part of the bed "; or again—this in the pompous language of a very important discovery—" Fill a stone bottle with hot water and make it your sleeping companion, warming the bed with it first." As for calico sheets, no doubt they do not absorb quite so much heat from the body as linen sheets, but they are as cold as moderate icicles in weather like that of the early part of the week ; and stone bottles, however hot, are very hard foreign bodies, which are apt to make you -dream that you are the seed sown in stony places, which forthwith sprang up,—as you do when you come suddenly upon it. The true warming-pan, which keeps warm all night and is not rocky, is a warm little dog at your back or on your feet ; but you must take care not to indulge it so much that it contests the bed with you, and growls when you move it, like the illustrious " Duchess" in. Dr. John Brown's story. But that is an excellent lesson in firmness.