How Real Maine Men Sleep

Each time I fiddle with the thermometer in the middle of a wintry night, I think of this Robert P.T. Coffin passage:

When a Kennebec man goes to bed in winter he wears his wool socks, a
flannel nightgown, perhaps his overcoat; he has two spruce-beer jugs filled with
hot water for his feet, a hot flatiron for his back, and his complete supply of
Boston Transcripts between mattress and springs. If he has a wife, he sends her
along ahead of him to warm the bed. Likely as not, when he wakes up in the
morning, there are icicles on his mustache, if he has one. When he gets up to
light the fire for his wife and sings to keep his courage up, he sees his song
right around him in the air.

By the last of March he may omit the flatiron.

- John C.L. Morgan