The Folding Bed

"I'm sorry, sir, " said the polite yonng up town hotel clerk to the grum looking guest, "but I haven't another room in the house tonight. If yon could use this till morniug, I '11 fis you up right for tomorrow. " But the inducement persuasively delivered failed to work and the grum looking man went away. When he had got over the threshold, the suave clerk smiled a sort of pensive smile and said: "Youcan't doanything with these fellows. It beats the world how a man will let his prejadices drive him out into the night to seek inferior accommodations. And yet this man looked like he knew better too." "What was it dissatisfied him?" "Nothing in the world except that in the only room he'd have there was a folding bed. You see we are crowded now and there are but few vacant apartments. He is a crank on the subject of folding beds because in modern times two or three human beings have been caught in theni when tbey folded up inopportunely and had their lives crushed out. I pleaded with him that no such disaster could happen here, for nowadays folding beds are made with patent catches that absolutely prevent them from manslaughter. No matter how sorely a bed such as we have should yearn to close up on its slumbering victim those catches forbid. I told him all this, but it had no effect. " "Are most people imbued with this prejudice?" "Yes. I think a majority of the traveling public has that feeling, and I do not believe the time will ever come when the folding bed will gain the full confidence, much less the affeotion, of