SNORERS.

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BY THEODORE S. FAY.

Has it ever befallen thee, gentle reader, to sleep
in a crowded hotel, in an apartment shared by several
others, or in a stage travelling all night, or
on board a steamboat? If so, you have suffered from
a nuisance, we fear, beyond the reach of satire, viz.
snoring. Whether it is an Americanism, like
whittling, spitting, putting the feet on the mantel-piece,
and wearing hats with a long nap, we do not
at this time wish to discuss; nor whether it is one
of those general evils incidental to human nature,
but we do say, that your regular snorer is an enemy
to society, and ought either to cure his propensity,
or turn hermit. Our object in writing this is to solicit
the attention of the learned to a subject intimately
connected with human comfort, that some
means may be adopted either to have the class of
snorers kept distinct from other people, in a different
part of the town, and compelled to travel in a
line of stages and steamboats constructed expressly
for them; or else to check the propensity in early

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childhood, by a rigid course of education. Our
youth are taught to dance, sing, play the fiddle, sit
straight, eat with a fork, and be virtuous, but not a
word about snoring; not a hint of this faculty,
growing up in the secrecy of night, like a rank
weed, within their character, to break the peace of
innocent families, and ruin, night after night, that
precious balmy slumber which lies, or should lie, so
“starkly in the traveller's bones.” Snorers! Why
they are monsters. We avoid them in all our rural
peregrinations, and smile inwardly on finding their
acquaintance cultivated by unwary strangers, who
little think what a trap they are falling into. We
are one of that extensive class of human creatures
who enjoy a fair night's rest. The day emphatically
belongs to earth. We yield it without reluctance
to care and labor. We toil, we drudge, we
pant, we play the hack-horse; we do things smilingly
from which, in secret, we recoil; we pass by
sweet spots, and rare faces that our very heart
yearns for, without betraying the effort it costs; and
thus we drag through the twelve long hours, disgusted
almost, but gladdened withal, that the mask
will have an end, and the tedious game be over,
and our visor and our weapons be laid aside. But
the night is the gift of heaven. It brings freedom
and repose; its influence falls coolly and gratefully
upon the mind as well as the body; and, when we
drop the extinguisher upon the light which glimmers
upon the round, untouched pillow, we, at the
same time, put out a world of cares and perplexities.

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What, then, must be our disappointment to find
ourself full length, side by side, with a professed regular-bred,
full-blooded snorer, when the spell of
sleep is every moment forming on us; and as often
broken by the anomalous, incongruous, nasal vociferations,
against which, at this particular moment,
we are endeavoring to excite the indignation of the
reader?

It is one of the advantages of authorship, however,
that even evils, by yielding prolific subjects for
the pen, become a source both of amusement and
profit. We experienced this the other night, when,
returning from a day's absence, the traveller's vicissitudes
sent us to sleep on board a steamboat, plying
between this city and Albany. Fancy our perplexity,
good reader; you know, (or, for we have
been hand and glove with you for so long a time,
you ought to know,) our sly penchant for comfort—
our harmless pieces of epicureanism on a small
scale—our enjoyment of a shady, still corner—our
horror of being pushed and thrust about “any
how.” We have even, on occasions, betrayed too
many of our secret tastes and antipathies, and have
been rated sometimes by anonymous correspondents,
(those familiar, invisible gentry,) for preferring a
slant of sunbeam through a heavy curtain to one
that comes in like other beams. Imagine us, then,
in a “night boat,” which even the captain confessed
was “slow;” the wind and tide against us, a hot
night, numerous passengers, the engine heaving
and working laboriously, with a heavy and regular

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impulse, that jarred through the massive vessel with
jerks and shocks like little earthquakes, and the
subtle languor of slumber stealing through our
limbs, and hanging on our eyelids. A hundred or
two travellers had already “turned in,” and we were
ushered below into the cabin, and directed by a
clerk to a berth, where, our guide informed us, we
were to sleep. To sleep! We looked at the fellow's
face. It was perfectly grave and respectful. A
glance satisfied us he had intended no insult. He
left us, and we paused to look around. Ah! the
cabin of a steamboat is a melancholy affair to a
sleepy gentleman, about eleven o'clock at night. A
dim lamp, suspended from the ceiling, shed a doleful
light upon the long, low, narrow apartment.
The curtains of the berths were mostly drawn. Divers
boots, which, when enlivened by their respective
legs, had clambered mountains or paced over
fields, now lay in groups here and there, and hats,
valises, and umbrellas, rested by their owners, being
probably the only vestiges of them we should
ever encounter. One fat gentleman had just lifted
his unwieldy person into bed, and was tying a bandanna
handkerchief around his head, preparatory
to his lanching off into glorious repose; while a
cross-looking lean person opposite, having wound
up his watch, and rescued his feet from his boots,
with a prodigious deal of straining and ill-humor;
having with considerable difficulty discovered where
he was to dispose of his cloak and other matters;
bumping his head, moreover, while getting into his

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couch, and easing the pain with the fragment of an
execration, at length also disposed of himself apparently
to his satisfaction. Few things, when a man
is really out of humor, exhaust his philosophy more
utterly than hitting his head sharply against a hard
object. My friend cursed the builder of the steam-boat,
in a half-smothered growl, and then all was
quiet. And now we were floating off into a pleasant
sleep, when a low and gradually increasing
sound from the berth of the fat gentleman arrested
our attention. We listened, all was silent; and then
again the same sound, more palpable and better developed.
It was at first a long breath, of the consistency
of a loud whisper. We turned over, still it
went on. We turned back again, there it was yet.
We rose on our elbow, in a passion, and poked our
head out between the red curtains. There was
the fat gentleman's berth. We could just detect a
glimpse of the bandanna handkerchief, by a feeble
glare of the lamp. Our sleepy eyes passed disconsolately
over the boots and valises. We laid down
again, but could not, “with all the weary watching
of our care-tired thoughts,” win the coy dame sleep
to our bed. What was to be done? Go up and hit
the fat gentleman a blow? Impossible. Complain
to the captain? He would laugh at us. Never was
man so weighed down, so oppressed with sleep, and
never did man so suffer from a snorer. The fat
gentleman, as if aware of our misery, and mocking
it, went on, like an orator getting warm with his
subject. He grew loud, vociferous, outrageous. We

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laid and listened. He inhaled, he exhaled. Now
the air rushed in between his extended jaws, now
it burst forth obstreporously through his sonorous
nose. He took it in with the tone of an octave flute,
he let it out again with the profound depth of a
trombone. He breathed short, he breathed long;
he gasped, whistled, groaned, gurgled. He quickened
the time; became rapid, agitated, furious.

Hitherto he had snored with the sound of a rushing,
regular stream, hastening onward over a deep
channel—now it was the brawl, clash, dash, hurry,
and discordant confusion of the same tide, hurled
down a cataract of broken rocks—at last he gave
an abrupt snort, and ceased altogether. We were
thanking heaven for this relief, when a treble voice
from the berth directly beneath, announced new
trouble. It was some one—whom, we knew not,
nor do we ever covet his friendship, who belonged
to a different class of snorers. He made a regular,
quick, sharp, hacking sound, like that of a man
cutting wood. Hack, hack, hack—we heard it at
intervals all night. The lean gentleman, in the
opposite part of the room, now put in his claim as
a snorer. He had four notes. It was a tune. It
could be written and played any day. We laughed
outright, and inwardly resolved to find the fellow
out, and see what he was like by daylight. He
played on some time, and then finished with a sudden
combination of sounds, among the constituent
parts of which we could plainly distinguish a hiss
and two sneezes. His exit reminded us of those

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pyrotechnic creations to be seen at Niblo's, Castlegarden,
&c. which whirl round and round and
round, and then explode with a phiz and a whiz,
sure to be bounteously applauded by the enlightened
audience. There was something in this gentleman's
snoring which touched our feelings. A fine
spirited fellow he was, we warrant. Full of life and
animation, and not inclined to hide his light under
a bushel. What became of him, however, after the
explosion, we cannot say. He left a dead silence,
and his evaporation we almost lamented. We
should like to know, however, whether any law
can be put in requisition against these gentry, or
why we have not the same right to practise on the
trombone, on board the steamboat, that they possess
of “piercing the night's dull ear” by such pompous
displays of nasal ability?