And when at last we owned two bedsteads, we rated ourselves pretty rich.

We boys slept five in a bed.

Why were bedsteads in those days harder to get than automobiles are to-day?
Because the wooden age still lingered, the age of hand work.

And it took so long to make a bed by hand that people came into the world faster than beds.

But within my lifetime the iron mills have made possible the dollar bedstead.