At the turn of the eighteenth century, a story went around Connecticut about a pious old woman who was berating her nephew for being such a rake. And an aging rake, at that. “But we’re not so very different,” he insisted. “Suppose that in traveling, you came to an inn where all the beds were full except two, and in one of those was a man and in the other was a woman. Which would you take? The woman’s, to be sure. Well, madam, so would I—”

Before 1829 Americans on the road stayed at inns, sleeping without privacy in the same room and even in the same bed. One timid foreigner complained that he would lie awake all night worrying about who might slide into bed with him. An Englishman, on the contrary, recalled a late night when five young ladies came into the room and began to undress for bed. “I raised my head,” he said, “and desired to be informed which of them intended me the honor of her company.” But they arranged a bedroll on the floor.

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