If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there; what caprices he acts without control! how kinglike he sways his pillow-tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and molding it, to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples.

Essays of Elia, The Convalescent (p. 329)