The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-03-13 00:00:00

Sir.
distrust

THE ART OF SLEEP. 4

Thol.fellewing article from the Globe, may possibly be
perused with advantage by some of our readers :
Few human instincts are more droll that which
prompts a man detected fast asleep in his chair to de-
clare solemnly that he was wide awake. He may be
in ordinary affairs the most truthful of beings ;;he may
regard's whiten() as a.deadly sin; and yet if you can i
'catch him suddenly enough in iiagra4 delict, Wine,
his post-prandial tforty winks, it is ten to .one her,
will protest,. with -a vehemence quite disprOportioned,
te the occasion, that' he has- never closed. hie,eyied.‘,
LAs a favour— quite is a ,conceesion,- marls yon-Ae.
will admit that he wag." getting rather.ideepy ;" that
he " would have been, off" in a little lime.„l:But
to have actually ielded, to have been quite sub-
dued by the insidioui^gOd, is a weakness which, en tlior
spur of the moment, he is almost certain indignantlYtob,
disavow. In a calmer moment he might, it is truest!'
perhaps own the impeachment, which is, after all, not
a hard one. But in the flutter of astonishment, with
mental powers still halrenchained, instinctive Un-
,pulesii2 bet '.own wily, and a natural 'feeling of
eel f. exculpation and .Ws e - stliktne commits' the s lir-
prised one to a -vehement: and untenable plea.'nf-
not guilty. Au i excuse is rea,onably clainaectima
flezie
-riudriedmitted for this reprehensible mbae of
le)kding on._the general-issue--; and- - the - hoirielT
penalty which an orthodox custom prescribes is INA
always disagreeable to the aileeper. No sucl*prdor'
an be accorded to that other pretence of watt etilness
which forms the sole title of a certain class- to their
cherished character of invalids. The peevish Com-
plaint of having passed IL sieePleis night, or even, as
the,Phrase is, having 4‘ glept-b-adly," A supposed to
account for and justify any amount of ill-humour dis-
played at breakfast and throughout the day. • A thou-
sand times less harmless than the other plea, it is as
much more insidious, since unlike the other, it admitS
of no disproval. Any morning some cantankerous
spinster, or fussy fidgety old bachelor, may come late
and grumbling downstairs, whining over her "ter-
ribly , bad night," or his "confounded difficul-
ties" in getting any sleep in such a house. The
real proportion between the numbers of • sleepless
moments passed by these individuals, and that amount
of the grievance established thereupon, is of the
vaguest possible description. In the darkness and
silence a minute no longer. represents, the sixty short ,
seconds of bustling day: It counts' for dOuble, treble,
or more often- ten-times itEr dayilights 'value. Dis-
tribute an hour i)f)totar wfiltefulness into a number
of short periods interrupted:- by ,iVegriff 42_,er 4
sound sleep,:kitd the fidoilvietird-wiltinTalfibly re-
present himself as having been awake all night with
only a few short snatches of repose. Let there be a SUPERFLUOUS INSTITUTIONS.—The writer of a
clock in the neighbourhood loud enough occasionally recent article of the Daily News on French madhouses
to half-awake the slumber, and he will adduce expresses astonishment that there are only three
actual proofs of his dreadful miseries by narrating Government Asylums in the Department of the Seine.
tragically how he "counted the hours" and watched And three too many, we should say. Would it not be
feverishly, for daylight to appear. The spinster who better to trangferreVeiftheie three, as soon as possible,
sleeps badly assumes a martyr's character not only at to the Department of the Insane ?—Punch.

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'Y they are on
.the t€acllingal
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