Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-04-29
Sieep.


than that which prompts man detected
fast asleep in his chair to declare sol
emily that he was wide awake He may
be In ordinary affairs the most truthful
Of beings; he may regard a white lie as
deadly sin; and Jet if you can catch
him suddenly enough in fragrant delict
taking his post-prandial forty winks it is
ten to one he will protest with vehe-
mence quite disp-oportioned to the oc-
casien that he has never closed his eyes.
As favor-quite as a concession, mark
you-he will admit that he was getting
rather sleepy; that he would have been
off in a little time. But to have actually
yielded, TO have been quite subdued by
the insidious god, is O. weakness which,
on the spur of the moment, he is almost
| certain Indignantly to disavow. In a
calmer moment he might, IL is true, per
haps own the Impeachment, which is,
after all, not hard one. But in the
futter of establishment, with mental
impulse has her own way, and a natural
| feeling of self-exculpation and false
shame commits the surprised one to a
| vehement and untenable plea of not
guilty. An excuse is reasonably claimed
and generously admitted for this rep
rehenslble mode of pleading on the
general issue; and the homely penalty
which an orthodox custom prescribes is
not always disagreeable to the sleeper.
No such pardon can be accorded to that
other pretense of wakefulness which
forms the sole title of certain class to
their cherished character of invalids. The
peevish complaint of having passed a
sleepless night or even, as the phrase is,
having slept badly, is supposed to ac-
count for and justify any amount of ILL
humor displayed at breakfast and
throughout the day. A thousand 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, fdgety old bachelor, may come
late and grumbling down stairs, whining
over her terribly bad night, or his con-
founded difficulties in getting any sleep
IN such house. The real proportion
between the numbers of sleepless mo-
ments passed by these individuals and
| the amount of the grievance established
thereupon is of the vaguest possible de-
scriptiOn. In the darkness and silence a
minute no longer represents the sixty
short seconds of bustling day. 1t counts
Tor double, treble, or more often ten
times, its daylight value. Distribute an
hour Of total wakefulness into a number
of Short periods interrupted by irregular
doses OF sound sleep, and the poor vic
tim will infallibIy represent himself as
having been awake all night with only a
few short snatches of repose. Let there
be clock in the neighborhood loud
enough to occasionally half-wake the
slumberer and he will adduce actual
proofs Of his dreadful miseries by mar
rating tragieally how he counted the
hours and watched feverishly for day
light to appear. The spinster who sleeps
badly assumes a martyrs charac-
ter not only at morn, but at
dewy eve. AS the hour of retiring
approaches, she expects sympathy and
votal prayers. Woe to the expectant
nephew who fails to hope that dear Aunt
Priscilla may have better night! At
the offer of tea che holds up her hands
with a regretful and solemn shake of her
poor head. Soon, if the malady increases,
and her one sleepless hour out of the nine
should grow to an hour and a half, she
will consult doctor, grow learned on the
subject of sleeping-draughts, and thence
forth augment by a modest but steady
expenditure the revenues of the family
apothecary. Of course, besides the sham
invalids there are some real sufferers. A
nervous organization will be so utterly
upset by an over excitement late atnight
that sound rest is out of the question.
SO slight matter as a game of chess or
the study Of tough problem in mathe-
matics will suffice to Danish sleep; and
The only resource for those whose nerves
are thus affected is to keep clear of the
dangerous occupation. No one accuses
the soliloquy of Henry ". of being un-
true to nature, or disbelieves in the dam
gerous nature Of the sleeplessless from
which the German Chancellor is now suf-
fering. But the number of bona tfde suf-
ferers from this cause is small in COM
parison of the host of make believe in
valids. And of those who really suffer,
nine-tenths at least may attribute their
troubles to their own absurdity Nine
tenths of the idle classes go to bed as
rule with the intention of achieving
feat beyond the natural pow
ers-namely, that of sleeping such
number of hours as nature never
intended them to sleep. Probably about
seven hours is above the average amount
of sleep upon which an idle person can
reasonably count. Active men, engaged
in urgent business, in bodily or mental
work, might possibly expect an hour or
half an hour more. But these are not
the persons who complain. The most
persistent victims are usually the very
persons WAC have the least to 90, who,
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