Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-10-26

Insomnia has become common, hence a
vulgar, malady among us Americans at
least, to us who breathe the oxygen which
the great waste OF wood and water has been
garnering up for us for centuries. Heretofore
| the malady has been confined to the few. who
sleeps on pillows of down, to those who have
too much brain, or to those who have guilty
cons cience-so the poets have said.
Now, however, we who have no such dis
tinction, We who have adopted hair mat
tresses instead of hair shirts, who cannot
claim any tlattering preponderance OF brain,
and who have not had originality or boldness
enough, perhaps to earn particularly
guilty conscience, We too are sleepless, We
toss on fevered pillows, we are haunted by
midnight assassins of sleep hours of I'M
earned remorse. spectres of people We have
not murdered, vengeance OF sins We have not
had the pleasure of committing We start
like guilty creatures from the commonplace
linen sheet as ii it were the poisoned mantle
OF Dejanira Macbeth saw no such daggers
in the air as We see ; Cain felt no such gloomy
ostracism Peter wept not such burning
tears, nor is our martyrlom less complete
than his for if our dreams may he believed,
we are nightly crucified with the head down
ward
From such visions we awake ut two o'clock
Ill the morning, to pass the rest OF the night
in gloomy reveries How all our wasted
opportunities rise up and walk before us IN
their grave-clothes How many SINS commit
ted and uncommitted find us out The
naked human soul-always a terrible object,
with no drapery of circumstances, no apology
OF affection no sweet and soothing balm of
sympathy-our own unshrIven soul stands
before us
Night after night we meet this object, We
contemplate ourselves and get woetully tried
of the subject We try philosophy it
proves unavailing we try memory, and, so
lar as we can govern that recalcitrant slave,
he serves us well. We summon visions of
Switzerland, look again on the snowy wonders
of Mont Blame, ENJOY the brlde-lke beauty Fl
the Jungiran, once more count the statues on
the pinnacles OF Milan Cathedral These
Joys of travel last us one, two, many nights
then memory grows FESTIVE, and will not obey,
but brings us rather all that We wish to for
get the sights. the disappointments. the
failures, the talseness the poorness, of
life
Ii is no wonder that. IN the frequency of
this universal misery. So many people resort
to Opium, and to chloral that most fearful
antagonist of the brain. which simply takes
club and knocks its enemy over. The sleep
OF choral Is not II natural ora resttul sleep
1t is rather removal of the battered and
bruised brain into another room, where 1t re-
covers ut leisure 10 become more triShtfully
active than before. Opium takes more de-
hberate revenge. 1t gives halcyou Slumhers,
that 1t may strike its fangs deep into the
moral sense ; WOO its victim from honesty
and truth and decency, then throw back a
poor and worthless weed on the shores of
time. like the poppy whence 1t springs; snowy
and beautiful while il lasts but fading quickly
into II dlS1rGanl2cd heap.
''Oh, that one could take his pen To bed
with HIM - said witty preacher. oh, that
one could lie as sleepy in the night as IN the
day when tasks press and the book waits TO
bc finished and the sick require to he nurscd,
and the poor to he led What heavy lids de
scend. too, III the parlor, listening to some
wel-bTed bore the hoa-c0nsrrlctor of CONVEX
sation who winds his heavy coils about your
reluctant but dazed senses
We remember municipalities, too, where IA
little slumber between the fifth and sixth
courses would have been very gratifying, and
SUNDAY afternoons IN city churches but tins
is choral and opium combined.
Tho physicians smile now when weary
women come to them, wiplng heavy dews
from pale hrows, and say
II cannot sleep
who can 2" says the physician wiping his
brow.
at is a eliot of blood too much about the
heart, or it is Il drop too little on the brain,
SAYS another.
''No matter what it Is but can YOU make
US sleep they cry.
Alas, no, unless You SO to Europe -
Yes but can We all 60 to Europe One