Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1882-10-05
No. 46.
GOOD SLEEPERS.
An Essay for Wide-Awakes.
lChristian at Work. |

An Essay for Wide-Awakes.
! lChrstian at Work.
There is so much din and drive and hurry
in our American life that people forget the
necessity of sleeping long and well. Every
body is crying out, wake up All is mo-
ton and activity Every faculty is alert
The nerves are strung to their utmost ten
sion. 1t would he the height OF folly to
preach sermon on the text which sends the
sluggard to the ant for there are no slug
CARDS left. The beautiful story of the Seven
Sleepers has been made impossible for our
time by the scream of locomotives and the
din of factory bells. Even the Foolish Nir-
gins would have had no chance to get their
fatal nap had they lived in these days.
Wakefulness is our craze. And there are
people lunatics enough to teach and preach
that four hours of sleep is enough for any
body. Yet it is thought very strange that
all our insane asylums are full, and would be
filled were they dou bled.
The truth is that the very rapidity of our
life, the wakefulness and wastefulness Of our
times, the strain and drive of all pursuits.
make longer periods of sleep necessary with
us than people living in more quiet countries
and at slower rate. We get tired enough
if we are well, and if we do not get tired
enough to sleep all over and clear through it
81 sign of nervous disorder. Sleeping is
sometimes more than luxury for Americans,
though the very opposite would be inferred
from our habits The Bible says the Lord
'giveth His beloved Sleep" from which it
would be concluded that Americans were
not included in the number. There is no
way by which the wear and tear, the drain
and strain, of American life can be neutral
lied but by large feasts of sleep every now
and then, and generous allowance every
twenty-four hours Four hours work of a
man who is thoroughly awake and vitalized,
at the top of his faculties, are worth more
for all practical business or literature or
social purposes than fourteen hours of weary
muscle and jaded nerve and tlaccid i'm
pulses. People are constantly forgetting
that it is quality, not quantity, that tells;
it is life, not time, that makes the scales
kick the beam. The man at his best is
worth 100 per cent more than the same man
fatigued, depressed and demoralized. If he
has no vital electricity playing through him,
he is a WEAKNESS to others and a burden to
his own soul, if he is conscious of having
one. And to keep at this top condition and
fibre and faculty. he must be good sleeper
and sleep well. When Mr.. Beecher was
asked how he managed to keep his congre
replied: by taking big dose of sleep in
the afternoon. 1t is my sleeping that keeps
my congregation awake" The time given
to sleep is not so much lost of life, but so
much gained, and at doubly enhanced val
uation. 1t is astonishing how much nap
of half an hour at noon in the summer time
will do to neutralize the effect of the morn
ing's heat and prepare the body for the after
Moons duties. There is something in that
bath of perfect Inconsistencies which re-
stores every loss and refreshes the whole
system, so that one emerges from it as from
sea of oblivion to begin life renewed and
invigorated as from supernal source.
1t is easy to say sleep much and well but
there are many unfortunate people who can
not sleep much, and the little sleep they get
is disturbed and unrestful. How to sleep is
a question which, in some instances, it taxes
the skill of the physician to the utmost to
answer. Persons afflicted with insomnia are
often great sufferers, and their lives are
shortened by the disease. There are persons
who require much less sleep than others, and
it is useless for them to WOO soft slumbers to
their pillows, for they will not come. A
popularity of constitution is not disease, and
should not be doctored. With the disorder
known as insomnia we shall not venture to
deal. But with the majority of people sleep
is regulated by habit, convenience whim.
They make it yield to every other considera-
ton People who would not omit a meal on
any account will throw away half their al
lowance of sleep for the merest tride. They
do not feel the Importance of giving the sys-
tenn its full unconscious refreshing, and hire
entertainers to cut off two or three hours
from the needed restorative in the evening,
and set an alarum clock to cut away an hour
or more at daybreak. They seem to think
that they can steal away from sleep with
impunity, when it is pretty much the only
thing that Furnishes every pilterer of it as he
goes along. Others destroy the possibility
of sleeping well by carrying all their cares
and troubles and griefs and ambitions to bed
with them and one might as we'll seek rest
on rack as with such bedfellows. The
ability to lay off care and perplexities like
ones clothes, and dismiss everything that
can excite the brain and disturb the emo
even when it is lost.
The story is told of guest at a hotel who
had paced the uncarpeted floor of his room
until midnight, keeping his neigbors from
sleeping. At last one Of them went to his
room to see what was the matter.
Il have note to pay tomorrow and do
not know how to get the money" he replied
in tone of despair.
"Well," said the visitor, "as you have
walked on it half the night, you may as we'll
let the other man walk out the rest of it.
and get some rest for to-morrow's work"
THE troubled man laughed and soon was
sound asleep. Of course sleep does not take
kindly to an overloaded stomach and brain
excited by stimulants Natures sweet re-
stOrer" refuses to knit up the ravelled edge
Of care" when violence has been done to
digestion which waited ON appetite only to
be abused. But when habits are good and
conscience is Clear and the mind cleared of
care and worry, sleep can be got after patient
wooing, until in little while the sleeping
habit is acquired in fact, good sleeping, like
good eating and good talking, is very largely
a matter o. education, and condition of
good morals Somehow there is an intimate
between wickedness and wakeful-
ness. Bad men are usually bad sleepers,
sure to be awake when nature has decreed
repOse. Macbeth found that he had .'mur-
1ered Sleep" They all do it. And good
sleeping should be cultivated as one of the
means of acquiring good dispositions and all
he sweet Christian graces. For the sick to
lo,n 10 ciO Of L