The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1882-10-28

WVVW OACOROAos
There is so much din and drive and
hurry in our American life that people
forget the necessity of sleeping long and
we'll. Everybody is crying out, ''Wake
mp" All is motion and activity. Every
faculty is alert. The nerves are strung
to their utmost tension. It would be the
height of folly to preach sermon on the
text which sends the sluggard to the ant;
for there are NO sluggards left. The
beautiful story of the Seven Sleepers has
been made impossible for our time by
the scream made by locomotives and the
din of factory bells. Even the Foolish
Virgins would have had no chance to
get their fatal p-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 anybody. Yet it is thought
very strange that all our insane asy1ums
are full, and would be filed were they
doubled.
The truth is that. the very rapidity of
our life, the wakefulness and wasteful-
ness 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 are tired enough if we are we'll,
and If we do not get tired enough to
sleep all over and clear through it is a
sign of nervous disorder. Sleeping is
sometimes more than q 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 con-
cluded 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 general allowance
every twenty-four hours. Four hours
work of man who is thoroughly awake
and vitaGzed at the top of his faculties,
are more for all practical business or lit
erature or social purposes than fourteen
hours of weary muscle or jaded nerve
and faccid impulses. People are con-
stantly forgetting that it IS in 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 o WEAKNESS to others and burden to
ing one. And to keep at this top con-
dition and fiber and faculty, he must be
good sleeper and sleep we'll. When
Mr.. Beecher was asked how he managed
to keep his congregation so wide
awake at q second service, he replied:
''By taking big dose of sleep in the
afternoon. It is my sleeping that keeps
my congregation awake" The time
given to sleep is not so much lost of lite,
but so much gained, and at doubly en-
hanced valuation. It is astonishing how
much nap of half an hour at noon in
the summer time will do to neutralize
the effect of the mornings heat and pre-
pare the body for the afternoons duties.
There is something in that bath of per-
feet Inconsistencies which restores
every loss and refreshes the whole sys-
tenn, so that one emerges from it as from
sea of oblivion to begin life renewed
and invigorated as from supernal
source.
It it easy to say sleep much and we'll;
but there are many unfortunate people
who cannot sleep much, and the little
sleep they get is disturbed and unrestful.
How to sleep is question which, in
some instances, it taxes the skill of the
physician to the utmost to answer. Per-
sons afflicted with insomania are often
great sufferers, and their lives are short.
ened 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 pecnliarity of constitution
is'not disease, ,and should not be doctered,
With the disorder known as insomania
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 con-
sideration. People who would not omit
meal on any account will throw away
half their allowance of sleep for the
merest trife. They do not feel the i'm
portance of giving the system its full
unconscious refreshing, and higher en-
tertainers to cut off two or three hours
from the needed restorative in the even
ing, 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 pun
ishes every pilferer of it as he goes along.
Others destroy the possibility of sleep
ing we'll 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 perplexi-
ties like ones clothes, and dismiss every
thing that can excite the brain and dis
turb the emotions may be gained by con-
tinuous effort, even when it is lost.
The story is told of guest at hotel
who had paced the uncarpeted floor of
his room until midnight, keeping his
neighbors from sleeping. At last one of
them went to his room to see what was
the matter.
81 havea note to pay tomorrow and
do not know how to get the money" he
replied in a 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 tom orrows'
work.
''The troubled man laughed and soon
was sound asleep. OF course sleep does
not take kindly to an overloaded stom-
ach and brain excited by stimulants.
Natures sweet restorer" refuses to"knit
kha 1oSl al o. Wiz