Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1882-10-06
A Plea For sleep.

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 for us than people liv-
ing III more quiet countries and at q
slower rate. We get tired enough if we
are well. and if we don't get tired
enough to sleep all over and clear
through, it is sign of nervous disorder.
Sleeping is something more than lux
ury for Americans, though the very OPP
posite would be inferred from orr
habits. There is no way by which the
wear and tear, the drain and strain of
American life can be neutralized but by
large teasts OF sleep every now and then,
and generous allowance every twenty
four hours. Four hours work of n man
who is thoroughly awake and vitalized,
at the top of bis faculties, are worth
more for all practical business or liter
airy or social purposes than fourteen,
hours OF weary muscles and jaded nerves
and tiaccid impulses. The man at his
best is worth 100 per cent. more than
the same man fatigued, depressed and
demoralized. If he has no vital cleo
tricity playing through him, he is a
WEAKNESS to others and burden to his
own soul, if he is conscious of having
one. And to keep at this top condition
of fiber and faculty, he must be good
sleeper and sleep well. When Mr..
Beecher was asked how he managed to
keep his congregation so wide-awake at
a second service. he replied: ..By tax
ing big dose of sleep in the afternoon.
1t is my sleeping that keeps my congre-
CATION awake" The time given to
sleep is not so much Joss of life, but so
much gained, and at doubly enhanced
valuation.
1t is easy to say "sieep much and
WE'LL" bat there are many unfortunate
people who cannot sleep much, and the
little sleep they get is disturbed and
unrestful. How 30 sleep is question
which, in some instances, taxes the skill
of physicians to the utmost to answer.
Persons afflicted with insomnia are
often great sufferers, and their lives are
shortened with the disease. There are
persons who require much less sleep
than others, and it is useless for them
to WOO soft slumbers to their pillow,
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 VEN
ture to deal. But with the majority of
people sleep is regulated by habit. con-
venience, whim. They make it yield to
every consideration. People who would
not omit a meal on any account will
throw away half their allowance of sleep
for the merest trifie. They do not feel
the importance of giving the system its
fill of unconscious refreshing, and hire
entertainers to clip off two or three
hours from the needed restorative in
the evening, and set an alarm clock to
cut away an hour or more at day-break.
They seem to think that they can steal
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 sleeping we'll by carrying all their
cares and troubles and griefs. and am
billions to bed with them, and one might
as well seek rest on rack as with such
bedfellows. The ability to lay off cares
and perplexities, like ones clothes, and
dismiss everything that can excite the
brain or disturb the emotions, may be
gained by continuous effort even when
it is lost.-Ihe Peoples Weekly.