Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1888-10-05
Why DON'T You Sleep?

Why Don't You Sleep8
Those who are afflicted with insom-
MIA know to the full the futility of
recipes. Some advocate a pine needle
pillow; some a hop pillow; others, one
so hard that it might have Jacobs
stone in the middle. For the first
two you are oppressed by their OdOr
oppressed rather than soothed; the
last makes your head ache and gives
you a sore spine all the day after.
Others, again, tell yOu to eat and
drink just before going to bed.
A ''nightcap" they say, of genial
spirits, with a few biscuits munched
discretely, viii do wonders for you.
The blood is brought from the brain
to the stomach, and an active indi-
gestiOn will cure your sleeplessness
like magic. You follow their advice
the prescription being pleasant
and you find that you have to take
your liver and your equity diathe-
sis'' in hand as the result, with no
better nights in the way of sleep than
before. You are told to battle your
face and wrists in cold water, and
you do so, whereby you have a
swinging cold which confines you in
bed for a week and to the house for a
fortnight.
Then you have mental prOphylac-
tics, and you hear with envy how one
man cures himself of insomnia,
drives off the hays who beset him,
and wins back the sweet genius of
sleep by counting imaginary sheep
jumping over an imaginary fence. He
goes off like a lamb, he says, before
he gets to the hundredth. You try
the same experiment, and you go on
to a thousand or mOre-With the re-
suit of feeling in kind of whirlwind
where the flying straWs take the form
of feecy ewes, and the Whirling dust
heaps are acrobaticrams.
Your jumping sheep become as tor
turing as that barrel organ tune
which sounds in your ears, do what
you will, and they stick to your brain
as the tune sticks-TeasOn or none.
AS for that unbidden music, YOU
think to exercise it by going over the
strain from the first note to the last.
You are conscientious in your memo
ry and put in every little thrill and
quaVer that may have been incOrpO-
rated. Now, then, you think you
have finally laid that noisy demon,
and are free to turn your mind to the
contemplation Of silence. Not a bit
of it. Suddenly the tune starts out
again, louder, clearer, more insisting
than before, and you havetO go over
your work once more, and have for
the second time the bitterness of fail
ure. You try, too, to come upon
sleeping by repeating pOetry-all the
poetry you know. Sometimes this
has a lulling effect, as when you
pound away at a piece you know by
heart as Familiarity as the alphabet.
But, for the most part, YOU Waken
up yourself by just SO much as you
think to have sOOthed, and the rep
ititiOn Of poetry proves, like the
counting Of sheep, a mental stimU-
liant instead OF a sediment. Then
you are wider and wider awake than
ever, and your pains are increased,
not hghtened, says the London
Queen.
Then there flow in on you all the
sorrows of your life, and everything
you would gladly forget insist on be
ing remembered with Photographic
clearness and gigantic proportions.
AreyOua little at crOss-cOrners with
a beloved friend?-the slight misun-
Outstanding which q few moments of
honest talk will clear away becomes
the fracture of your friendship, which
no time, no effort can repair. The
word that was said in thOughtlessness
becomes the intentional insult-the
designed outrage. ThelOOkthathad
no significance at all becomes as the
thrust of a sword and the sting of a
whip; and whenever you can torture
yourself you dO-all because the pow
er of sleep has gone from you and
your feverish blood is firing your
thFObbing brain. So with all your
life. IfyOu are in mOmentary diff
hculty about money, you are on the
verge of ruin and the Threshold of
the WOrkhOuse. If you have had an
inhnitesimal check in your career you
are cast down from your secure hold
ing, and can never make your foot
ing sure again. Whatever may have
happened to ruffie the still waters of
the lake and break the deep silence of
the woods is a cataclysm no less of
sleeplessness eXeraggerates like a
micrOphOne, and makes thefOOtsteBs
OF a fly ike the swinging tread Of the
grenadier. Thus you give yourself
up for lost and to the physical tor
ments of your condition are added
the mental agOnies Of fears, despair
and anticipated destruction.