Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1892-12-30
WAKING UP AT WILL.
WHY IS IT THAT MANY PERSONS
WAKE AT A CERTAIN HOUR,

A discussion has been going on in tn
Soci ETY. for Psychical Research as to the ex
fstenoe and the nature of the power b,
which so many people manage to wax,
. themsel yes precisely at the hour at which
| they have resolved to awake on the pre-
vious night. There is no question as to tn,
fact 1t is matter on which probably the
!: greater number Of people can convince
themselves. You may fix time when nc
clock strikes, SO that it cannot be hall
heard sound which wakes you.
You may fix five minutes before the hour
in house in which no clock strikes the
quarters, or even in house in which there
is no striking clock at all and no church
clock within couple of miles, and yet not
one person only, but great many-we
might perhaps say the majority Of persons
past middle aegean wake themselves at
the right hour if on the previous night
they go to bed with the resolve to do so
! strong ont their minds. It is power which
+, belongs to all sorts of persons-not only
| persons who have been in the habit of get
| ting up at given hours, but to persons who
! have not.
Most nurses have it. most servants, most
laborers, most professional men, Yet it is
very difficult to account for, for when you
wake you have no distinct, nor indeed in
distinct recognition Of the time on you.
You only know what time you ought to
nave been awake, but not in the least con-
sclously that this time has arrived, though
when you look at your watch in fright
you find as matter of fact that it has ar
rived, and only just arrived. We believe
that the same power would apply to the
daytime under the same conditiOns--name-
~, that you fix firmly in your mind some
hours. or at least some considerable time
earlier, that you are to do something spe-
cific and to be reused to sense of the time
at a specific minute; only people notice
this less, since there are SO many things in
the daytime which warn US and thus put
us on the watch as to how time is flying.
The curious thing is that, though you
can arrest " Ut attention and wake up at
the required time, you never seem to have
the least assurance that it is the right time
without consulting your watch. If you do
really "divine" the time, you have no
power of recognizing that you have "di-
vined'' it. You feel as if you had merely
guessed it, and very probably guessed it
wrong, until your watch confirms the guess.
1t is not by keen sense of duration that
you compute the hour, for that would inn
ply that you knew at what time you made
the resolve-at what time you went to
sleep with the resolve on your mind-and
this is often just what you do not know.
If you measured time by the organic
processes which go on within you. by a
general sense of the number of pulsations
of your heart, or the number of breaths
drawn, then you would require to know
accurately what the time was when YOU
resolved TO awake, and you would measure
only by the length of the thread subse-
quently drawn out. Not only would that
be very complicated process, but it is al
most certainly not the actual process, for
you may be quite unconscious at what
hour exactly the resolve is formed. 1t
seems to be sense of time, as quite dis
tinct from q sense of the duration of your
sleep or of the length of any organic proc
ess which has gone on since the resolve was
made.
Yet it is extremely difficult to imagine
that the individual mind can be so closely
identified in feeling with the revolution of
the earth on it's axis as would enable it to
say at what hour a. m. or p m. you have
arrived. The mind measures duration chief
ly by the succession of it's own thoughts.
but as we have seen, it is not duration, but
something quite different from duration,
of which it appears to be conscious Thus
it can wake the body at any given hour
without even knowing Consciously at
least) how much time has elapsed since
the resolve to wake was first formed.
The present writer may assign the pres
enI article as a consequence Zone of very
many OF the power of waking at the exact
hour desired, an hour which is often varied
in accordance with the urgency Of the case,
SO that it cannot be ascribed to the habit of
waking at exactly the same hour. 1t is a
very curious power, for which we can as
sign no parallel. We certainly have no
similar power Of waking ourselves on
journey at any exact point in space on
which we may previously determine If
we resolve to wake up at the moment the
express train in which we are travelling
passes a particular point from which, sup
pose, a striking landscape is visible, we
should not manage it unless the train were
so punctual that we could effect it by de-
termining to waken at the precise minute
when the train was due there, though in
that way we believe it might occasionally
be effected
But there certainly are multitudes of.
persons who appear to carry some kind of
clock about with them in their inner mind,
though whether it be the clock of the
house or the clock of the neighborhood it
would be well to find out
In the present writer's case 1t is not the
clock of the house, which is kept fast, but,
as near as he can judge, what he believes
to be right time. e., railway time, though
it he were, say, five minutes wrong in his
impression of what right time is, it is prob
able that he would awaken by the time of
his impression, and not by railway or
Greenwich time.-London Spectator.
Two Great Generals Were Poor Students.
The celebrated Fabius Maximus, whose
life was characterized by greatness of
mind, unalterable courage and invincible
was derisively styled in boy
hood ''the little sheep" His slowness and
difficulty in learning were so great that he
was looked upon by all his preceptors as
.incorrigibly stupid" John Howard, the
was another illustrious
Ounce learning nothing in seven years."
AS boy Napoleon was esteemed at best a
plodder, and if not called an absolute
Ounce it was only because his teachers
hardly knew what to make of his rather
grim taciturnity and love of seclusion.
Southey once said that ''pigs are brought
up on wiser system than boys in an ordi-
nary school," and the records of enforced
duncery too often justify the proposition.
1t is a little surprising to find that the
Duke of Wellington's mother believed her
"sheep faced boy" to be hopelessly deficient
in mental ability, and when, after a short
residence at Elton, he was sent to the mill
tary college at Anglers it was only to quail
ify him ito become food for powder -
London Standard.
The Reign of the Chrysanthemum.
The rose is no longer the queen of flowers
for twelve months in the year. During
October and November she must abdicate