Omaha daily bee., 1893-08-11
UP WITH THE LARK.
The Medicine of sleep Far Better Than
Early Rising.

baVlS NisinR'
The Hartford Courant has a charming
rha psody on the delights of getting up
early in the morning. Onr extract will I
show the tenor of the article. 1t says
"One knows but half OF ones self. and
that not the better half. who has not
gone forth alone and fresh with sleep
into the early morning and let
the. voices. of that joyful hour
make music to the ear. II is no
injustice to the other phases to say that
the morning burst of sunshine, fresh
ness and fragrance is the divinest thing
nature does for man. 1t is the hour
when optimism is as easy as breathing
and life looks as smooth and pleasant as
a stretch OF meadow land. All things
animate and inanimate, have the ap-
pearance of taking new heart, and we
fall in with the general good cheer and
jubilate, not of compulsion, but as in
stinctively as the robins on the orchard
trees"
This is fine composition, comments
the Philadelphia Press, and if there
were no other parts of the day except
the morning, or if they were not filed
with nerve straining duties we would
feel disposed to add some high flown
rhetoric to the rhapsody of the Courant
and advise everybody to get up early in
the morning and enjoy nature.
But as it happens in this hur-
rying modern life of ours, there
is an almost constant call for the ex-
penditure of nerve force, and as this
force can only be laid up during sleep or
bodily rest it follows that the average
man must have certain amount of
sleep and rest or he becomes nervously
exhausted 1t Is lack of enough
OF this time for recuperation that
makes the American people prema-
turely old and sends thousands of them
to the insane asylums every year. They
are worn out, physically exhausted and
their nervous systems broken down at an
age when they ought to be in good
health and enjoying life and all because
they denied themselves the sleep nature
demanded.
There is nothing like sleep to store up
nervous energy and to put flesh on the
bones. In an article published some
years ago, and generally ascribed to
Oliver Wendell Holmes, it was recon-
mended that nervous women be put to
bed and compelled to stay there while
they were fattened with nutritious foods,
just as a chicken is fattened for market
With the requirement of fat and
the filling up of the reservoirs of
nervous strength the tidgety, emotional,
whimsical woman will get up from her
| bed another being, Thomas A. Edison,
| the electr' clan, proved in his own case
how flesh can be acquired by sleep One
week he slept fourteen hours a day and
| the next week twenty-five hours. The
result was a gain of seven pounds in
weight. A woman OF only moderate
| physical strength was asked how she
managed to attend to the large business
from which she gained support, and the
| that chn nl,taipol IL l,,,
sleeping ten hours six days and spend
ing the whole of the seventh day in bed.
There has been a visible advance in
the health of the American people dur:
ing the past twenty or thirty years
Their stock of vitality has increased and
they live longer. And while there are
other reasons for this change the chief
one is that people sleep longer and rest
more. The hours for work have grad
ually grown fewer. Factory operatives
are no longer compelled to hurry to their
work at 5 o'clock in the morning
and work until 7 in the evening
Business and professional men 60 to their
counting rooms and Offices an hour or
more later and leave as much earlier in
the afternoon. The result is more time
for sleep and better health. But there
is still more room for Improvement in
this way. Walter Besant, the English
| nOVellSt, SAID rev weeks ago at Har-
ward university, when commenting on
the graduating class: GA fine, noble
looking lot of young men. They are
unlike our English university students
physically. l think our young men, as
rule, are bigger, heavier, stouter men,
while yours have more nervous activity
than ours. They are slighter and per-
haps taller, but they seem to be more
highly strung nervously." That is the
trouble with majority of graduates.
Notwithstanding the growth of the ath-
letic spirit in colleges too many young
men go out into life too ''highly strung
nervously."
There is no better medicine than good
sleep and plenty of it, and many boy
and man is crippled in energy by an
unwise habit of getting up too early in
the morning. The American people
would be happier, there would be just
as much work done the insane asylums
would be half empty and there would be
less crime committed if people slept
longer. 1t is time the so-called slug
gard had his rights and the man who
prefers his morning snooze to morn
ing cocktail is estimated at his proper
value.
rDIJE oTU q nUS rrTE cLh