The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-05-14
Miscellaneous.
I'D sLEzP.

We r now approaching q very
busy time on the farm. There is
two days work in sight every morn-
ing and cften three days the next
morning. The farmer feels that he
must make a long day of it, COM
mencing very early in the morning
and working very late in the night.
He is very apt to neglect sleep which
is a condition Of successful work any
day. The average system requires
for it's efficiency that one-third of
the time be spent in bed not in toss
ing nor in planning, much less in fret
ting OF worrying, but in good, solid,
refreshing sleep. The man who will
resolve in his youth that all his life
long he will sleep eight hours a day
no matter what happens will in nine
chances out of ten be a successful
mai and live to a good old age, while
the man who robs himself of sleep,
who carries the disappointments and
vexatiOns of the day to bed with him
and does his planning when he ought
to be asleep will become an irritable
and CROSS young man and if he lives
to be old will be peevish and disa-
greeable.
1t is not always easy to follow out
our advice. We have practiced it
for a life time and yet we have not
always succeeded, but we have had a
measure of success and the capacity
for work which we enjoy is largely
due to the fact that we have made it
a point to sleep eight hours a day if
we did not get chat sleep in the night
time, to take a nap just after dinner
if only for fifteen minutes. We need
eight hours sleep. We can't afford
to rob the body of that sleep. But
even now just SO sure as we take to
bed with US a ! jtGy piece of bust
ness or even a proposed editorial we
miss the hour or two of sleep before
midnight and have to make it up
afterwards. It is a losing business
all the time. Bear in mind that the
body will always go to sleep at night
if the mind will let it. It is the
mind that keeps the body awake.
Therefore, the art of thinking about
nothing at night is as desirable as
the art of thinking about some
thing intently in the day.
Say to yourself when night comes,
Clones, you have run this machine
all day. 1t is badly clogged up, out
of order, needs oiling and greasing.
Now turn it over to the Being who
made it. Go to sleep and let him oil
it and fix it up and have it in good
shape for you to run in the morn
ing" Of course all this is fancy and
yet it has given us many a good
nights sleep. Certainly the Maker
of the body knows how 10 fix it up
better than you do. Let Him have
a chance.
Sometimes it helps to initiate the
breathing that is natural in sleep.
We have found great help sometimes
by counting, commencing with TWEEN
ty-one and skipping thirty, forty,
fifty, etc, taking a long breath when
thinking twenty and naturally
shorter breath on one. We can
nearly always put ourselves to sleep
before we count up to one hundred
twice. However, a firm determine
ton to go to sleep when you go to
bed and to go to bed in time to get
eight hours sleep before morning is
the best anodyne, or sleeping powder,
that a man over took. In short if
you don't take eight hours sleep dur
ing the summer season you are rob
bling yourself, and will have to pay
with compound interest. Where
there's a will a way is usually found.
-Wallace's Farmer.