The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-08-13
Get Your Full Quota
 of Sleep Every Day

Juiian Hawthorne in New York Ameri-
 can.
 Sleep is rest, and rest is exercise, though not of the ordinary and obvious sort. It is not like lifting dumbells or running or rowing. But in sleep na- ture does her secret work of recon structing and repairing the injury that during our waking time we infiict upon ourselves. A man falls aseep exhaust ed. and, waking. finds himself rebuilt and ready for more self-inJury. Ma ture has been taking her turn at exer- S1se, which Is not to destroy, but to restore. And sometimes she seems not Snly to restore what has been lost, but actually out of her mysterious re- sources to add something to the man that he had not possessed before.
 mean this literally. though I have not happened to meet with any refer ence to 1t in works on physiology. But Q wellknown Southern writer ,now dead, who in his day was a true anna teur sportsman and athlete. informed me that he had once had the care Of man during his training for a race and on the morning of the day of the contest he found hi sman pound be- low weight, overdrawn and anxious The race was set for o'clock in the afternoon; at noon he sent the man to bed. The man slept very soundly till half past two. when he was awakened and weighed. He had gained two pounds during his sleep, felt well and strong, and he won the race. Where did he get those two pounds?
 The saying of the holy man of old. "1 die daily" Is true of us all. and 1t is during our waking time that we are dying. During what has been called deaths counterfeit-sleep-t dying process Is arrested, If 1t be not even turned backward toward more life. Yet we must put limit to the life that we accept from sleep. for life that is only living is worth a mans while He must do things, he must use himself, he must die in order to live to purpose. Tortoises sleep for months every year and live for centuries. but that sort of endurance is not what we are here to practice.
 No General Rule for Sleep.
 There is for each man a certain daily period which he should give to sleep. If he falls below 1t he harms and weak ems himself; if he overpass it he be- comes stupid. But this period differs in length so much in different men that no general rule can be given for 1t, and it also differs widely at different ages. A man I know. a great original genius in science. who has one of the most finely organized and well balanced brains in the world, never takes or ap- parently needs more than four hours sleep a day, and often he does well with three. or even with two. That brain of his does more work in an hour than most men could do in a year, and yet 1t recuperates its powers with but a half or a third the rest that numskulls give to theirs. He is tall and slender, but muscular and vigorous. and the grasp of his long, slight hand, if he chooses to exert it, could force blood drops from the ends of your fingers. have thought bis case might be partly explained by the fact that the abstrac- tion of his thoughts is so constant and complete that he really can be said to live in his body very little-he Is else where. and his body recuperates during his absence. But I apologize to physio- logists for so unscientifc an hypothe- sis!
 On the other hand, when was train- ing hard for rowing in college I could and very often did. sleep twelve hours at stretch sound and dreamlessly. Al any rate. if I dreamt did not know 1t when I awoke. During one four and-twenty hours that I remember rowed sixty miles against a head seq from Cape Ann to Charles River, Bos. ton-and then walked twenty miles reaching home at in the morning. slept till the next afternoon. ant woke perfectly rested and ready to dc it over again. But that was in my 1stt year. In the scholarship lists of the faculty that year I led my class. count ing from the bottom; but my recitation: on the river always got high marks.
 Sometimes men of middle age or any age. will all al once fall asleep and sleel for days or weeks. and then awake re. freshed. I do not refer to cases of fit. or other pathological instances; but the sleepers mean had for long time pre-, vious worked hard and rested little And they took what they needed at last in one large dose. Of course, the phe' nomenon cannot be termed normal. be cause very few men can make up a loss in that wholesale way. The pathologi' cal cases 1t Is not here my cue to dis cuss. They are interesting, but they have nothing to do with the ordinary give and take of existence.