The L'Anse sentinel., 1907-09-28
m HOURS OF SLEEP
IDEAS HAVE FLOODED BRAINS OF
GREAT MEN.
Authors, Statesmen and Inventors All
Admit indebtedness to the Drowsy
God-Some Remarkable
Cases in Point.


Some people are not satisfied with
having done fair days work at their
regular occupation, but insist upon
keeping busy even when they sleep.
Most of this work, done uncon-
sciously during the dead hours Of the
night, is worthless, but sometimes in
tellectual feats are accomplished dur
ing sleep which during waking hours
proved quite impossible.
From his earliest childhood Robert
Stevenson was dreamer, and his
dreams were horrible. Later in life
he began to dream of journeys where
In he would see strange towns. In
the next phase he would read in
his sleep, and such wonderful books
I that never afterward was he content
with ordinary literature. Lately he be-
gan to dream in sequence, and he
would continue the dream from the
place where he left of the previous
night.
1t Is admitted that Stevenson dream
ed the window scene in "Jekyll and
Hyde" and some of his friends are
sure that the central theme of the
strange book came to the author while
he was asleep His Brownies showed
il to him in the night"
A pupil of Prof. Won Swinden in
Amsterdam solved a difficult problem
in his sleep, after the professor and
ten Of the brightest students in the
class had worked for days in the
effort to find the answer Marquis de
Condocet, the famous French mathe-
matician, solved problem in integral
calculus while he was asleep, although
the matter had puzzled him for days.
He did not write the answer and
process down as Won Swindens pupil
had done, but he remembered the So
luton that came in his dream, and
put II on paper as soon as he awoke.
Cabanis. the eminent French physi-
clan, says that Franklin told him, dur
ing one of his political missions to
Paris, that over and over again he
had gone to bed puzzled by political
events which became quite clear to
him during his sleep.
Dante is said to have dreamed The
Divine Comedy or at least the plot
and characters. and some part Of the
details. This vision appeared to him
when he was only nine years old,
according to some OF the stories,
while, as others tell it, the dream
came to another child during a trance
which came with long illness.
Voltaire composed the first canto of
the "Henriade" while he was asleep.
Ideas occurred to me-" he says, in
spite of myself, and in which had
no part whateves.
Some useful and prosaic things also
have come from dreams. II long has
been known that the making of shot
resulted from an idea that came to
Bristol mechanic in his sleep. The
man was employed cutting up strips
of lead, out of which his fellow work
men made shot The process was
slow and expensive. One night this
workman had been drinking and after
he went to bed he dreamed that il was
raining AS he watched the rain II
turned to lead. and the earth was
covered with shot. He awoke. and,
filed with his dream, went up into the
tower of st. Mary Radcliffe, in Bris.
tol and, melting some lead. poured II
out from the top Of the tower When
he went to look for the lead he found
that il had taken the form of shot
Thus the shot tower became a fact.
and the workman made fortune out
of his dream.