340 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



pork-fritters, generally result in apocalyptic visions, and an eel-pie for 

 supper is a reliable receipt for a first-class nightmare. Vivid dreams, 

 per se, however, are by no means a morbid symptom ; on the con- 

 trary, the scenes of the slumber-drama are most lively and lifelike in 

 the happiest years of childhood ; and I remember a time when I longed 

 for the bed-hour, in anticipation of a pleasant dream-land excursion. 

 Children are apt to relate their trance adventures, and I would encour- 

 age the habit ; dreams, as the elder Pliny already observes, may often 

 afford a suggestive insight into the ethical condition of the mind ; also 

 into the condition of the stomach. Melodramatic incidents indicate 

 the presence of irritating ingesta, and the least attempt at clairvoyance 

 calls for out-door exercise and an aperient diet. A South-German 

 feather-bed is a Trophonian cave ; the difficulty of turning from side 

 to side crowds the brain with alarming phantasms, and the excessive 

 warmth of the thing itself is apt to affect the imagination. The best 

 bed is, indeed, a hard, broad mattress, or a well-stuffed straw tick, and, 

 for reasons I have stated in the chapter on " In-door Life/' a woolen 

 blanket over a linen bed-sheet is preferable to a quilt. Those who 

 find it uncomfortable to sleep in an absolutely horizontal position 

 should slightly raise the head-end of the bedstead rather than use a 

 thick bolster. A thick pillow bends the head upon the breast, or 

 keeps the neck in a position that aggravates the distress of respiratory 

 difiiculties. Woven-wire mattresses recommend themselves by their 

 cleanliness and durability ; their elastic qualities alone would hardly 

 justify a great ex^Dense, though luxury has even devised an "hydro- 

 static bed," a trough of water with a tegument of caoutchouc. His- 

 tory records the name of the Sybarite who "cried aloud because a 

 leaflet of his flower-mattress got crumpled " ; and Chevalier Luckner, 

 the Russian Lucullus, built himself an air-pillow bed on noiseless 

 wheels, that could be turned by a hand-lever, in order to move the 

 sleeping-car from or toward the stove, the aphelion and perihelion be- 

 ing determined by the state of the out-door atmosphere. Such chev- 

 aliers deserve the penance of Ezekiel (iv, 3-6), who had to lie three hun- 

 dred and ninety days on his left side for the iniquity of the house of 

 Israel, and forty days extra for the iniquity of the house of Judah. A 

 weary head needs no air-cushions, with noiseless wheel-attachments ; 

 brakesmen take their intermittent naps on the hard caboose-bunk of 

 a rumbling freight-train ; and the log of the Royal Sovereign records 

 that, during the heat of the battle of the Kile, some of the over- 

 fatigued boys fell asleep upon the deck. 



The habit of going to sleep at fixed hours can overcome the tort- 

 ures of neuralgia, and some practical stoics have manifested a not 

 less astonishing command over their mental emotions ; Napoleon I 

 slept soundly on the eve of the battle he knew to be his last chance, 

 like Mohammed II before his last neck-or-nothing assault upon the 

 ramparts of Constantinople. Army-life can acquaint a man with 



