POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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much sleep you ought to have say, eight 

 hours and get up sternly when you have 

 been in bed eight hours, however long you 

 have been awake. Increase your air and 

 exercise gradually." A journalist, when 

 suffering from an over-excited brain, and 

 finding his eyes in constant movement, 

 although the lids are closed, resolutely fixes 

 the gaze downward say, to the foot of the 

 bed while the lids are kept closed. If his 

 sleeplessness arises from flatulence, he takes 

 a remedy for that. " A most wretched lier- 

 awake" of thirty-five years' standing, who 

 had for ten years thought himself happy if 

 he could get twenty minutes' sleep in the 

 twenty-four hours, took hot water " a pint, 

 comfortably hot, one good hour before each 

 of my three meals, and one the last thing at 

 night naturally, unmixed with anything 

 else. The very first night I slept, for three 

 hours on end, turned round, and slept again 

 till morning. I have faithfully and regularly 

 continued the hot water, and have never had 

 one ' bad night ' since. Pain gradually less- 

 ened, and went ; the shattered nerves became 

 calm and strong, and instead of each night 

 being one long misery spent in wearying for 

 the morning, they are all too short for the 

 sweet, refreshing sleep I now enjoy." 



The Mental Torpor Remedy. Complete 

 intellectual torpor is recommended as a 

 remedy for overweariness by a writer who, 

 to sustain his view, brings pertinent illustra- 

 tion to the support of argument. Such a 

 condition is almost superstitiously avoided 

 by hard-working men, who are disposed to 

 regard it as a waste and an idle indulgence. 

 But " there is no more harm in intellectual 

 torpor for the sake of the mind's health, 

 than in sleep for the sake of the body's 

 health ; and its duration ought to be gov- 

 erned only by expediency. ... As to the 

 curative effect of torpor, we have no doubt 

 whatever. So far from the mind being 

 weakened by total rest, or the energies dimin- 

 ished, both wake after a time fully recov- 

 ered, and repossessed of the old readiness to 

 exert themselves to fatigue. 'I am tired,' 

 says the cured man to himself, ' of doing 

 nothing' that is, he has recovered the power 

 to do things easily, which is the mark of 

 mental health. The mind itself is, in fact, 

 often positively stronger, having grown in 



its sleep as the body grows, and having, so 

 to speak, resharpened its weapons, till the 

 'lazy' mathematician can not only solve bis 

 old problems more quickly, but can recol- 

 lect them more accurately, the mind having 

 gained, as in boyhood it gained, from sleep. 

 We can all recollect how in school-days the 

 lesson of the evening was often best known 

 on the following morning, although, if tor- 

 por weakens, we ought in the intervening 

 twelve hours to have invariably lost some 

 slight grip of the words, instead of gaining 

 a fresh one. The memory in particular re- 

 covers under this process in the most amaz- 

 ing way, so that even the permanent weak- 

 ness, the slowness of recollection which 

 comes of advancing years, seems to disap- 

 pear. The grand gain, however, is in mental 

 nerve, in the disappearance of that appre- 

 hensive anxiety and sense, not of strain 

 which is, but of strain which is coming, that, 

 far more than actual toil, however severe, 

 shatters men's powers to pieces. But how 

 is torpor to be attained ? Like everything 

 else, by determining to have it that is, by 

 a persistent resolve to be lazy, to do noth- 

 ing, read nothing, think nothing, and say 

 nothing, that involves the smallest up- 

 springing of the sense either of trouble or 

 of effort." 



Animal Language. Whether animals 

 can " talk," and men can learn to under- 

 stand their "language," is the subject of an 

 article by Mr. F. G. Frazer in the " Archaeo- 

 logical Review." A critic of the paper de- 

 nies the human part in the matter, and de- 

 clares that the supposition that men can 

 learn to understand animals to the extent 

 implied "is a direct contradiction to universal 

 and unbroken human experience." All rep- 

 resentations asserting such an achievement 

 as a fact, or assuming its possibility, are vain 

 boastings or imaginings. Yet beasts and 

 birds all utter sounds, and sounds that have 

 meaning to them, and meanings which to a 

 certain extent we can understand. " They 

 all utter, or at least they all seem to utter, 

 the same sounds to express the same emo- 

 tions. The love-cry of the nightingale, the 

 low by which a cow recalls a straying calf, 

 the grunt of a pig when it sees food, the 

 mew of a cat who wants the door opened 

 that is, wants to attract attention the bark 



