SLEEP AS A FACTOR IN HEALTH. 105 



that sleeplessness is an evidence of mind. It is simply an evi- 

 dence of the want of mind, since those who have much mind must 

 have a correspondingly large amount of sleep. 



Regularity Essential Now, it is essential to good and 

 refreshing sleep that it be sound. A light and broken slumber, 

 disturbed by vivid dreams in which the emotional and intellectual 

 powers are generally abnormally active, does not answer the restor- 

 ing purposes of nature; it neither builds nor strengthens the sys- 

 tem; hence, refreshing sleep is necessarily sound. Again, it is a 

 condition of sound sleep that it be regular that is, that it should 

 occupy pretty much the same hours in every day. Alternate sleep- 

 ing and waking, during the same hours of successive days, has the 

 effect, often if not commonly, of rendering sleep difficult, uneasy 

 and insecure. On the whole, if late hours must often be kept, it is 

 perhaps better that the hour of retiring should be uniformly late 

 than occasionally and frequently late; though even this preferable 

 method defeats the evident design of nature, as shown by the 

 declining health of those who from some peculiar necessity of their 

 occupation, habitually turn night into day and day into night. A 

 few years of useless and hurtful fighting against a great law and 

 they are worn out, and must yield and go back to natural habits or 

 die. Thus we see that these four named conditions of good sleep 

 are vitally connected; that sleep, to be refreshing, must oe sound; 

 that to be sound, it must be regular; and that to ue regular it must 

 be timely, or taken at those hours indicated by the order of nature 

 and a once universal custom. 



Injurious Effects of Fashionable Hours In this re- 

 spect of seasonable rest Nature has given way to Fashion. Fash- 

 ionable society means late hours, and all who aspire to enter that 

 charmed circle must conform to this requirement. The modern 

 fine lady must not only have time for her elaborate toilet before 

 making her appearance at any place of evening entertainment, but 

 she must also postpone her arrival to such an nour that, the place 

 being filled, she can attract the greatest number of admiring regards 

 to the splendid elegance of her costume. So theatres, concerts, 

 lectures and sermons must alike wait for her coming, since she it is 

 who gives character and tone to all these assemblies. People who 

 labor and who ought therefore to be in bed by nine or ten o'clock, 

 p. M., must conform to this rule or forego all fashionable amuse- 

 ments, and therefore it is that they are urged by all the well dis- 

 posed to forego these amusements. It is not that the entertain- 

 ments are wrong in themselves, but they sin against the health and 

 happiness of all workers, whether with brain or muscle, by trench- 

 ing more and more deeply as time goes on upon the hours which 

 Nature has consecrated to repose. If workingmen and women 

 must have amusement and we concede that they must and should 

 let them devise it for themselves, within seasonable and proper 

 hours. A persistently and repeatedly broken sleep very soon pro- 



