SLEEP 157 



resistfulness and pose of living men and women ; others 

 show true observation in presenting the startling and 

 distinctive flaccidity of the newly dead, which is followed 

 after a few hours by the equally characteristic rigor 

 mortis, or stiffness of the dead. There are many fine 

 studies of sleep by sculptors, but none which to my 

 thinking so delicately and truthfully present its most 

 beautiful and peculiar effects on the muscular " tone " 

 as a work in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris, called 

 " Le Nid " a baby of a year old and a little girl of 

 three or four years, asleep side by side on the cushion 

 of a capacious arm-chair. The pose and the details of 

 muscular relaxation differ greatly and characteristically 

 in the two children. One would like to see sleep at 

 different ages and under various conditions of fatigue 

 similarly portrayed, for there is a range and variety of 

 expression in those who sleep, not perhaps as extensive, 

 but as beautiful as that to be found in those who are 

 awake. 



All things on the earth may be said (if we use the 

 term in a wide sense) to sleep, for all are affected by 

 the stimulation to activity caused by sunlight and by its 

 cessation during night. It is only of late years that we 

 have come to know of fishes, crabs, worms, and star- 

 fishes (many of them without eyes) which live in the 

 depths of the ocean, where no light penetrates and it 

 is always night. The ultimate source of their food 

 is in the upper sunlit layers of water, to which they 

 never penetrate, and from which particles of dead but 

 nutritious matter (the bodies of those who have lived 

 up there) rain down upon them incessantly, like 

 manna on the Israelites. All things accessible to the 

 sun's rays are not equally, nor even similarly, affected 

 by the alternation of day and night, and some not 

 directly at all, but only by the sleeping and waking of 



