SLEEP. 215 



be deducted from any apparent view of a period devoted 

 to life or labor or love. Sometimes that brevity of time 

 for love is an overwhelming thought. We look forward 

 to a dear companionship of years. We give to that com- 

 panionship how much ? I know many a man who loves 

 his family with devoted affection, but who gives ten hours 

 each day to business, and six to sleep, and thus can count 

 in every twenty years only seven which he has passed in 

 their society. I do not find fault with him to whom labor 

 is a necessity, but it is beyond question a wrong to him- 

 self and others in the case of one who has no actual need 

 to keep on working ; and surely it is a grand error in the 

 modern social structure that the styles of life, the require- 

 ments of social position, the luxuries that have become 

 necessities of our artificial life, compel this vast sacrifice 

 of the affections. It is more than a sacrifice of affection, 

 for it has its effect on the character, and so on the nations 

 and the age. But what's the use of talking about it. We 

 can't reform it. Only, my boy, it's pleasant, lying on this 

 rock and watching the water, to think that when the rough 

 and tumble is over — when we have had our play in the 

 forests, and have done our work in the factories — when 

 we have gotten through the alternations of sunshine and 

 shade, light and darkness, labor and rest, there will be an 

 end of it, where there will be no more sleeping." 



" What ! no sleep in heaven ? I'm not so sure of that. 

 Sleep is one of the blessings. You know, ' He giveth his 

 beloved sleep.' " 



" A beautiful passage, and one that it seems very hard 

 to erase from our Bibles : but, you know, it does not be- 

 long there. The correct translation of the Hebrew is, 

 ' He giveth to his beloved asleep.' God's gifts are often 

 unsought, unforeseen, and come without our seeking or 



