150 
CONTINUOUS DAYLIGHT. 
quoting the words of my journal — puzzled me, as 
things obsolete and fanciful. 
This was instinctive, perhaps ; hut hy-and-hy came 
other feelings. The perpetual light, garish and un- 
fluctuating, disturbed me. I became gradually aware 
of an unknown excitant, a stimulus, acting constant- 
ly, like the diminutive of a cup of strong coffee. My 
sleep was curtailed and irregular ; my meal hours trod 
upon each other’s heels ; and but for stringent regula- 
tions of my own imposing, my routine would have 
been completely broken up. 
My lot had been cast in the zone of liriodendrons and 
sugar-maples, in the nearly midway latitude of 40°. 
I had been habituated to day and night ; and every 
portion of these two great divisions had for me its pe- 
riods of peculiar association. Even in the tropics, I 
had mourned the lost twilight. How much more did 
I miss the soothing darkness, of which twilight should 
have been the precursor ! I began to feel, with more 
of emotion than a man writing for others likes to con- 
fess to, how admirable, as a systematic law, is the al- 
ternation of day and night — words that type the two 
great conditions of living nature, action and repose. 
To those who with daily labor earn the daily bread, 
how kindly the season of sleep ! To the drone who, 
urged by the waning daylight, hastens the deferred 
task, how fortunate that his procrastination has not a 
six months’ morrow! To the brain-workers among 
men, the enthusiasts, who bear irksomely the dark 
screen which falls upon their day-dreams, how benig- 
nant the dear night blessing, which enforces reluctant 
rest ! 
