Take Plenty of Sleep.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 4

Take Plenty of Sleep.

There is a notion abroad that the older one grows the less one has need of sleep, but for my part every year I take it in larger and larger quantities. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept. Were toiling upward in the night, 1 3 a verso that has led a great many people astray. The poet does not tell us how these great men felt in tho morning. I don’t believe in thi3 night-work. Arsenius used to say that one hour’s sleep at night was enough for a monk ; but I am not aware that even

as a monk he greatly distinguished himself. Caligula never slept above three hours, and no wonder. The best advice, lam persuaded} that can be given to a brain-worker is *go to bed early and sleep for ton hours.’ It is true that the doctor!) fire addictod to working at night, but they have the honesty to tell thcii patients, both in this matter and in feasting (for there is nobody so ‘imprudent ’ as your doctor), ‘ do as I tell you, not do as I do,’ The cutting short of sleep is one of the snares in which we poor literary folks are so often caught aud slain. What terrible examples have I not seen of it in the noblest and best of us ! Shakespeare understood the value of sleep thoroughly, and has written the noblest praise of it. The worst punishment, even his imagination could devise for a criminal was that ho should ‘sleep no more.’ This, be it noted, was not because he had murdered his king aud guest (though that, of course, was reprehensible), but be* cause he had murdered Sleep itself, a very much more serious matter.—Jamci Payn, in London Illustrated News.