A POET'S NIGHT-CAP.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 9, 20 June 1884, Page 13

A POET'S NIGHT-CAP.

about nine o'clock at night we boarded the sleeping coach for Washington. Behind time again, because of the belating of other trains, we reached Weldon when we should have been in Richmond. Just before retiring for the night my mind,, somehow or other, reverted to an editorial article recently published in the New York Times, half serious, half jeering, concerning the latest theory of aa English physician as to the prepotent cause of insomnia and nervous disorders generally. It may be remembered that to the abandonment of toe night-cap of our grandfathers (the cotton or flannel article, not the alcoholic) was attributed the modern tendency of sleeplessness that makes even a philosopher like Herbert Spencer more or le3s of a crank. What I wanted, and w-nted as the fellow did his pistol in Texas, was a first-class slumber, just such unmitigated repose as occasionally comes to a highly-organised baby, uuvexed by colic or pure cussedness. I begin to think that perhaps that British doctor was right, and that, if it were possible, I would return to the neglected custom of my ancestors. Just at that moment I plunged my hand into my coat pocket and pulled out a smoking-cap— a pretty thing wrought for me long ago by the dainty, delicate, deft fingers of one vsrho now rests in the grave-yard at Augueta. This cap was the very thing I I placed it reverently npon my head with an act of faith, and lay down. The result was magical. Never since I was a boy can I remember to have experienced so perfect and delicious a repose. Not a dream rippled ttie surface of my calm brain, and I awakened hours afterwards with a sense of satisfaction that it must be a foretaste of heaven itself. An incipient headache had vanished. Powers of mind that had been dulled were restored to animation and keenness. Not a trace of irascibility remained ; but in its place came trooping the sweet angels that Father Faber says continually hover over the good-humoured man. I declare that the metamorphosis \va* so complete that I almost needed an introduction to my new self. And this prodigy was created by one grand, complete and unusual slumber, when wearing a night-cap. Subsequent experiments have been relatively successful ; so lam getting to be an enthusiast on the subject. Some folks Bay that it is a delusion, a mere freak of the imagination. Be it so. If a night-cap can extinguish my imagination at bedtime, thank God for tbe discovery 1 My good old mother tells me that when I waa a little fellow she used to tie a night-cap under my chin, and that I was a famous sleeper in those days. She is a firm believer in its efficacy. Likely enough if a man eats pickled pigs' feet at midnight, or drinks unlimited whisky, even a silk or cotton night-cap may not consign him to the arms of Morpheus, but it may work wonders for a sober person who is cursed with the pestilent habit of conjuring up all manner of odd fancies when his head touches the pillow, instead of dismissing the workmen who hammer on the forges of the brain. The majority of men will rather suffer nocturnal horrors than be laughed at for wearing night-caps, just as the majority of women will prefer to wear shoes that are instruments of disease and torture rather than have their feet shod comfortably and sensibly. I have a clear idea as tojwhich is the course of wisdom and which the alternative of folly. But this is a diversion which you, reader, may smile at or not, as the whim seizes you,— J. R. Randall in Augusta, LGa.) Chrmiolc. - .