A New League.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 9, 27 February 1902, Page 17

A New League.

The following paragraph appeared in a recent issue of the Otago Daily Times: ' A society has recently been organised in Ghioago with the object of waging war againeit Bleep. The mem-

bers are pledged never to Bleep over four hours, also to train their ohildren to do with less sleep. The president of the society says : " Since limiting myself to four hours I have felt more active, energetic, and healthy than erer before. Millions of people are wasting their lives by unnecessary sleep. It iB also a sure Bign of laziness, and lazy people are not wanted in Chicago." The Bociety has a large membership, and branches will be established in other parts of the country.'

Excessive sleep is injurious at any age. Even in the new-born' sprawling, mewling infant, consciousness requires exercise for its development. In old age the habit of prolonged sleep is acconr panied by a marked enfeeblement of memory. Many of our readers will remember the case of Linnaeus, the great botanist, who, in his feeble and sleepy -headed old age, took down one of his own books out of a case, and, having forgotten all about his authorship of it, exclaimed as he devoured its pages : ' How fine this is 1 What would I not give to have written that ! ' Alfred the Great allowed himself eight hours abed. It is not so generally known that he anticipated the eight hours' movement by nearly a thousand years, his motto being, eight hours' labor, eight hours' recreation, eight hours' rest. Eight hours are said to be, on the average, a wise and safe allowance for adults to devote to ' drifting down the tides of sleep.' Grown persons in perfect health may, however, safely curtail this allowance. Dr. Binns, in his curious old book, The Anatomy of Sleep, gives a number of instances in which this curtailment was, for a time at least, successfully effected. ' Jeremy Taylor,' says he, ' allowed but three hours out of the twenty-four for sleep ; Baxter, four ; Wesley, six ; Lord Coke and Sir William Jones, Beven. Nine, however,' he adds, ' will frequently be found not too much for literary men.' We may supplement the list. Edison sometimes goes for two or three nights without sleep, when on the track of a new discovery or invention. His usual sleeping hours are only four or five out of the twenty-four. Fonr hours were also, for long years, the time devoted by Pope Leo XIII. to slumber. The great engineer Brunei worked twenty hours a day. During the siege of Gibraltar Sir George A. Elliott (.afterwards Lord Heathfield) slept only four hours out of the twenty-four. Humboldt, when in the prime of life, managed to live and work on two hours sleep a day. In his old age be indulged himself with four. And he lived to the respectable age ofo f 89 years. But it may be pointed out that such examples are ' more for admiration than imitation.'