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.'
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 9, 27 February 1902, Page 17
Word Count
495A New League. New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 9, 27 February 1902, Page 17
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