SLEEP.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 925, 12 March 1881, Page 5

SLEEP.

Thebe can be little doubt that as a general rule—and therefore setting aside all exceptional cases, some of which are sufficiently startling, we know —the time at which we go to bed is not nearly so important to the welfare of the day as the time at which we get up. A person may go to bed punctually, and even keep nursery time, but if he be uncertain or systematically late in the morning he will not, as a rule, make so much of the day as he would if he got up regularly in the morning whatever be the hour he went to bed at night. We are not speaking of children, or of invalids, or of any exceptional cases, as we have said, but of men and women in ordinary health and working trim, and of men apd women who have .a mind to do their work —ay, and enjoy their work, and their whole being too, to the best of their ability. ' And we say that there is a gain to the whole day in bodily and mental power, in tone, in temper, and in the quality if not the quantity of time —an advantage which can better be experienced than described—in regular if not early rising, which no early hours at night can make up for, and which net even late hours at night can entirely take away. The old rhyme, it is true, makes the two things of co-ordinate importance “ Early to bed, and early to rise, is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise but however true this may be, it is equally true, and of much greater width of practical application, that of the two, .early or at least regular rising

is the one which alone is essential to our true prosperity. And if we are thus regular—that is, if we can but habitually depend on ourselves to get up in the morning when we know we ought—then a good deal of latitude may be allowed us both as to the time we go to bed and as to the regularity with which we adhere to it. Such latitude can never become licence so long as it is rigidly attached to the condition ofunf ailing regularity in the mornings In that case the. time for going to bed will simply be the' time that will give us the quantity of sleep we require before getting up» ) That quantity each must judge of for himself. Happily, with healthy persons the hours between going to bed and rising are the measure of sleep. Probably most people take a larger measure of sleep than they absolutely require, though it is. not’easy to determine what should be, and we do not all want the same. It is simply a question of health. No one has any right to curtail his hours of rest habitually so as to injure that. But sleep though “ tired nature’s sweet restorer,” is not the only recreative agency that fits us for our work, and it is quite possible that’at least occasionally the curtailment of the period of rest may be more than compensated from other sources of refreshment and renovation. For when we speak of health we mean health of mind as well as health of body. A man may sleep the clock round and not be so invigorated for duty as another who has slept scarce half the time, because one has laini down in an unhealthy frame of mind, while the other has gone to bed with a mind cheerful and contented —refreshed, it may be, with some wholesome intercourse. And for the same reason, because what is really healthy must be really healthy for the mind, it is miserable compensation for encroaching on the needful hours of rest to close the day with amusements that tend to dissipate and enervate the mind, even though, which is sometimes but not generally the case, we never allow them to interfere with our regularity in the morning.