Rules for Good Health.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 101, 9 May 1885, Page 5

Rules for Good Health.

Sleep, like any othor appetite, can be cultivated and pampered ; and just as a mouthful of food more than we really want i 3i 3 waste, and something woree, so every wink of sleep more than we need is dead losp, and thai without the redeeming quality of over-eating and drinking, viz., pleasure, says Eev H. L. Haweis. For to be asleep is not pteaput c ; simply dead loss. To sleep from 11 to 9 in the morning ifl too much ; from 11 till G should be, and is, for our averagelv healthy and normally constituted, quite enough. The point I want to fixespecially is those precious hours before breakfast. How many people only begin their day after breakfast, say about 10 o'clock! I mysolf lived for nearly forty years without realising that I had thrown away about twenty-one, thousand nine hundred hours of good working hfj. Of course, the candle cannot be burned at both ends. You must get your sleep. I have known more than one professional man to succumb to the habit of retiring too late and rising too early. That was thebeginninp of mvpooY friend the late Baron Amphlet 8 collapse. AsQC. he never should have gone into Parliament, and when he retired from the Hou*e on a judgesbip the mischief was done. Be used to be up late with briefs, or down at the House till 2 or 3, rico At 6 light his own fire ana work UU 9» All

such orerpreesure is, of course, bad. Young men may stand it for a few years— young men can stand almost anything for a few years— but it is a vicious principle, Give the body its dues, or the body will revenge itself. Still, to acquire the habit of early rising is worth an. effort. I recommend it for health and pleasure as well as for profit. No one knows how radiant and vigorous nature looks who has not cared to assist her at early toilet, and seen her bathing herself in crystal dew and decking herself with opening blossoms between 4 and 6 o'clock on a midsummer morning. So much and how much more for the pleasure-seeker? But the early-rising worker all the year round is rewarded by an increase of produce, an economy of time, and an invigoration of mind and body. Morning literary work is usually characterised by freshness, continuity, grasp, and vigour ; night work by fever excitement, and less condensation. This , believe to be the rule, and with exceptions, in speaking thus generally, it is, of course, impossible to deal. Of one thing lam certain, that for all headworkers, especially literary men, the following rules will be found golden :— To bed before 12. To work before 7. As little liquid aa possible, and no smoking before breakfast.