TAKE PLENTY OF SLEEP.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 368, 15 May 1889, Page 8

TAKE PLENTY OF SLEEP.

There U a notion abroad that the older one grows the less one has nefd of sleep, but fnr my part every year I take it in larger and laiger quantities. — The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight. P»nt thov, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night, Is a verse that has led a great many people fistSs«y- The poet does not tell us how these great men felt in the morning. I don't believein this night-work. Arsenius used to fay That one hour's sleep at night was enough ft>r ft monk ; but I am not aware that even nn a monk he greatly distinguished himself. Caligula never slept above three hours, and no wonder. The best advice, I am perßnaded, that can be given to a brain-worker is ' go to bed early and sleep for ten hours.' It is true that the doctors Rre addicted to working at night, but they have the honesty to tell their patients, both in this matter and in feasting (for there is nobody so " imprudent' as your doctor), ' do as I tell you, not do as I do,' The cutting short of sleep is one of the snares in which we poor literary folks are po often caught and slain. What terrible examples have I not seen of it in the noblest and best of us I Shakespeare underptood the value of sleep thoroughly, and has written the noblest prafae of it. The worst punishment, even his imagination couli devise for a criminal was that he should * sleep no more,' This, be it noted, was not because he had murdered his king and guest (though that, of eouise. was reprehensible), but beceuse be had murdered Sleep itself, a very much moreseiiou* matter, — a«.~<vs Payn, in London Illustrated News.