How Long to Sleep

1874

There has been a great deal of trash written and labeled "Hygienic;" but the following so entirely accords with our own experience, that we commend it to readers as sensible:

The fact is, that as life becomes concentrated, and its pursuits more eager, short sleep and early rising becomes impossible. We take more sleep than our ancestors, and we take more because we want more. Six hours' sleep will do very well for a plowman or brick-layer, or any other man who has no exhaustion but that produced by manual labor, and the sooner he takes it after his labor is over the better. But for a man whose labor is mental, the stress of work is on his brain and nervous system, and for him who is tired in the evening with a day of mental application, neither early to bed nor early to rise is wholesome. He needs letting down to the level of repose.

The longer the interval between the active use of the brain and his retirement to bed, the better his chance of sleep and refreshment. To him an hour after midnight is probably as good as two hours before it, and even then his sleep will not so completely and quickly restore him as it will his neighbor who is physically tired. He must not only go to bed later, but lie longer. His best sleep probably lies in the early morning hours, when all the nervous excitement has passed away, and he is in absolute rest.

Note: Please don't take this old article for true advice on your own sleeping. I had to read it a couple time because I can't believe my eyes. The author discounts the exhaustion of a man who plows or lays bricks as something less than one whose labor is more mental. And since the author was a writer, guess who is being talked about there. It would seem that he or she is feeling a bit superior to those others. It seems like the truth would be just the opposite, or neither. There's a lot of looking-down on people in these old articles, a lot of snobby upper class hoity-toityness.


Perseverance

A poor woman had a supply of coals laid at her door by a charitable neighbor. A very little girl came out with a fire-shovel, and began to take a shovelful at a time and carry it to a sort of bin in the cellar. I said: "Do you expect to get all that coal in with your little shovel?" She was quite confused with my question, but her answer was striking: "Yes, sir; if I work long enough." Humble worker, make up for your want of ability by abundant continuance in well-doing, and your lifework will not be trivial. The repetition of small efforts will effect more than the occasional use of great talents.