p. 247 | Sleep and Ruin by Hall's Journal of Health

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 17, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 16.

Sleep and Ruin.

By Hall's Journal of Health

I THINK the intellectual and moral connections of sleeping have not been sufficiently appreciated. Men and boys have been praised for burning the "midnight oil." Now, this "midnight oil" is a delusion and a snare. The student who is fast asleep at eleven o'clock every night, and wide-awake at seven o'clock every morning, is going to surpass another student of the same intellectual ability, who goes to bed after twelve and rises before five. In sleep, the plate on which the picture is to be taken is receiving its chemical preparation; and it is plain that that which is the best prepared will take the best picture.

Men who are the fastest asleep when they are asleep are the widest awake when they are awake.

Great workers must be great resters.

Every man who has clerks in his employ ought to know what their sleeping habits are. The young man that is up till two, three, and four o'clock in the morning, and must put in his appearance at the bank or store at nine or ten o'clock and work all day, cannot repeat this process many days without a certain shakiness coming into his system, which he will endeavor to steady by some delusive stimulus. It is in this way that many a young man begins his course to ruin. He need not necessarily have been in bad company. He has lost his sleep, and is losing his strength and grace.

Here is the outline of the history of a suicide within my own knowledge. A young man, a stranger in New York, in a good situation, in a large boarding-house, has pleasant young companions; spends his evenings out; goes to midnight parties; his nerves become disturbed, then a little drink; a little mistake in business, another drink; reproof from employer, more drink; more mistakes; loss of situation; no help from frivolous companions; money all gone; then credit all gone; then turned out of the boarding-house; wandering in the street; mortification; desperation; shoots himself.—Hall's Journal of Health.