THE ART OF GETTING TO SLEEP.
ALL the conditions must be favorable to sleep. The bedroom should be quiet, dark, and airy. In winter it is better to have the window away up than to shut it so that a knife-edged draught shall chill an exposed shoulder. The temperature of the bed should be agreeable. Getting to sleep when the feet are cold is as slow a job as getting to sleep when hungry. A hot-water bottle in one case and a piece of bread and butter in the other will help things. I leave it to you to decide which is for which. A warm bed in winter is easily got, but a cool bed in summer is not so simple a proposition. However, a sheet made of straw matting, interposed between the regular sheet and the mattress, will be found to mitigate sensibly the horrors of a hot night. It preserves the softness and springiness of the bed, and yet is pleasantly cool, without being too cool. Personally, I find that sleep comes soonest when I have no pillows at all. The next thing is to relax utterly. Remember that the corner of the jaw is the citadel of tension. While that is clinched no sleep can come. But most important of all is the disposition of the mind so that sleep can come. The reason why we fail in this is the same as the reason why we fail in other things—we do not very genuinely want to succeed. As we lie stretched out after a busy day there are so many thoughts that we want to chase after that we drop the notion of sleep, tho we know that to-morrow is another day on which we can think. It is all very well to say, “Dismiss these thoughts.” How to dismiss them is the problem that each must solve. —Everybody’s Magazine.