HOW PEOPLE SLEEP | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 7, 1892

HOW PEOPLE SLEEP.

Though it be true, as the author of a school composition once asserted, that "sleeping is a universal practice among all nations," it is also true that there is a great diversity in the methods of sleeping among people of different nations and different ways of life. The things which one person needs to make him sleep are precisely the things which would keep another awake all night. Even the sedative medicines which put one person immediately into a heavy slumber excite another into a condition of nervous restlessness.

The European or American in order to sleep well ordinarily requires a downy pillow under the head; but the Japanese, stretching himself upon a rush mat or the floor, puts a hard, square block of wood under his head, and does not sleep well if he does not have it.

The Chinese makes great account of his bed, which is very low indeed—scarcely rising from the floor—but it is often carved exquisitely of wood; but it never occurs to him to make it any softer than rush mats will render it.

While the people of Northern countries cannot sleep unless they have plenty of room to stretch out their legs, the inhabitants of the tropics often curl themselves up like monkeys at the lower angle of a suspended hammock, and sleep soundly in that position.

The robust American often covers himself with a pair of blankets, and throws his window wide open to the air, even in the wintertime, and he does not complain if he finds a little drift of snow across the top of his bed in the morning.

The Russian, on the contrary, likes no sleeping place so well as the top of the big soapstone stove in his domicile. Crawling out of this blistering bed in the morning he likes to take a plunge in a cold stream, even if he has to break through the ice to get into it.

The Laplander crawls, head and all, into a bag made of reindeer skin, and sleeps warm and comfortable within it. The East Indian, at the other end of the world, also has a sleeping bag, but it is more porous than the Laplander's. Its purpose is to keep out mosquitoes more than to keep the sleeper warm.

While the American still clings to his feather pillow, he is steadily discarding his old-fashioned feather bed in favor of the hair or straw mattress. The feather bed is relegated to the country, and many people who sleep upon it all through their childhood find themselves uncomfortable upon it in their maturity.

The Germans not only sleep upon a feather bed, but underneath one. The feather covering used in Germany, however, is not as warm as a mattress, and the foreigner who undertakes to sleep beneath it often finds his feet suffering from cold while his shoulders are suffering from heat.—The Youth's Companion.