WHERE TO LEAVE CARES OVERNIGHT.
By Robert J. Burdette
I SLEEP. That is "good medicine." I used to be foolish enough to go to bed to think of my sins and my mistakes and my foolishness and my misfortunes, and all the things that happened to me and were going to happen to me. When I put out the light, the room would become luminous with cares and lurid with regrets. But it dawned upon me that a bed wasn't made for that sort of thing. It was made to sleep in; and I proposed to use it for that purpose. It was no easy task to overcome the evil habit which long indulgence in the luxury of bedtime worry had fastened upon me. But I did it. And now when I want to go to sleep, I can. I don't care what the trouble and fret, the irritation and the trial, the blunders and the disappointments of the day have been; I leave them at the door; they are on the outside. They may lie in wait for me as I come out next morning, but they have to abide out in the cold and gloomy hall all night. They do not come to bed with me. And the next morning I am all ready for them, after a long, sound sleep. But most of them die overnight from exposure and loneliness. Nothing requires more tender and constant nursing to keep it alive than worry. You don't worry because you have to; you worry because you like it; you enjoy it. I used to myself; used to like to get away from people; used to be glad when bedtime came so that I could worry over my troubles comfortably, without being interrupted. By and by I had some real troubles; then I learned to do better.—Robert J. Burdette, in Ram's Horn.