Sleep the Best Stimulant.
THE best possible thing for a man to do when he feels too weak to carry it through is to go to bed and sleep a week if he can. This is the only true recuperation of power, the only actual recuperation of brain force. Because during sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood which takes the place of those which have been consumed in previous labor, since the very act of thinking consumes, burns up solid particles, as every turn of the wheel or screw of the splendid steamer is the result of consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. The supply of consumed brain substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the blood, which were obtained from the food eaten previously, and the brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to itself those nutritive particles during a state of rest, of quiet, and stillness in sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they only goad the brain, force it to a greater consumption of its substance, until that substance has been so exhausted that there is not power enough left to receive a supply, just as men are so near death by thirst and starvation that there is not power enough to swallow anything, and all is over.