Alexandria Gazette

Hints on Sleep.—To literary men, preachers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and brain workers in general, the following hints are exceedingly worth attention : The fact is, that as life becomes concentrated, short sleep and early rising becomes impossible. We take more sleep than our ancestors, and we take more sleep because we want more. Six hours sleep will do very well for a plowman, or brick-layer, or any other man, who has no exhaustion but that produced by manual labor, and the sooner he takes it after the labor the better. But for the man whose labor is mental, the stress is on his brain and nervous system, and for him who is tired in the evening with mental application neither early to bed nor early to rise is wholesome. He needs letting down to the level of repose. The longer interval between the active use of the brain and the retirement to bed, the better his chance of sleep and refreshment. To him an hour after midnight is probably as good as two hours before it, and even then his sleep will not so completely restore him as it will his neighbor who is physically tired. His best sleep is the early morning hours, when all the nervous excitement has passed away, and he is in absolute rest.