SLEEP.
348. Have you any remarks to make on the sleep of boys and girls?
Sleeping-rooms are, generally, the smallest in the house, whereas, for health’s sake, they ought to be the largest. If it be impossible to have a large bed-room, I should advise a parent to have a dozen or twenty holes (each about the size of a florin) bored with a center-bit in the upper part of the chamber-door, and the same number of holes in the lower part of the door, so as constantly to admit a free current of air from the passages. If this cannot readily be done, then let the bed-room door be left ajar all night, a door-chain being on the door to prevent intrusion; and, in the summer time, during the night, let the window-sash, to the extent of about two or three inches, be left open.
If there be a dressing-room next to the bed-room, it will be well to have the dressing-room window, instead of the bed-room window, open at night. The dressing-room door will regulate the quantity of air to be admitted into the bed-room, opening it either little or much, as the weather might be cold or otherwise.
Fresh air during sleep is indispensable to health—If a bed-room be close, the sleep, instead of being calm and refreshing, is broken and disturbed; and the boy, when he awakes in the morning, feels more fatigued than when he retired to rest.
If sleep is to be refreshing, the air, then, must be pure, and free from carbonic acid gas, which is constantly being evolved from the lungs. If sleep is to be health-giving, the lungs ought to have their proper food, oxygen,—and not be cheated by giving them instead a poison, carbonic acid gas.
It would be well for each boy to have a separate room to himself, and each girl a separate room to herself. If two boys are obliged, from the smallness of the house, to sleep in one room, and if two girls, from the same cause, are compelled to occupy the same chamber, by all means let each one have a separate bed to himself and to herself, as it is so much more healthy and expedient for both boys and girls to sleep alone.
The roof of the bed should be left open—that is to say, the top of the bedstead ought not be covered with bed furniture, but should be open to the ceiling, in order to encourage a free ventilation of air. A bed-curtain may be allowed on the side of the bed where there are windy currents of air; otherwise bed-curtains and valances ought on no account to be allowed. They prevent a free circulation of the air. A youth should sleep on a horse-hair mattress. Such mattresses greatly improve the figure and strengthen the frame. During the daytime, provided it does not rain, the windows must be thrown wide open, and, directly after he has risen from bed, the clothes ought to be thrown entirely back, in order that they may become, before the bed be made, well ventilated and purified by the air:
“Do you wish to be healthy?—
Then keep the house sweet;
As soon as you’re up
Shake each blanket and sheet.
Leave the beds to get fresh
On the close-crowded floor;
Let the wind sweep right through—
Open window and door.
The bad air will rush out
As the good air comes in,
Just as goodness is stronger
And better than sin.
Do this, it’s soon done,
In the fresh morning air,—
It will lighten your labor
And lessen your care.
You are weary—no wonder;
There’s weight and there’s gloom
Hanging heavily round
In each overfull room.
Be sure all the trouble
Is profit and gain,
For there’s headache, and heartache,
And fever, and pain,
Hovering round, settling down
In the closeness and heat:
Let the wind sweep right through
Till the air’s fresh and sweet.
And more cheerful you’ll feel
Through the toil of the day;
More refreshed you’ll awake
When the night’s pass’d away.”
Plants and flowers ought not to be allowed to remain in a chamber at night. Experiments have proved that plants and flowers take up, in the daytime, carbonic acid gas (the refuse of respiration), and give off oxygen (a gas so necessary and beneficial to health), but give out in the night season a poisonous exhalation.
Early rising cannot be too strongly insisted upon; nothing is more conducive to health, and thus to long life. A youth is frequently allowed to spend the early part of the morning in bed, breathing the impure atmosphere of a bed-room, when he should be up and about, inhaling the balmy and health-giving breezes of the morning:
“Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed:
The breath of night’s destructive to the hue
Of ev’ry flower that blows. Go to the field,
And ask the humble daisy why it sleeps
Soon as the sun departs? Why close the eyes
Of blossoms infinite, long ere the moon
Her oriental veil puts off? Think why,
Nor let the sweetest blossom Nature boasts
Be thus exposed to night’s unkindly damp.
Well may it droop, and all its freshness lose,
Compell’d to taste the rank and pois’nous steam
Of midnight theater and morning ball.
Give to repose the solemn hour she claims;
And from the forehead of the morning steal
The sweet occasion. Oh! there is a charm
Which morning has, that gives the brow of age
A smack of youth, and makes the lip of youth
Shed perfume exquisite. Expect it not,
Ye who till noon upon a down-bed lie,
Indulging feverish sleep.”
If early rising be commenced in childhood it becomes a habit, and will then probably be continued through life. A boy ought on no account to be roused from his sleep; but as soon as he be awake in the morning, he should be encouraged to rise. Dozing—that state between sleeping and waking—is injurious; it enervates both body and mind, and is as detrimental to health as dram-drinking! But if he rise early, he must go to bed betimes; it is a bad practice to keep him up until the family retire to rest. He ought, winter and summer, to seek his pillow by nine o’clock, and should rise as soon as he awakes in the morning.
Let me urge upon a parent the great importance of not allowing the chimney of any bed-room, or of any room in the house, to be stopped, as many are in the habit of doing, to prevent, as they call it, a draught, but to prevent, as I should call it, health.
349. How many hours of sleep ought a boy to have?
This, of course, will depend upon the exercise he takes; but, on an average he should have every night at least eight hours. It is a mistaken notion that a boy does better with little sleep. Infants, children, and youths require more than those who are further advanced in years; hence old people can frequently do with little sleep. This may in a measure be accounted for from the quantity of exercise the young take. Another reason may be, the young have neither pain nor care to keep them awake: while, on the contrary, the old have frequently one or both:
“Care keeps his watch on every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”