A little device which we call “the Perfect Gift of Sleep” is a great help in excluding the light without excluding the air, and especially valuable in that most delightful change, sleeping out of doors. A bag is made of dark green or blue or black silk or satin, about four inches wide and eight inches long, and very loosely filled with sweet pine needles. It is laid lightly over the eyes.
This may seem too trivial to bother about, but the increased comfort and the better quality of sleep which it brings is astonishing.
CHAPTER XXII
FRESH AIR AND REFRESHING SLEEP
Somnus, that walks the world from twilights’ wane
All the night long till day be born again.
Edgar Fawcett.
It is not so necessary now as when Dr. Hall wrote to urge the importance of large, airy sleeping-rooms. But it is amazing to find how many, even among the so-called “better classes,” neglect to open their windows wide at night. I have known people out in the country whose bedroom windows could hardly be made to open, so seldom did they admit the air. Indeed, they were also heavily shaded so that they might not admit the sunshine.
That such people have been able to live at all is due to the patience of Nature, or to the fact that so much of the day is spent in the open air that it helps to counteract the effect of the closed-up night. Even then they do not escape early wrinkles, bent shoulders, and a look of age long before their time. We used to attribute these to the hard work of the farmer’s life, but we might more properly attribute it to improper living.