CHAPTER XXXVI
REST AND SLEEP
O Happy Sleep! that bear’st upon thy breast
The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest.
Ada Louise Martin.
One of the main purposes of sleep is to secure rest to men. But intelligence will find rest in many other ways independent of sleep or of promoting sleep. We are just beginning, under the leadership of such people as Miss Eva Vescelius, to make a full use of music as a soother of the nerves: yet, as long ago as the time of David, some persons knew its value. Browning’s magnificent poem, “Saul,” recounts its force.
As David exorcised Saul’s evil spirit by the skillful harp and voice, so those who are studying the therapeutics of music are now helping the physically and mentally ill. Miss Vescelius and those working with her claim that “music is capable of great life-awakening energy.... The use of music for healing the sick is therefore a natural use of a natural power. Music, like medicine, has been divided into classes as stimulants, sedatives, and narcotics. It is now admitted that music can be so employed as to exercise a distinct psychological influence upon the mind, the nerve centers and the circulatory system, and that by the intelligent use of music many ills may be cured.” For almost all of us “music hath charms to soothe.” Others again find in some form of massage a sweet though artificial sedative; some even in the combing of the hair, which is possibly connected with an electric effect, for we know little definitely as yet of the principles of the possible curative force of electricity.
Others again rest by a mere mental change in their ordinary avocations. My wife was once talking with Mr. Stiegler, a well-known riding teacher in New York, and he said that he was in the saddle every day from six or seven in the morning till eleven at night, with only short intervals for meals. “It’s a hard life,” he said.
“But Sundays?” the lady asked.
“Oh, Sundays! I have Sundays to myself.” “And what do you do on Sundays?” “Oh!” he said, “I take a ride in the Park.” The relief from the strain of watching the pupils and their horses was rest to him.
When Weston had won his first six days’ walk in Madison Square Garden, he went out to take a walk on Fifth Avenue on the Sunday.