Miss M. F. Cassey.
Oberlin, Ohio.
The Night Cap.
In a late letter to the August Constitution Jas. R. Randall discourses thus pleasantly of the efficiency of the night cap in producing sleep:
About 9 o'clock at night we boarded the sleeping coach for Washington. Just before retiring for the night my mind, somehow or other, reverted to an editorial article recently published in the New York Times, half serious, half earnest, concerning the latest theory of an English physician as to the prepotent cause of insomnia and nervous disorders generally. It may be remembered that to the abandonment of the night cap of our grandfathers (the cotton or flannel article, not the alcoholic) was attributed the modern tendency of sleeplessness that make even a philosopher like Herbert Spencer more or less of a crank. What I wanted, and wanted as the fellow did his pistol in Texas, was first-class slumber, just such unmitigated repose as occasionally comes to a highly organized baby, unvexed by colic or pure cussedness. I began to think that perhaps that British doctor was right, and that, if it were possible, I would return to the neglected custom of my ancestors. Just at that moment I plunged my hand into my coat pocket and pulled out a silk smoking-cap—a pretty thing, wrought for me long ago by the dainty, delicate, deft fingers of one who now rests in the graveyard at Augusta. This cap was the very thing. I placed it reverently upon my head, with an act of faith, and lay down. The result was magical. Never since I was a boy can I remember to have experienced so perfect and delicious a repose. Not a dream rippled the surface of my calm brain, and I awakened hours afterward with a sense of satisfaction that must be a foretaste of heaven itself. An incipient headache had vanished. Powers of mind that had been dulled were restored to animation and keenness. Not a trace of irascibility remained; but in its place came trooping the sweet angels that Father Faber says continually hover over the good-humored man. I declare that the metamorphosis was so complete that I almost needed an introduction to my new self. And this prodigy was created by one grand, complete and unusual slumber, when wearing a nightcap! Subsequent experiments have been relatively successful; so I am getting to be an enthusiast on the subject. Some folks say that it is a delusion, a mere freak of the imagination. Be it so. If a nightcap can extinguish my imagination at bed-time, thank God for the discovery! My good old mother tells me that when I was a little fellow she used to tie a nightcap under my chin, and that I was a famous sleeper in those times. She is a firm believer in the efficacy. Likely enough if a man eats pickled pig's feet at midnight or drinks unlimited whisky, even a silk or cotton nightcap may not consign him to the arms of Morpheus; but it may work wonders for a sober person who is cursed with the pestilent habit of conjuring up all manner or odd fancies when his head touches the pillow, instead of dismissing the workmen who hammer on the forges of the brain. The majority of the men will rather suffer nocturnal horrors than be laughed at for wearing nightcaps; just as the majority of women will prefer to wear shoes that are instruments of disease and torture rather than have their feet shod comfortably and sensibly. I have a clear idea as to which is the course of wisdom and which the alternative of folly. But this is a diversion which you, readers, may smile at or not as the whim seizes you.
How to Treat a Boy.
Get hold of the boy's heart. Yonder locomotive comes like a whirlwind down the track, and a regiment of armed men might seek to arrest it in vain. It would crush them, and plunge unheeding on. But there is a little lever in the mechanism that at the pressure of a man's hand will slacken its speed, and in a moment bring it panting and still, like a whipped spaniel, at your feet. By the same little lever the vast steamer is guided hither and yonder upon the sea, in spite of the adverse winds or current. That sensitive and responsive spot by which a boy's life is controlled is his heart. With your grasp gently and firmly on that helm, you may pilot him whither you will. Never doubt that he has a heart. Bad and willful boys very often have the tenderest hearts hidden somewhere beneath incrustations of sin or behind barricades of pride. And it is your business to get at that heart, keep hold of it by sympathy, confiding in him, manifestly working only for his good by little indirect kindnesses to his mother or sister, or even his pet dog. See him at his home, or invite him into yours. Provide him some little pleasures, set him at some little service of trust for you; love him; love him practically. Anyway and every way rule him through his heart.
"Etiquette now admits of a second plate of soup." That is all right, but if a man's appetite will not admit of a second plate of soup, etiquette is nothing to him. And if he has the appetite, he will have the soup, etiquette or no etiquette.