C
The Commoner,
10
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How to Sleep.
Peoplo woo sleep; they call sleep
fickle or Inconstant and in .various
ways abuse it. They make ridiculous
proverbs which imply that there is
something virtuous in short nights, as
if sleep wore to bo kepi at bay. All
this is wrong. Sleep is the restoration
of life call it, if you please, the gov
ernor of the engine. With the right
sleep and enough of it the -body comes
up to its work every morning new
born. In the first half of life it comes
up to its work a Httlo better able to
do its duty than the morning before.
But this is not so if the sleep has not
been sound and steady.
Every one will And out how much
sleep is good for him. Then he will
make it his duty or business to take
that amount regularly.
The rules as I have found them are
simple. Thoy are well laid down in
more than one book. Dr. Hammond's
is as good as any.
1. Do not work the brain for six
hours before you go to bed. Business
men, so-called, are apt to violate this
rule. The agents of banks and other
great financial trusts think they must
give daylight to their employers and
then spend their evenings in memo
randa and calculations about their own
personal affairs. All this is wrong.
You may get out of bed as early as you
please and work your brain then. But
you are safest if after 3 or 4 in the af
ternoon you give it no hard work at
all. Are there not the children to play
with and novels to read and Joe Jef
ferson at the theatre and the sofa to
lie upon while Marion and Hugh play
a duet on the piano? Do not work
this poor old brain, then, which has
stood by you so loyally since you got
out of bed in the morning.
2. . Remember always what the bed
is for and why you are in it. You are
there to sleep. Not to add up figures
in your head. Not to think out a let
ter to your lawyer. Not to work out
the best way of putting your house lots
on the market. Simply you are there
to sleep.
3. If you have been working the
poor old brain too late, or if you have
been eating a Welsh rarebit just be
fore you undressed yourself, and if
your head burns so that it almost sets
the pillow on fire, crawl out of bed
and sponge your head with cold water.
At the worst soak the feet in as hot
water as they will bear. You want to
draw away the extra' blood from the
brain. In all natural sleep there is
less blood on the brain than when
you are awake. I have at my bedpost a
long cord with a child's flat-iron at
tached to it. When my head Is too
hot I hold the smooth, cold surface of
the iron against the forehead to drive
tho blood away.
4. People tell you to think of
sheep jumping over a wall, to repro
duce familiar strains of music, to hold
tho eyes open and fixed on some ob
ject opposito in the room. Recall tho
last ridiculous vision you had before
waking. B;it do not engage while in
bed in any such serious matter which
will again exhaust and exasperate the
brain. Edward Everett Hale in Phil
adelphia Press.
ACTIVE BRAINS
Must Have Good Food or Norvous Pros
tration Surely Follows
It is a lamentable fact that American
brain workers do not, as a rule, know
how to feed themselves to rebuild tho
daily loss occasioned by active mental
effort." 'This fact, coupled with the dis
astrous effects Of tho alkaloids con
tained in tobacco, coffee and whisky,
makes a sure pathway towards nervous
prostration.
The remedy is simple enough. Em
ploy the services of a food expert, who
knows the kind of food required to re
build the daily losses in tho human
body. This can be done by making
free . use of Grape-Nuts, tho famous
breakfast food, which contains exactly
the elemental principles which have
an affinity for albumen and go direct
ly to rebuild the gray matter in the
brain, solar plexus and nerve centers
throughout the body! Follow your se
lection of food up with a dismissal of
coffee, tobacco and whisky for fifteen
days and mark the difference in your
mental ability, which means every
thing to the average hustling Ameri
can, who must have physical and men
tal strength or ho falls out in tho race
for dollars.
Washington's Wealth.
In these days when millions are
counted as nothing and millionaires
aro found in almost every city, it
seems strange that the property of
Georgo Washington, the richest man
in the United States at the time of
his death, inventoried only $489,135.22.
He owned 41,523 acres of land, lying in
Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Penn-,
sylvania, Ohio and New York, with
city lots in New York, Philadelphia
Washington Alexandria, Winchester
and Berkley Springs.
Lord Fairfax, who owned G,000,000
acres of land stretching back into
Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennes:
see, gave Washington tracts of wild
land as compensation for his services
as surveyor. Washington inherited
even more from his brother, and his
wife, she that was Martha Dandridge
and afterward the Widow Custis, was
a rich woman for her time. The judg
ment of Washington about town
sites, however, was not good. In 17G5
he laid out the town of Berkley
Springs, which was christened in hon
or of the governor of Virginia, and
was intended and expected to be a
great metropolis. Washington was so
confident of its future prominence as
a city that he bought a large num
ber of lots in addition to those which
he received as compensation for his
services, and was greatly disappointed
because the town did not develop.
Washington expected and desired the
capital ot the United States to be lo
cated farther west than its present site
and although he took no conspicuous
part in the contest, which was bitter
and prolonged, he nevertheless at
tempted to manipulate matters so as to
accomplish his design. In the adver
tisements of land which he offered for
sale in West Virginia, where he had
25,000 acres, he stated that it "was of
great value on account of contiguity
to the seat of government, which it is
more, probable will be fixed at the
mouth of the great Kanawha river."
These lands were Washington's share
of 200,000 acres donated by the state
of Virginia to the officers and soldiers
who served in the Indian war.
Washington also had 5,000 acres in
Green county, Kentucky. He visited
that region at an early date, and set
tled some of his poor relations there.
It is an interesting fact that Wash
ington owned the first natural gas
well in this country. On his land near
the Kanawha the gas issued from tho
cracks in the rock at the bottom, and
forced its way through the water of
what was known as Burning Spring
creek: It was a common amusement
for Washington and his fellow sur
veyors to light the gas which came
through and would burn on the sur
face . of the water. W. E. Curtis, in
Chicago Times-Herald.
Polygamy by Law-
, Not many years ago a citizen of
New York left his family, went to
Pennsylvania, and, by constructive no
tice to his wife, procured a divorce.
He remarried, became the father of
children by that marriage, again de
serted his family and turned up in
California, where ho, procured a di
vorce, valid by the law of that state,
and took a third wife, by whom he
reared a family.
In the course of time he died, own
ing lands in all three of the states in
which he had married.
In California ho had a lawful wife
and lawful children. Had he takon
them to Pennsylvania, the California
wife, by changing tho name of the sov
ereign state in which she dwelt, would
have descended from the status of a
wife, given her by the highest law of
the land, into the position of a woman
against whom the finger of scorn could
justly be pointed and Upon whom the
hard hand of the law could be right
fully placed. And the children, while
under the humane policy of the law
recognized as the offspring of the
mother, would have found tho bar sin
ister in their escutcheon and their
father's property in Pensylvania de
nied to them.
Nor would the Pennsylvania wife
and her offspring bo in any happier
lot if thoy went toNew York. There
wife No. 1 was still the valid and
only wife of the much-married hus
band. Her children and hers alone
would be in that state legitimate. How
ever pure and innocent either the sec
ond or third wife, she would in New
York possess and enjoy exactly the
same status as belonged to those be
tween whom no sort of marriage had.
over occurred, and her children would
be classed with the offspring of those
who loved not wisely but too well.
For the courts of New York say
that the husband's divorce in Pennsyl
vania is void and tnat the marriage
relation with the first wife continued
to exist. The law of Pennsylvania
said the same thing about the Cali
fornia divorce, and the Pennsylvania
wife continued to be the wife, not
withstanding the second divorce. Of
course, neither Pennsylvania nor Cali
fornia recognized the New York mar
riage as still existing, and California
explicitly annulled the Pennsylvania
marriage. In the land which the hus
band owned in New York his first
wife took dower. In the laud which he
owned in Pennsylvania the second wife
took dower. The third wife took her
widow's rights in the California land.
It is monstrous, but it is true, that
If the husband had been careful to
keep his first wife out of California
and Pennsylvania, his second wife out
of New York and California, and his
third wife out of New York and,
Pennsylvania, and any two from be
ing in one state at the same time, he
could have continued to sustain mari
tal relations with all three, and in so
doing have violated no- law. Con
gressman R. W. Tayler in Harper's
Weekly,
Great Stock Country.
No bettor cattle!and sheep country
in America. Cheap. rands', puro running
water, and flowing wells, fine climate, np
malaria, plenty of hay, 'Write for infor
mation to
J. O. MORROW,
O'Neill, Neb.
0
How Men Die;
I have found that persons of clean
life, of honorable, upright, religious
character, not only dor not display an
indifference to the approach of death
as those of grosser life do, but wel
come it as a relief from care and toil.
There is something about tho approach
of death that reconciles men to it.
The senses are dulled, the perceptive
faculties are bluntedvand the end comes
quietly, painlessly, like a gentle sleep.
In this condition I mean on tho ap
proach of death those vho retain
their faculties to any degree become
more or less philosophers. Thoy
know that death is inevitable, that it
is only a question of hours, and they
accept the verdict'without any demon
stration and in a philosophical way.
In all my experience . I haVo never
found a case in which a dying man or
woman complained against the inevit
able, attempted to fight its' approach
or even feared It. It Is only in good
health that we fear death.- When wo
become, ill, when we havo sustained
some injury' of a very serious nature,
the fear of death seems to disappear.
Dr. Andrews of Philadelphia: Who Has
Seen 2,000 Deaths.
Fruits of Imperialism.
Not long ago I visited the town of
Novara in Northern Italy. There, in a
wheat-field, the farmers have ploughed
up skulls of men till they have piled
up a pyramid ten or twelve feet high.
Over this pyramid some one has built
A canopy to keep off tho rain. These
were the skulls of young men of Savoy,
Sardinia and Austria men of eighteen
to thirty-five years of age, peasants
from the farms and workmen from the
shops who mot at Novara to kill each
other over a matter in which they had
very little concern.
Further' on Frenchmen, Austrians
and Italians fell together at Magenta,
the hue of the blood that flowed out
under the olive trees. Go over Italy
as you will there is scarcely a spot
not crimsoned by tho blood of France,
scarcely a railway station without its
pile of French skulls. You can trace
them across to Egypt, to the foot of
the pyramids. You will find them in
Germany at Jena and Leipsic, at Lut
zen and Bautzen and Austerlitz. You
will find them in Russia at Moscow, in
Belgium at Waterloo. "A boy can stop
a bullet as well as a man," said Na
poleon, and with the rest are " the
skulls and bones of boys "ere evening
to be trodden like the grass." Presi
dent Jordan in the Popular Science
Monthly.
Looting in China.
The accounts of the looting pub
lished in England and America were
not accurate, and seemed to.be mostly
written by persons who had some ul
terior motive in showing the soldiers
of some one nation or another at their
worst. I maintain that, if looting is to
be looked upon as a crime, the soldiers
of all nations, none excepted, disgraced
themselves alike. The Russian, the
British, the American, the Japanese,
the French, all looted alike. Theyono
and all weie looters of the very first
water.
Nothing, probably, was more curi
ous, when Peking quieted down, than
the sale by auction of the legal loot in
the British legation. Regular parties
went out with carts ' and brough't in
what they could silks, embroideries,
furs, bronzes, jewelry, jade, china
vases. These were then sold every
afternoon at 5 o'clock on the legation
lawn, or in the first hall, and quite a
considerable sum' of money was real
ized by the sale of these articles. These
aucljionswero well attended, mostly by
British officers and missionaries, and
by a few Americans:
A worse thing happened. Out in the
court, as one of the Chinese officials
whq was escorting the visitors stood
impassive, with his white tasselled hat,
;and. a long necklace of amber and jade,
With pendants, the! emblem of his
rank, dangling on his chest, a military
officer approached him and with va bow
removed the valued necklace from the
Chinaman's neck, placed it round his
own, andwith a "Ta-ta" and grace
ful wave of the hand, walked away
with it. A complaint was later mado
of this to Sir Robert Hart, but, 'un
fortunately, the necklace could never
bo recovered. Henry Savage Landor's
"China, and the Allies." ---'
Raising "Pears." -
The speech in the house of lords of
the Bishop of Hereford on the sub
ject of. gambling recalls a story told
of Bishop Potter, of New York. -Tho
bishop, travelling through Louisiana,
addressed inquiries to his feljowrpas
sengers with a view of obtaining in
formation regarding the orchards and
fruit interests of tho state. "Do you
raise pears in Louisiana?" inquired th
bishop. "We do," replied the Louis
iahian, "If we havo threes or hotter.'
London Financial News. ,
,n :.
