He would just “set” in a decrepit old chair by the stove or putter about the house long winter nights. He’d while away the tedious hours reading sea stories and cowboy yarns and go through three or four magazines in a night. But, his mother’s glasses didn’t serve him as well toward the end and time became more of a burden. Around 3 a.m. he would brew a pot of tea and make himself a sandwich. Moonlight nights in the spring and summer were welcomed, for then he was able to get outdoors and do a few chores. Bill-Ike said he first discovered the capacity to go without sleep when he was a youth working in the cranberry bogs during a rush season. He worked night and day for three months that time and discovered that he could get along with only an hour’s snooze in the morning before breakfast. But, he didn’t really begin to make a habit of staying awake until 1928. HOW HE “EXPERIMENTED” That year Bill-Ike happened to read in a magazine, “Nobody can go 80 days without sleep.” Just to prove this wasn’t so, the old gentleman began by denying himself sleep for a continuous stretch of 83 days. In 1929 he “experimented” again, keeping awake 147 days. Then the sleeplessness became more of a habit. But, each year he bettered his own record and in 1933 he rounded out his first full year of going without sleep. Finally, Bill-Ike achieved the amazing five-year record, and he was going into his sixth year when he passed on. He was in fine fettle almost to the end, a firm believer in the gospel of hard toil. During vacation seasons he kept busy tending the gardens and being the handyman for summer cottagers. A bachelor--“always been willin’ but the right gal ain’t ever showed up”--Bill-Ike lived with his brother, Fred, in a century-old house in a spot remote from the town. Fred would have his regular eight or nine hours in bed, undisturbed by Bill-Ike’s poking about the house at all hours of the night. “Sure, I could enjoy a full night’s sleep,” was the old insomnia champion’s mournful comment. “But, I just can’t, that’s all. Doctors say it has something to do with my nerves.” There were people in Orleans who took Bill-Ike’s sleepless story with a pinch of salt. But Bill-Ike got the publicity just the same, and the New York excursion and ballyhoo didn’t change him a bit. And, at the peak of the newspaper excitement, another oldster of the community bobbed up with a new and original claim. He slept, all right, but his eyelids never seemed to come down. All of his sleeping was done with eyes wide open. He just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, all night long. ORLEANS---- _The First German U-Boat Attack On American Soil_ In the last war, the one and only attack on American soil by the Germans was at Orleans, Cape Cod.