Someone has said: “Sleep, like drink, may drown our sorrows, yet it also drowns our joys. What could we not accomplish if we did not require sleep?” It may be comforting to think of this when we are lying awake, that at least we are wasting no time. The gift of wakefulness is often as desirable as is the gift of sleep, and, if we welcome the one as what must be—with as much cheerfulness as the other—each will bring us equal blessings. It often happens that what we regard as evil is but Life’s left hand outstretched with a gift whose use we did not recognize when presented by her right hand. CHAPTER XII THE PURPOSE OF SLEEP Sleep is a life giver as well as a life saver. WILLARD MOYER. But none of these things lessens the benefits of real sleep, nor are they intended to show that sleep is unnecessary, for although it may be true, as Dr. Charles Brodie Patterson says in “The New Heaven and the New Earth,” that man will some day get along without sleep, no one is yet able to do that. Although our troubles make us lose sleep, we could lose all or nearly all our troubles if we got natural sleep. Forgetfulness of daily frets, of the wear and tear of contact with the sharp edges of our own temper and the temper of others—these are the things that sleep blots out. “Go to sleep,” says Mother Nature, “and forget your troubles.” And to blot them out even for a time means surcease of sorrow and worry for that time at least, and a new way of looking at them when we have awakened. That is what sleep is for. It is the use of it. Pat took Mike to church for the first time, and, when the ceremony was over, he said, “Well, Mike, what do you think uv it?” “Think uv it, Pat? The candles, the bowings, the incinse, and the garmints,—it do bate the divil.” “Sure,” replied Pat, “thot’s the intintion.” And so it is the intention of sleep to “beat the devil” of unrest and dissatisfaction. Nothing makes us feel better than a good night’s sleep. It soothes the aching muscles, quiets the jangling nerves, brushes away the cobwebs of the mind, and leaves us rested and refreshed, strong to meet the events of the new day. It is after a bad night that we rise oppressed with fear for what the day may bring us; overwhelmed in advance with shadowings of evil. This, in itself, makes us unequal to the demands of the day. If any seeming strain is put upon us that day, we are apt to make errors in meeting it; if we find anyone has failed to do just what seemed to us best, we upbraid him roundly and unlovingly, making him and ourselves unhappy. At the close of such a spoiled day, when we review its happenings, we say: “I knew this morning that this would be an unlucky day. I felt it as soon as I got up.” But we may not realize that that very attitude of fear and apprehension may have caused all that we call ill-luck. Remember this, then, lest the one bad day should spoil another night.