Often after a night of sound, wholesome, refreshing sleep we are surprised to find that what looked like a mountain at midnight is now scarcely a hillock. We find that we can see around it on all sides, and the prospect of surmounting that difficulty fills us with peculiar delight. We are no longer apprehensive of anything. The things we see in our work in the world are no more terrible than what we see in that unknown world which we enter nightly through the gate of sleep. We long to pass that gate, yet we know nothing of where we go, how far we travel, or by what means we come back. If we can trust Life for what the night brings, we can trust it further and gladly accept what the day brings. We feel this, even if we are not conscious of it, and after a good sleep (this is what sleep is for), we accept it much as the child accepts his mother’s care. A little boy was riding in a trolley car with his parents and persisted in standing up, to the terror of his mother, who begged him to sit down lest he get hurt. Turning to his father he whispered, as he reluctantly took his seat, “What a ’fraid-cat mother is.” “Oh, well!” replied his father, “she is nervous, but you know she has to take care of her little boy.” “Yes,” said the child, “that’s what she is for.” So that is what sleep is for—to take care of us, but we cannot compel sleep; and the advantage of recognizing the possible gifts of wakefulness is that we thus get around to the frame of mind where we drop into natural sleep. Impatience not only delays the coming of sleep, but it robs us of any benefit we might receive from lying peacefully in the dark. CHAPTER XIII THE SLEEP OF THE INVALID Sleep, O gentle Sleep, Nature’s soft nurse— SHAKESPEARE. We should not think that, because we are ill, it is natural that we should not sleep. The invalid needs more and better sleep than the robust person—and the invalid can have it. It is true that, as more and better sleep comes, the invalid will cease to be an invalid—at least that is the beginning of the end of invalidism. For Nature provides sleep as the “balm of hurt minds” —a cure for body or mind that needs restoring. In the case of severe illness the physician in charge feels relieved when he learns that his patient is sleeping well. The professional idea of sleep is that nutrition goes on most perfectly during sleeping hours; that is, that Nature repairs all the waste that results from the use of brain and muscle during our waking hours. The more prolonged and undisturbed the sleep is, the more opportunity Nature has to make good the extra demands made upon the system by disease. It opens the way for the “Vis Medicatrix Naturæ”—the healing power of Life.