The best immediate preparation for sleep is the confidence that one will sleep, and _indifference if one does not_. It is an aid in the adoption of this frame of mind to learn that many have for years slept only a few hours per night, without noticeable impairment of their health or comfort. Neither unbroken nor long-continued sleep, however desirable, is essential to longevity or efficiency. This is illustrated by the following examples: Joseph A. Willard, for nearly half a century Clerk of the Court in Suffolk County, and a well-known figure on the streets of Boston, died in his eighty-eighth year. He was active and alert in the performance of his daily duties up to their discontinuance shortly before his death. He kept, meantime, records of the temperature, weather, and condition of the streets, at all hours of the night, and every night, for many years before the establishment of the weather bureau. So reliable were these records regarded by the courts that they were often appealed to in the trial of cases, and their accuracy never questioned by either party in the suit. I publish these facts by the permission of his son. George T. Angell, the well-known humanitarian, than whom few, if any, have led a more busy life, when in his sixty-ninth year wrote as follows: "For the benefit of those who do not [take narcotics, opiates, anæsthetics] I will say that I suppose there are very few in this country _who have slept less_ than I have; but I have never taken anything to stupefy, while thousands of good sleepers I have known have long since gone to the last sleep that knows no waking here. It was undoubtedly wise to change my professional life from court to office practice: but in other matters I was compelled to choose between living the life of a vegetable, or losing sleep; and I chose the latter." Mr. Angell is now eighty-four, still actively engaged in affairs, and allows me to add that during the past six years he has gone for a week at a time with no sleep; for three months at a time he has not averaged more than two hours in twenty-four; he does not remember having ever had a good night's sleep. Mrs. Angell states that, with one exception, she has never known him to sleep through the night. It is worth while to remember these experiences before resorting to drugs for sleeplessness. I have somewhere seen it stated that a prominent divine attributed his happy and green old age to the fact that he slept a certain number of hours every night. Against this statement must be set the reflection that many another old gentleman can fairly attribute his comfort, in part at least, to an attitude of indifference toward the unessentials, among which I suspect must be included the question whether we average eight hours of sleep or materially less.