When the sleeplessness is due to mental strain alone the cure can be effected through the quiet mind. This is, I know, not always easy to obtain. Conditions do not always favour it. Economic pressure does not disappear at will with prices rising and with factories operating on half-time. When the heart aches for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still, grief is scarcely to be put away without some seeming hurt to the best in us. For many a subject to insomnia the most that can apparently be done is to stand cheerfully and confidently between him and the temptation to grow morbid and melancholy, to keep the house as quiet as circumstances will allow, to provide for the bedtime hour a glass of hot milk with its pinch of salt in it, the hot malted milk unsweetened, the clam bouillon, the beef extract, or a cup of cocoa which every insomniast should take before he goes to bed, and by day and night to soothe, sustain, and cheer the troubled spirit.
|
  |
