London, and all the farrago of noted places with which the brain of
a traveller is crammed; in a word, he was just falling asleep.’
Thus, that delightful writer, WASHINGTON IRVING, in his Tales of a
Traveller. But, it happened to me the other night to be lying: not
with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes wide open; not with my
nightcap drawn almost down to my nose, for on sanitary principles I
never wear a nightcap: but with my hair pitchforked and touzled all
over the pillow; not just falling asleep by any means, but
glaringly, persistently, and obstinately, broad awake. Perhaps,
with no scientific intention or invention, I was illustrating the
theory of the Duality of the Brain; perhaps one part of my brain,
being wakeful, sat up to watch the other part which was sleepy. Be
that as it may, something in me was as desirous to go to sleep as
it possibly could be, but something else in me WOULD NOT go to
sleep, and was as obstinate as George the Third.
Thinking of George the Third – for I devote this paper to my train
of thoughts as I lay awake: most people lying awake sometimes, and
having some interest in the subject – put me in mind of BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN, and so Benjamin Franklin’s paper on the art of procuring
pleasant dreams, which would seem necessarily to include the art of
going to sleep, came into my head. Now, as I often used to read
that paper when I was a very small boy, and as I recollect
everything I read then as perfectly as I forget everything I read
now, I quoted ‘Get out of bed, beat up and turn your pillow, shake
the bed-clothes well with at least twenty shakes, then throw the
bed open and leave it to cool; in the meanwhile, continuing
undrest, walk about your chamber. When you begin to feel the cold
air unpleasant, then return to your bed, and you will soon fall
asleep, and your sleep will be sweet and pleasant.’ Not a bit of
it! I performed the whole ceremony, and if it were possible for me
to be more saucer-eyed than I was before, that was the only result
that came of it.
Except Niagara. The two quotations from Washington Irving and
Benjamin Franklin may have put it in my head by an American
association of ideas; but there I was, and the Horse-shoe Fall was
thundering and tumbling in my eyes and ears, and the very rainbows
that I left upon the spray when I really did last look upon it,
were beautiful to see. The night-light being quite as plain,
however, and sleep seeming to be many thousand miles further off
than Niagara, I made up my mind to think a little about Sleep;
which I no sooner did than I whirled off in spite of myself to
Drury Lane Theatre, and there saw a great actor and dear friend of
mine (whom I had been thinking of in the day) playing Macbeth, and
heard him apostrophising ‘the death of each day’s life,’ as I have
heard him many a time, in the days that are gone.
But, Sleep. I WILL think about Sleep. I am determined to think
(this is the way I went on) about Sleep. I must hold the word
Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent in half a
second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, already, into Clare
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as illustrating the equality
of sleep, to inquire how many of its phenomena are common to all
classes, to all degrees of wealth and poverty, to every grade of
education and ignorance. Here, for example, is her Majesty Queen
Victoria in her palace, this present blessed night, and here is
Winking Charley, a sturdy vagrant, in one of her Majesty’s jails.
Her Majesty has fallen, many thousands of times, from that same
Tower, which I claim a right to tumble off now and then. So has
Winking Charley. Her Majesty in her sleep has opened or prorogued
Parliament, or has held a Drawing Room, attired in some very scanty