Once in a great battle on the river Nile some British soldiers had to be awake so long and work so hard by day and by night that at last some of them fell asleep on the deck of the ship in the midst of the fighting.

They wanted to keep awake and they tried not to sleep, but they could not help themselves.

In another battle the captain of a man-of-war fell asleep too, and the strange part of it was that although a great cannon was firing all the time only six feet away from him, he slept two hours and did not hear a sound.

Soldiers have done even stranger things than that. They have fallen asleep while they were marching along, and they have walked several steps while they were asleep. Of course, they wakened very soon, but they did march and sleep at the same time.

Children who work in factories often have just as much trouble about keeping awake when they are very tired. They try with all their might not to go to sleep while they are working, because they know they will be punished if they do but suddenly, before they know it, they are fast asleep.

Now the soldiers, the captain, and the children all had the same trouble. They had worked too hard and slept too little; the brain was tired out, and under such circumstances it sometimes goes to sleep even when we tell it not to. Whenever we say we are sleepy we mean that the brain needs to rest.

Ask your father to open and shut his hand as fast as he can, and beg him to keep on doing it as long as he can. After a while he will tell you that his fingers are stiff, and you will notice that they move more and more slowly. Then he will say that he is getting very tired. If he keeps on long enough, at last his hand will be so tired that his fingers will not obey him. They will not move even if he tries with all his might to make them. The brain behaves in just this way when it is very tired; it cannot keep on working even if we want it to.

We all know that thinking is the work that the brain does. It begins when we first wake in the morning, and it does not stop until we go to sleep at night. It does not rest an instant all day unless we take a nap; for from first to last it is thinking about toys and play, about school and kites, dolls and balls, and all about our duties and our fun. No wonder it gets tired. No wonder we have to sleep a great deal to give it the rest it needs.

The truth is that we spend more time in sleeping than in eating or playing or studying; and we are wise in this because the work the brain does is more important than the work of any other part of the body, and sleep is the only thing that rests it.

If you lie down and are not asleep, the brain is not really resting. If you dream, it is working a little; but it rests perfectly when you sleep perfectly.

While the brain stops working the rest of the body is not idle. In fact, one of the important things to remember is that children grow fast while they are asleep.

You can prove this by noticing how much a baby sleeps and how fast he grows.

If you have a chance, you might visit the same baby once a month for a year. Each time you will see that he is bigger. His mother will also tell you that he does nothing but sleep and eat, and from this you know that he must be growing fast while he sleeps. It is a fact, indeed, that babies who sleep the most grow the fastest, and, as a rule, this is true of all children.

Though we can sleep even when we are not lying down, still we get the best rest when we are stretched out on a comfortable bed.

Several things about the bed must be looked after. It should be flat and smooth. The pillow should not be large, because the higher the head is raised the harder the heart has to work to send the blood into it, and we ought to give the heart as little work as possible at night.

Some people use a thin hair pillow, and others who are quite as wise use none at all. Most people understand the laws of oxygen and carbon dioxide so well that they never cover their heads with the bedclothes when they sleep. They wish pure air and plenty of oxygen instead of impure air and little oxygen under the bedding.

While we are sleeping we have a grand chance to help decide whether our backs shall be straight or crooked. If we always lie as we should we shall be helping our backs to be straight, because children's bones are not very hard, and the oftener we bend them in one particular way the more likely they are to stay in that shape. But a boy who is sure that he wants a straight body will help himself even while he is asleep, and when he has grown to be a man he is sure to be as straight as a soldier.

Albert S. Lyons

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