some of our people are telling us about the best or the most satisfying meal they ever ate. this question of food seems to depend on habit, hunger and personal taste. i saw a man once in a lumber camp eat plate after plate of a stew made of meat, potatoes and carrots—cooked in a big iron kettle over an open fire. at home, this man would have growled at turkey or terrapin, but here he was pushing back his plate again and again asking the cook to put more carrots in. “why,” he said, “i thought carrots were made for horses to eat. i didn’t know human beings ate them!” he never had been a real human before—not until hunger caught him and pulled him right up to that iron pot. at his club in the city he could not have eaten three mouthfuls of that stew.
it is different with sleep. the man with no appetite can get on after a fashion, but if he cannot sleep he is a pitiable object. i met one once—a rich man who had worked too hard—starved himself for sleep in order to get hold of rather more than his share of money and power. he had passed the limit of nerves and was denied the power of sleeping. a few snatches of rest were all he could get, but through the long still nights he lay awake, thinking, thinking with the constant terror that this would end in a disordered mind.
we sat before this man’s fire late at night, and he told me all about it. to you sleep seems like a very common and simple thing. the night finds you tired and you shut your eyes and before you know it you are sailing off into a peaceful, unknown country. here was a man who could not sleep. he must remain chained to the cares and terrors of his daily life, and the bitterness of it was that all the money he had slaved so hard to obtain could not buy him what comes to you and me with the mere closing of the eyes. it seemed to me the most despairing mockery for this man to repeat sir philip sidney’s “ode to sleep”:
“come sleep; o sleep! the certain hour of peace,
the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
the indifferent judge between the high and low;
with shield of proof, shield me from out the prease
of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw;
o make in me these civil wars to cease
i will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
make thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
a rosy garland and a weary head.”
“that’s it,” said my friend, “a weary head, a weary head. mine is weary, but sleep will not come.” he sat looking at the fire for a long time, and then he turned suddenly with a sort of haunted look in his eyes.
“i wish you would tell me about the best sleep you ever had. men may tell of their best meal, but i want to know about rest—the best sleep.”
it was a strange request, but as i sat there, my mind went back to a hillside near the new england coast where the valley slopes away to a salt marsh with a sluggish stream running through it. a low, weatherbeaten farmhouse crouches at the foot of the wind-swept hill. it is a lonely place. few come that way in daylight, and at night there are no household lights to be seen.
it had rained through the night, and the morning brought a thick heavy fog. it was too wet to hoe corn, and uncle charles said we could all go gunning. he was an old soldier, a sharpshooter, and a famous shot. so we tramped off along the marsh following the creek until it reached the ocean. what a glorious day that was for a boy! i carried an old army musket that kicked my shoulder black and blue. we tramped along the shore and through the wet marsh, hunting for sandpipers and other sea fowl. now and then a flock of birds would seem to be lost in the fog, and uncle charles would whistle them to where we lay in ambush. it all comes back,—clear and distinct,—the cries of the sea fowl and dull roar of the ocean as it pounded upon the beach. late in the afternoon we tramped home wet and tired, but with a long string of birds. the ocean roared on behind us louder than ever as the wind arose.
it was not good new england thrift to eat those birds—the guests at the parker house in boston would pay good money for them. while we had been hunting, aunt eleanor and the girls in the lonely farmhouse had been busy with a “new england dinner.” there was a big plate of salt codfish, first boiled and then fried crisp with little cubes of browned salt pork mixed with it. there were boiled potatoes which split open in a rich dry flour, boiled onions and carrots and great slices of brown bread and butter. then the odor from the oven betrayed the crowning act of all—a monstrous pan-dowdy, or apple grunt! ever eat a genuine pan-dowdy in a new england kitchen as a wet dreary night is coming on after a tiresome day? no? i am both sorry and glad for you. you have missed one of the greatest joys of life, but you have much to look forward to. when uncle charles began to cut that pan-dowdy, we boys realized that we could not do it full justice, so we went out and ran around the house half a dozen times to make more room for the top of the feast.
after supper the dishes were washed, the house cleaned up, and we washed out our guns. the old musket had kicked my shoulder so that i could hardly raise the arm, but no human being could have made me admit it. we got uncle charles to tell us about the time he shot at the officer at port hudson during the war, and about the humpbacked man who carried the powder from plymouth to boston during the revolution. then through the gloom and fog came two young men to call on the girls. in those days it seemed to me very poor taste for one to listen to the conversation of girls rather than war stories. true, the war stories were time-worn, but the girl conversation was older yet. soon the little melodeon was talking up and a quartette was singing the old songs of half a century ago. it may have been the day’s tramping, the old musket, the last plate of pan-dowdy or the tap of the rain on the windows, but sitting there by the warm kitchen stove, i felt a delicious drowsiness stealing over me.
bed is the place for sleep, and we boys climbed the stairs past the great center chimney, and quickly tumbled into bed. in the room below that quartette had started an old favorite:
“along the aisles of the dim old forest
i strayed in the dewy dawn
and heard far away in their silent branches
the echoes of the morn.
“they stirred my heart with their low, sweet voices,
like chimes from a holier land,
as though far away in those haunted arches
were happy—an angel band.”
there was one great booming bass voice which had unconsciously fallen into the key of the dull roar which the distant ocean was making. the rain was gently tapping on the roof, and all the joys and pleasant memories of youth were whispering happy things in our ears as we sailed off on the most beautiful voyage to dreamland.
i told this as best i could before the fire while my weary friend listened, leaning back in his easy-chair with his hand shading his face. and when i stopped sleep had come to him at last—sweet and blessed sleep. there are very few of us who would stand for a photograph taken while we were asleep, but this man’s face was free from care. an orator might not think it a high tribute to his powers that he sent his audience to sleep, but i am not an orator, and i would like to be able to give my friends what they consider the blessed things of life! and peace, blissful peace, had put her healing hand upon my poor friend’s head.
