How to Effect a Permanent and Lasting Cure.
1.--Lie perfectly still and count 287,643 in a slow, methodical manner.
By the time you have finished counting it will be daylight, and you will
be surprised to notice how quickly the night has passed.
2.--Always partake of a bountiful repast before retiring, giving special
attention to a lobster salad, welsh rarebit and hard-boiled eggs. This
will, no doubt, give you delirium tremens, night-mare, St. Vitus' dance
and indigestion, but the pleasing thought will remain that you have kept
the rest of the household awake as well as yourself.
3.--Always undress in the dark. When you have broken three chairs, upset
the centre table and stepped on six assorted tacks, you will realize
what a stupid habit sleeping is anyway, and your senses will have become
so acute that you will want to sit up and read the Family Story Paper
during that portion of the night which has not been devoted to swearing.
4.--Always lie with your head lower than any other point of your body
and throw the pillows away. The monotony of a sleepless night will then
be relieved by the novelty of having apoplexy or heart failure, either
of which diseases is much more exciting and dangerous than insomnia.
5.--Always concentrate your thoughts and endeavor to breathe
pronouncedly and with exaggeration, like a freight engine climbing a
grade. This is calculated to frighten the rest of the family into
convulsions and stampede all the cattle in the neighborhood, but you
will be enabled to while the remaining hours of the night away by
listening to the terse remarks hurled at you from time to time by the
other members of the household.
6.--Always sponge your face with boiling water several times before
retiring. If you keep this up long enough it will be breakfast time, and
you may then go about your daily labor with the happy consciousness that
you have saved the bed clothes a great deal of wear and tear.
7.--Always take a brisk, long walk before retiring, taking particular
care to come home late and allow the watch dog to mistake you for a
tramp and chase you hurriedly into the next country side. It is also
calculated to withdraw the blood from the brain and put wings on your
feet. A brisk run of sixteen miles across country as the crow flies with
an angry bulldog pushing you pretty hard for first place, is a pleasant
diversion in a sleepless night.
8.--Be phlegmatic and indifferent in a marked degree. If you hear
thieves in the chicken coop during the night, don't move a muscle; if
you smell smoke and know the house is on fire, lie perfectly still and
count imaginary sheep jumping over an imaginary fence; if you feel the
folding bed closing up let it close and go on with your counting; if you
know that burglars are in the room pay no attention to them and let them
burgle--you have business of your own to attend to. A man with a
thoroughly developed case of insomnia has no time for such trifling
details.