"fain encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in his arms." To those of
riper years the "blanket of the dark" often ushers in a season of
terrors,--a time of fitful snatches of broken sleep and of tormenting
dreams; of long stretches of wakefulness; of hours when all things
perplexing and troublesome in one's affairs march before him in sombre
procession: in endless disorder, in labyrinths of confusion, in
countless new phases of disagreeableness; and at length the morning
summons him to labor, far more racked and weary than when he sought
repose.

It has been of late years much the fashion in the literature of this
subject to attribute sleeplessness to the rapid growth of facilities for
activities of every kind. The practical annihilation of time and space
by our telegraphs and railroads, the compressing thereby of the labors
of months into hours or even minutes, the terrific competition in all
kinds of business thereby made possible and inevitable, the intense
mental activity engendered in the mad race for fame or wealth, where the
nervous and mental force of man is measured against steam and
lightning,--these are usually credited with having developed what is
considered a modern and even an almost distinctively American disease.

As the maxim, "There is nothing new under the sun," is of general
application, it may be of interest to investigate if an exception occurs
in the case of sleeplessness; if it be true that among our ancestors,
before the days of working steam and electricity, the glorious sleep of
youth was prolonged through all one's three or four score years.

Medical books and literature throw no light upon this subject three
hundred years ago. We must therefore turn to Shakespeare--human
nature's universal solvent--for light on this as we would on any other