Sleeper

“ We know that the surface idea connected with sleep is that of resting. The eyes of the sleeper ache no more with the glare of light or with the rush of tears; his ears are teased no more with the noise of strife or the murmur of suffering ”

“ Or, it may be, there lurked darkly in her mind the ancient secret Celtic dread of sleeping in the bed where any of one's own blood-kin has died: the dread of the whisper that is on the pillow in the dark hours, of the hand that gropes along the coverlet, of the chill breath that comes without cause and stirs the hair as it falls suddenly upon the cheek of the awakened sleeper. ”

“ In profound slumber, when both brains are sleeping, there is no consciousness—time is annihilated to such a sleeper and awakening seems to follow immediately upon falling asleep, although in reality many hours may have passed. ”

“ And far below the long vale stretched.
⁠As a sleeper she did seem
That after some brief restlessness
⁠Has now begun to dream.
(All day the wakefulness of men,
⁠Their lives and labours brief,
Have broken her long troubled sleep.
⁠Now, evening brings relief.) ”

“ Then we got into one of those things called a sleeper, which ought to be called a thinker. An ideal cloister for meditation. All down the dark aisle we could hear the innocent snores of our fellows, but we ourself lay wakeful. ”

“ I therefore passed the gate, and stopped not till I had reached a neighbouring summit, crowned with chestnut-oaks and poplars.
Here I more deliberately reviewed the incidents that had just occurred. The inference was just, that the man, half clothed and digging, was a sleeper; but what was the cause of this morbid activity? What was the mournful vision that dissolved him in tears, and extorted from him tokens of inconsolable distress? What did he seek, or what endeavour to conceal, in this fatal spot? The incapacity of sound sleep denotes a mind sorely wounded. ”

“ The sleeper knows nothing of the external world, and has lost all consciousness of his own existence. But the duration of profound repose is brief. From the end of the first hour the depth of sleep, at first, rapidly, then, more gradually, subsides. Dreams disturb its tranquility, mental activity increases, the power of volition revives, and, at the end of six or eight hours, the individual is once more awake. ”

“ A sleeper may react to a given somatic stimulation when this is of a lively nature, such as bad pain, in one of several different ways. In the first place he may altogether ignore it, as often occurs in bodily disease, secondly he may feel it during, or even throughout, sleep without dreaming at all, thirdly he may be awakened by it, and fourthly he may weave it into a dream. ”

“ Go into a room where a sensitive or “high-strung” person is taking a nap—not sleeping [51] heavily, as most men sleep, but lightly, naturally, as all wild animals take their rest. Make no noise, but stand or sit quietly where you can look intently into the sleeper’s face; and commonly, by a change of position or a turning away of the head or a startled opening of the eyes, the sleeper will show that he feels your look and is trying subconsciously to avoid it. ”

“ The aspect of the sleeper to the observer is that of unconsciousness. There are occasional motions of the limbs, but these are involuntary. He seems dead to the external world and to have ceased from active life. ”

“ None but a man insane or asleep would wander forth so slightly dressed; and none but a sleeper would have disregarded my calls.'—This conclusion was generally adopted; but it gave birth in my mind to infinite inquietudes. ”

“ If, now, we consider the relation of sleep to the three processes of suppression, dissociation and suggestion, it is clear that the primary position belongs to suppression. Sleep is pre-eminently a process in which certain mental processes are put in abeyance for the purpose of recuperation and restoration of the sleeper to full mental as well as bodily efficiency. ”

“ You wish he wouldn’t snore; he might wake somebody else, he might wake himself. Snorers do wake themselves. The expert burglar doesn’t fancy the heavy snorer; he likes the sleeper that wheezes gently, softly, regularly. ”

“ Furthermore, that Sleep might be the more welcome to men, he endowed him with many a lovely dream that, according to each sleeper's favourite hobby, he might—in his dreams—either watch an actor and clap him or listen to a flute-player or shout advice to a charioteer in his course ”

“ And the nape of his neck bathing in cool blue watercress,
Sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under the skies,
Pale in his green bed where the light falls like rain.
Feet in the gladiolas, he is sleeping. Smiling like
A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
Nature, rock him warmly: he is cold. ”

“ But if you are within sight of your sleeping comrades, and within hearing of their snores, it becomes doubly exasperating, and might really sour the temper if it were not for the consolatory reflection that another time you will be the happy sleeper, and one of the present performers on the nose will be listening to your efforts to play upon that organ. ”

“ Logic of the Dream.—During sleep the nervous system, through various inner provocatives, is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs act independently and vigorously. The blood circulates rapidly. The posture of the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. ”

“ At this sad stirring is the sleeper’s rest and ease disturbed and broken, whereof the first feeling and stinging smart admonisheth that he must patiently endure great pain and trouble, and thereunto provide some remedy; as when we say proverbially, to incense hornets, to move a stinking puddle, and to awake a sleeping lion, instead of these more usual expressions, and of a more familiar and plain meaning, to provoke angry persons, to make a thing the worse by meddling with it, and to irritate a testy choleric man when he is at quiet. ”

“ The Sleepers
1 I wander all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping. How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still, How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles. ”

“ Usually when I enquire, I find that the sleepers were on guard or picket the night previous. We let them sleep on. They are wise; none of us know how far we have to go or how many nights of wakefulness lie before us. ”

“ In the highest stages of the mesmeric sleep the countenance often acquires the most lovely expression, surpassing all that the great artists have given to the Virgin Mary or to angels, and which may fitly be called heavenly, for it involuntarily suggests to our minds the moral and intellectual beauty which alone seems consistent with our views of heaven. As to the voice, I have never seen one person in the true mesmeric sleep who did not speak in a tone quite distinct from the ordinary voice of the sleeper. ”

“ In this respect it differs from the condition of coma and of trance, in which there is entire unconsciousness. In the most profound sleep perfect unconsciousness never prevails. Impressions may be made upon the senses of the soundest sleeper that will waken him. ”

“ Some curiosity was naturally excited by this appearance: either some other person, or Clithero, on a subsequent occasion, had been here. I was now likewise led to reflect on the possible motives that prompted the maniac to turn up this earth: there is always some significance in the actions of a sleeper: somewhat was, perhaps, buried in this spot connected with the history of Mrs. ”

“ The younger man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder, indignant and vociferous, a high penetrating voice under his red aquiline nose and bushy moustache. "No one expected you to wake. No one expected you to wake. ”

“ You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that occasionally a certain friction——— But even if that was the case, there is a doubt whether he will ever wake. This sleep exhausts slowly, but it exhausts. ”

“ The amount of sleep is greatly influenced by habit, and, contrary to what might have been anticipated, we find that exceptionally brief sleepers have generally been men of the greatest mental calibre. ”

“ With some sleepers sleep is, as they affirm, a condition of entire unconsciousness. These tell us they have no sense of existence until the moment of waking and that, however protracted their slumber, the moment of waking is to them as the moment after having fallen asleep. It is impossible to contradict those who thus affirm, for their mental condition in sleep cannot be read. But if a judgment may be formed from their actions in sleep, as talking and motions of the limbs, the probable explanation will be that they dream but do not remember their dreams. ”

“ I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn, I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, And I become the other dreamers. ”

“ Poor sleepers should endeavour to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative. ”

“ well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream.'
But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality? ”

“ SEG. Oh, rather pray for me a sleep so fast As shall obliterate dream and waking too. (Exit into the tower.) CLO. So sleep; sleep fast: and sleep away those two Night-potions, and the waking dream between Which dream thou must believe; and, if to see Again, poor Segismund! that dream must be.— And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death? ”

“ The restlessness is allayed, and a quiet state of body and mind succeeds. It needs but a suggestion to induce him to retire for the night. After being a few minutes in bed, sleep steals over him, and his heavy breathing tells that he is in the world of dreams. ”

“ What is sleep? I do not ask, of course, how sleep can be explained physiologically. That is a special question, and besides is far from being settled. I ask what is sleep psychologically; for our mind continues to exercise itself when we are asleep, and it exercises itself as we have just seen on elements analogous to those of waking, on sensations and memories; and also in an analogous manner combines them. Nevertheless we have on the one hand normal perception, and on the other the dream. ”

“ If it be so in one waking time, when the mind is busy with a multitude of impressions flowing in upon it from every sense—much more is it likely so to be when the impressions made by the senses are few, as is proved by the experience of every reader. In sleep, a slight sound falling upon the ear will suggest a dream of roaring cannon or rattling thunder. ”

“ Might it not be that this host of angels is descending upon the sleeping world to soothe the restless, worried ones, and smooth the puckered, aching brows in quiet slumber? Lulled by their gentle music, or the rustle of their approaching footsteps, the weary one would soon find refreshing sleep. ”

“ This term may seem in some degree appropriate when applied to the sleep of persons who are able to sleep at will. In the case of those who sleep immediately after going to bed, on the other hand, we should have to regard the suggestion as coming from the pillow, the darkness, the silence, or other habitual feature of the surroundings in which a person is accustomed to sleep. ”

“ Among the ancients sleep was portrayed as a female with black unfolded wings, having in her left hand a white child, the image of sleep, and in her right hand a black child, the image of death. An author has described sleep as the "rest of the spirits, dreaming their tremulous motion;" another writer speaks of sleep as "the reality of another existence;" while a third says, "all men, whilst awake, are in one common world, but that each, when asleep, is in a world of his own." ”

“ During sleep we enter a strange, mysterious realm which science has thus far not explored. Beyond the border-line of slumber the investigator may not pass with his common-sense rule and test. Sleep with softest touch locks all the gates of our physical senses and lulls to rest the conscious will—the disciplinarian of our waking thoughts. ”

“ Then we wrapped ourselves up, Auguste in his greatcoat, I in my blanket, on a bed of ferns prepared by Boudoux, and we tried to sleep.
I say we tried to sleep, but, although the air around us was balmy, the forest quiet, the moonlight serene, the expectation of pleasure keeps one awake almost as much as pleasure itself. It is very rarely I sleep the night before a hunting expedition, and only when life is more seriously preoccupied do these pleasant attacks of insomnia cease. ”

“ I said it with my thought to the dark wings, and it replied—‘You shall pass away together.’ Then it came closer to me, like a watching mother to the bed, and I felt it come down on my eyes like a shadow, and then I seemed to sleep a long, long while. Such a sleep as one is half conscious of, and the refreshment of which he fully enjoys. ”

“ It seemed to me, young mothers, that I understood you! sleep is the mystery of life; there is a profound charm in this darkness broken by the tranquil light of the night-lamp, and in this silence measured by the rhythmic breathings of two young sleeping creatures. ”

“ This excellent and refreshing sleep falls like a soft curtain of oblivion and saves the man's consciousness from the jar and disappointment of an anti-climax. But not only is this sleep a restorative after the strenuous efforts of the transport, it has peculiarly refreshing powers, and many men feel that after such a sleep their whole system seems rejuvenated. ”

“ The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory with visions of love or terror—what are they? Random freaks of the fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments, and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance—such are the stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming but deepens as we advance. ”