mask covers all about you, and the porter took your
pocket-book to keep till morning, returning it then with twice what you
had in it at nightfall. After a while the train slackens to one hundred
and seventy-five miles an hour, and the conductor, in his dream, announces
that they are coming near the terminus. More brakes are dropped and they
are running but ninety miles the hour; and some one, looking out of the
window, says, "How slow we go!" "Yes," says the conductor, "we are holding
up." Now they have almost stopped, going at only seventy miles the hour.
The long line of depot lamps are flashing along the track. On the platform
of the station are the lovers who are waiting for their betrothed, and
parents who have come down to greet their children, returned with a
fortune, and wives who have not been able to eat or drink since their
spouses went away three weeks before. As the cushioned train flashes into
the depot and stops, wedding bells peal, and the gong of many banquets
sounds, and white arms are flung about necks, reckless of mistake, and
innumerable percussions of affection echo through the depot, so crisp and
loud that they wake the conductor, who thought that the boisterous smack
was on his own cheek, but finds that he is nothing but a bachelor railroad
man, with a lantern, at midnight getting out into a snow bank.

Application: Get an easy position when you sleep, if you have any choice
between angels and gorgons. At midnight, seizing a chair, I ran into the
next room, resolving to kill, at the first stroke, the ruffian who was
murdering a member of my household. But there was no ruffian. The sweet
girl had, during the day, been reading of St. Bartholomew's massacre, and
was now lying on her back, dreaming it all over again. When dreams find
anyone lying flat on the back, they cry out, "Here is a flat surface on
which to skate and play ball," and from scalp to toe they sport
themselves. The hardest nag in all the world to ride is the nightmare.
Many think that sleep is lost time. But the style of your work will be
mightily affected by the style of your slumber. Sound Asleep is sister of
Wide Awake. Adam was the only man who ever lost a rib by napping too
soundly; but when he woke up, he found that, instead of the twelve ribs
with which he started, he really had nigh two dozen. By this I prove that
sleep is not subtraction, but addition. This very night may that angel put
balm on both your eyelids five minutes