after dinner, or how much health in an hour's
horseback ride, or how much fun in a Saturday afternoon of cricket. He who
has such an idea of the value of time that he takes none of it for rest
wastes all his time.

Most Americans do not take time for sufficient sleep. We account for our
own extraordinary health by the fact that we are fanatics on the subject of
sleep. We differ from our friend Napoleon Bonaparte in one respect: we want
nine hours' sleep, and we take it--eight hours at night and one hour in the
day. If we miss our allowance one week, as we often do, we make it up the
next week or the next month. We have sometimes been twenty-one hours in
arrearages. We formerly kept a memorandum of the hours for sleep lost. We
pursued those hours till we caught them. If at the beginning of our summer
vacation we are many hours behind in slumber, we go down to the sea-shore
or among the mountains and sleep a month. If the world abuses us at any
time, we go and take an extra sleep; and when we wake up, all the world is
smiling on us. If we come to a knotty point in our discourse, we take a
sleep; and when we open our eyes, the opaque has become transparent. We
split every day in two by a nap in the afternoon. Going to take that
somniferous interstice, we say to the servants, "Do not call me for
anything. If the house takes fire, first get the children out and my
private papers; and when the roof begins to fall in call me." Through such
fanaticism we have thus far escaped the hot axle.

Somebody ought to be congratulated--I do not know who, and so I will shake
hands all around--on the fact that the health of the country seems
improving. Whether Dio Lewis, with his gymnastic clubs, has pounded to
death American sickness, or whether the coming here of many English ladies
with their magnificent pedestrian habits, or whether the medicines in the
apothecary shops through much adulteration have lost their force, or
whether the multiplication of bathtubs has induced to cleanliness people
who were never washed but once, and that just after their arrival on this
planet, I cannot say. But sure I am that I never saw so many bright,
healthy-faced people as of late.

Our maidens have lost the languor they once cultivated, and walk the street
with stout step, and swing the croquet mallet with a force that sends the
ball through two arches, cracking the opposing ball with great emphasis.
Our daughters are not ashamed to culture flower b