Wild-eyed and cries to time.

“Ballad of Reading Gaol¹.”

Oscar Wilde.

The fact that we confound rest and sleep makes us regard wakefulness as an evil. We go to bed to sleep, and, if sleep does not come at once, we begin to fret² and to toss and we try by every means that we know to force ourselves to sleep. We never accomplish anything that way, because it is essentially³ opposed to the nature of sleep. Sleep, to be refreshing⁴, must be complete relaxation⁵ of mind and body, and that is not gained by striving. Natural sleep is merely “letting go,” which is just what so many find hard to do. The course is so simple and plain that “the wayfaring⁶ man, though a fool, need not err⁷ therein,” but he often does err in spite of its simplicity⁸; and sometimes, perhaps, even because of its simplicity.

 

Naaman, captain of the host of Syria, went to the Israelitish prophet, Elisha, to be cured of his leprosy. As he was a great man with his master, he expected some special ceremony done for him. Imagine his surprise and wrath⁹ when bidden to wash in the River Jordan.

 

At first Naaman went away in a rage; such advice ill-befitted his ideas of his needs. If it were enough that he should bathe in a river, why in Jordan? “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” Why not wash in them and be clean? And Naaman turned and went away.

 

But his servants questioned him and said: “Had the prophet bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much rather then when he saith to thee ‘wash and be clean’?” Then Naaman yielded and was made whole.

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