Wasn’t
it Sancho Panza who prayed a benediction on the man who invented sleep? The
vicious taste for early rising is an acquired taste. No man ever gets up early
in the morning because he likes it. Necessity, an unquiet conscience, a tooth
ache or dyspepsia is always at the beginning of a downward course of early
rising. That it is a vicious habit we are prepared to maintain, for when it has
gained a hold upon a man, when he has really acquired a smacking relish for it,
he has lost forever the power to enjoy an occasional morning nap – as dessert
after the feast of slumber – and he is a plague to everyone in the house. He
rattles the furnace or hard coal burner when honest people should be calmly sleeping
the sleep of the just, and he arouses his wife and daughters and sets the pots
and pans on the cooking range on a wild dance, and then before Dame Nature has
had half a chance to get the world ready for daylight, he goes shouting through
the house, and the beauty sleep with which wife and daughters have been vainly
coquetting is frightened away by the distracting din. Horrid man! Then he is
nearly always nervous, irritable and pugnacious. Probably he was out the night before
at a lodge meeting, and the late supper brought on one of his usual fits of
indigestion. He cannot sleep himself, and thinks the family should awake early
in sympathy with him. He rushes on his nervous way through life, makes
innumerable mistakes through an unsteady brain, and either worries his way into
an early grave or makes life miserable for everyone around him.
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Early rising is a modern invention.
Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua and the other patriarchs mentioned in the Bible
got up early so seldom that it is considered a matter worthy of note in the
scriptures, and the only approach to a command to arise early is a resolve of
the Psalmist : “I will awake early in the morning” – a resolve which there is
no record of having been kept; and judging from our own personal experience
under similar circumstances, he doubtless slept later on the occasions than
usual. Alarm clocks were unknown in the days of the patriarchs, and the man who
invented them must have been enemy to his family and his race. The Psalmist did
not resolve to arise early in the morning simply to awake. On the other hand,
there are many passages of scripture that would seem to condemn the habit.
Isaiah seemed to appreciate the reason which leads many to arise early, when he
says ; “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow
strong drink.” This is certainly scriptural proof that some of the old boys
were no better than men of the present generation. And that after being out all
night at the lodge, they had a cottony taste in their mouths in the morning
that had to be cured with the hair of the dog that bit them. “And when they
arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses.” Ah! those sly
old rascals. What times they must have had, and it is only when we take a dip
into sacred history that we really get the bottom facts.
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Then what a knowledge of the ways of
the early risers who keep house is evinced in the proverb of the wise man : “He
that blesseth his friend with aloud voice rising early in the morning, it shall
be counted a curse to him.” Not only is early rising not commanded by
scripture, but it is a sin against nature. It is false to suppose that it will
make one healthy or wealthy or wise. In times of pestilence or epidemics, the
early riser is the first to fall, and the man who works before breakfast feels
wrong in his stomach all day, and the chances are that he will be led into the
habit of taking a “bracer” or two to tone up his stomach before eating the
matutinal meal. It unfits a man for business, it makes him nervous and
unsettled, and nine times out of ten, he leaves home in the morning without
kissing wife and the babies, and if he goes out of doors, he is apt to give the
dog a parting kick. He who got off that old chestnut that the early bird
catches the worm, forgot to tell the whole that the early worm is caught by the
bird. It does not make a man wise to get up at the peep o’day. The morning
sleep is as much needed as that of the night, and it is more enjoyable when one
knows and feels that it is time to be up and doing. It has its economy in the
life of man. The half-conscious half hour in the morning has its ministry to
the brain, and the wise man is he who listens dreamily to the sound of Angelus
bell, who presses his feet against the footboard of the bed, who puts the
pillow into new shape again, and wanders off into dreamland. The labor unions
have not divided time fairly. Instead of eight hours for work, eight hours for
sleep, two hours more should be looped off work and added to sleep.
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Before Hamilton lost its prestige as a
lake shipping port, the wharves down at the bay used to be lined with vessels
of all descriptions during the winter months, and consequently there was a
large number of the families of the sailors who made their home here. The other
day we came across a list of shipping that spent the winter of 1867-68 at this
port, which may recall to the memory of those interested in lake navigation 35
and 49 years ago, the stirring times when Burlington bay was a seaport. The
vessels that wintered here that year were the steamers Osprey and Ottawa; propellers
Acadia and India; brigs Southampton, L.
D. Woodruff, China, D. McInnes, Florence, New Dominion, Malta, Orion, Marco
Polo, Union Jack and John Rae. The
schooner Persia, with a full cargo, got caught in Burlington canal and was
frozen there till the ice let go its hold. The schooner Alvord with a cargo of
grain, was driven on Burlington beach as she was trying to get away with her
last shipment for the season, and it was not till springtime that she was
released.
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A story was told of S. B. Freeman, the
silver-tongued orator of the bar back in the early ‘50s. He was once employed
to plead two cases in court, which were precisely alike, but in one he was engaged
for the defendant and in the other for the plaintiff. It happened that both
cases were tried the same day, the one following the other. Mr. Freeman made an
eloquent plea of half an hour to the first jury, and when they had retired the
other case was called. Although the cases were almost identical, he made use of
entirely different arguments to the jury. This rather amused the judge, and he
quietly reminded his learned friend that he had changed his tune, repeating to
him what he had said before in the other case. With one of his blandest smiles,
Mr. Freeman replied : “May it please your honor, I might have been wrong half
an hour ago, but know I know that I am right.” He finished his argument, and
when the two juries returned with their verdicts, Mr. Freeman had won out in
both cases.
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When the waterworks were first opened
in this city, the chairman of the commissioners had the principal streets
watered from the hydrants by means of a section of hose. This was done at very
little cost, and the plan was continued till the men who owned horses wanted
the job of sprinkling the streets with the old-fashioned sprinklers.
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When he was a young man, George Black,
manager of the G. N. W. telegraph office in this city was in rather a ticklish
place, in a case that was being tried between the Great Western railway company
and James M. Hillburn, concerning the transportation of a carload of cattle. On
behalf of the railway company, Mr. Black was subpoenaed, by whom it was sought
to prove that certain instructions had been sent by telegraph as to what
disposal should be made of the cattle. Here was a delicate point to settle. If
Mr. Black violated the confidence reposted in him as a trusted and confidential
officer of the telegraph company, he would be liable to a heavy fine and
imprisonment. If he refused to produce the original copy of the message in
court then he was liable to be treated as a contumacious witness and fined or
imprisoned as the court directed. Aemilius Irving, solicitor for the railway
company, insisted as his right that the message be produced in court, and this
brought the question up to the judge for decision. Mr. Black was between two
fires; he must either violate the confidence reposed as the manager of the
telegraph office, or run the risk of going to jail or paying a fine if he
persisted in his refusal to furnish the original message. It was a new point in
law, and never been passed upon by the Canadian courts. The case was being
tried in the division court, Judge Alexander Logie, presiding. Mr. Black was
firm in his refusal to produce the copy of the message, and the judge ordered
that he be fined $8, and in default of payment the manager should spend ten
days in jail. In consideration of the circumstances, Judge Logie was willing to
remit the penalty, if Mr. Irvine would consent , but the lawyer would not
listen to the court’s plea for mercy. Mr. Black paid the fine. Probably the old
manager has a vivid recollection of the trying ordeal through which he passed.
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The old year is slipping away and in a
few hours more, it will be numbered with the past. Let us hope that the readers
of the Musings can look back with pleasure to the past, and that the future
years may bring them a renewed happiness and prosperity. It is a good time, on
the threshold of a new year, to look back upon the records of the past, and if
there is aught that needs changing, determine to begin 1906 with a clean
balance sheet. What more appropriate time for the drinking man to resolve to
begin a new life and free himself from the slavery of the intoxicating cup. Why
should less than 100 saloon keepers in Hamilton be supported in luxury at the
expense of 15,000 to 20,000 workingmen? Why should you, my tippling friend, be
one of that number to rob yourself and your family of the comforts of life,
that a man may stand behind a bar and hand you out that which, as Shakespeare
says, “steals away your brains?” The Muser can go back in memory to hundreds of
young men who began the race of life with him more than a half century ago who
dropped by the wayside because of an accursed appetite for strong drink. The
love of liquor has been the besetting sin of men who might today be living in
comfort instead of in perury and want. But we have gone over this subject time
and again in these Musings, still the desire to call it up again is strong in
the writer’s heart today. Ten years ago, a Hamilton man who had passed through
the terrible ordeal of a drunkard’s life determined to begin the new year by
turning over a clean page in his life history. He is a man of fine education,
charming manners, and even in his worst estate was kind and affectionate to his
family. A fortune had been left him by a wealthy relative and being of a convivial
nature, he found friends only too willing to help him get rid of his money. The
larger part of that fortune crossed the saloon bar and his life was wrecked.
Ten years ago today, he decided to call a halt, and having but one more day to
the close of 1896, he decided to celebrate it by testing his holding capacity.
On new year’s morning, when he appeared at the breakfast table, he announced to
his family that there was to be a new order of things thereafter, and a new man
was going to take the place at the head of the household. Henceforth he would
never taste another glass of liquor. Say! wasn’t that a happy household that
new year’s morning! And he has been faithful to his promise. One morning this
week, he met the writer in the street, and he was so jolly and happy that he
could not refrain from telling the story of his reformed habits. “For the first
two years,” said he, “the old appetite kept biting and demanding the old
stimulant, but I fought it out; and since then I have had no ore desire for
liquor, and the past ten years have been the happiest of my life.” He had that
English bulldog grip in his makeup that brought him through the trail victoriously.
It is worth the trial, my unfortunate brother, and if you have not already
decided to begin a new life next Monday, make the resolve now, and back it up
with your manhood. To how many families would it be a happy new year if the
husband or son with an appetite for strong drink would manfully decide to cut
it out and begin a new lease of life and happiness?
