GREAT MEN'S BODIES
"Supreme Court, Appellate Division,
"First Department.
"New York, March 9, 1898."Mr. William Blaikie:
"Dear Sir,—…I never received any special physical training. I have always taken considerable exercise; but I think that I have been able to do my work because I never took it to bed with me. And I have always kept Saturday as a day of recreation, and have also had a good amount of sleep. I believe that more harm is done than a little because men think of their work in bed instead of sleeping.
Yours very truly,
"C. H. Van Brunt."
And what a valuable suggestion—going right to the heart of the subject, as he about always does! No man of much experience at the New York Bar, and doubtless at those involving large interests elsewhere over the land, does not know of some brother professional man, who, from neglect of this one simple but surpassingly important practice of Judge Van Brunt's, has either broken down, and gone the rest of his way in nerve and effectiveness a cripple—or who, long before his time, has actually died from precisely that neglect. And many more are following to-day exactly the same course. In some way the Duke of Wellington learned to go to sleep when and where he would, night or day, in the stillness of his own chamber, or amid the thunder of battle. General Butler, it was said, could do the same. Mr. Gladstone, as already seen, followed inexorably Judge Van Brunt's rule. And Mr. Beecher did even more—just the thing for us intense, nervous Americans to know—and to do. For almost every afternoon, soon after dinner, he would have his nap. And who will say that that quieting of heart, and whole machinery; that resting of brain and nerve and muscle, for ever so few minutes, when half-way down the burden and heat of
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