Insomnia

How to Effect a Permanent and Lasting Cure.

1. Lie perfectly still and count 287,643 in a slow, methodical manner. By the time you have finished counting it will be daylight, and you will be surprised to notice how quickly the night has passed.
2. Always partake of a bountiful repast before retiring, giving special attention to a lobster salad, welsh rarebit and hard-boiled eggs. This will, no doubt, give you delirium tremens, night-mare, St. Vitus' dance and indigestion, but the pleasing thought will remain that you have kept the rest of the household awake as well as yourself.
3. Always undress in the dark. When you have broken three chairs, upset the centre table and stepped on six assorted tacks, you will realize what a stupid habit sleeping is anyway, and your senses will have become so acute that you will want to sit up and read the Family Story Paper during that portion of the night which has not been devoted to swearing.
4. Always lie with your head lower than any other point of your body and throw the pillows away. The monotony of a sleepless night will then be relieved by the novelty of having apoplexy or heart failure, either of which diseases is much more exciting and dangerous than insomnia.
5. Always concentrate your thoughts and endeavor to breathe pronouncedly and with exaggeration, like a freight engine climbing a grade. This is calculated to frighten the rest of the family into convulsions and stampede all the cattle in the neighborhood, but you will be enabled to while the remaining hours of the night away by listening to the terse remarks hurled at you from time to time by the other members of the household.
6. Always sponge your face with boiling water several times before retiring. If you keep this up long enough it will be breakfast time, and you may then go about your daily labor with the happy consciousness that you have saved the bed clothes a great deal of wear and tear.
7. Always take a brisk, long walk before retiring, taking particular care to come home late and allow the watch dog to mistake you for a tramp and chase you hurriedly into the next country side. It is also calculated to withdraw the blood from the brain and put wings on your feet. A brisk run of sixteen miles across country as the crow flies with an angry bulldog pushing you pretty hard for first place, is a pleasant diversion in a sleepless night.
8. Be phlegmatic and indifferent in a marked degree. If you hear thieves in the chicken coop during the night, don't move a muscle; if you smell smoke and know the house is on fire, lie perfectly still and count imaginary sheep jumping over an imaginary fence; if you feel the folding bed closing up let it close and go on with your counting; if you know that burglars are in the room pay no attention to them and let them burgle--you have business of your own to attend to. A man with a thoroughly developed case of insomnia has no time for such trifling details.