Chinamen Can Sleep

In the item oí sleep the Chinese establishes the same difference between himself and the Occidental, says A. II. Smith, in Chinese Characteristics. Generally speaking, he is aWe to sleep anywhere. None of the trilling disturbances which drive us to despair annoy him. With a brick for a pillow, he can lie down on his bed of stalks or mud bricks or rattan and sleep the sleep of the just, with no reference to the rest of creation. He does not want his room darkened, nor does he require others to be stfll. The "infant crying in the night" may continue to cry for all he cares, for it does not disturb him. In some regions the entire population seem to fall asleep, as by a eommon instinct (like that of the hibernating bear) during the first two hours of summer af ternoons, and they do this with regularity, no matter where they may be. At two hours af ter noon the universe at such seasons is as still as at two hours af ter midnight. In the case of most working people at least, and also in that of many others, position in sleep is of no sort of consequenee. It would be easy to raise in China an army of a million men - nay, of ten millions- tested by competitive examination as to their capacity to go to sleep across three wheel-barrows, with head downward, like a spider, their mouths wide open and a fly inside.