ON EARLY RISING
A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years
to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a
case of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising;
from which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie
abed late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the
majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple
fact that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth
milestone he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit
to him. As the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily
reached the conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep
late, instead of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are
old. He moreover failed to take into account the numberless young lives
that have been shortened by matutinal habits.
The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told
that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive.
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