Although separated by more than a Century, both Charles Dickens and Patsy Cline were onto something similar. They both advocated for walking after midnight. Cline's hit song from 1957 positions nocturnal walking as a soothing balm for heartbreak, whereas Dickens' perambulations appeased insomnia and unleashed creativity. How much might Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol be credited to walking?

As Dickens outlines in "Night walks", he suffered from periods of severe insomnia. A common approach to sleeplessness might involve simply staying at home and just waiting in futility for sleep to arrive. Insomnia, Charles Dickens wrote, "might have taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed." Yet, it was "soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at........

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