right and wrong, but in relation to every other idea or emotion. Children
are afraid of thunder and lightning, or of robbers at night, or of ghosts,
because they perceive that their parents, or older brothers or sisters, are
afraid of them. Where the parents do not believe in ghosts, the children
are not afraid of them; unless, indeed, there are domestics in the house,
or playmates at school, or other companions from whom they take the
contagion. So, what they see that their parents value they prize
themselves. They imbibe from their playmates at school a very large
proportion of their tastes, their opinions, and their ideas, not through
arguments or reasoning, but from sympathy; and most of the wrong or foolish
notions of any kind that they have acquired have not been established in
their minds by false reasoning, but have been taken by sympathy, as a
disease is communicated by infection; and the remedy is in most cases, not
reasoning, but a countervailing sympathy.

_Afraid of a Kitten_.

Little Jane was very much afraid of a kitten which her brother brought
home--the first that she had known. She had, however, seen a picture of a
tiger or some other feline animal devouring a man in a forest, and had
been frightened by it; and she had heard too, perhaps, of children being
scratched by cats or kittens. So, when the kitten was brought in and put
down on the floor, she ran to her sister in great terror, and began to cry.

Now her sister might have attempted to reason with her by explaining the
difference between the kitten and the wild animals of the same class in the
woods, and by assuring her that thousands of children have kittens to play
with and are never scratched by them so long as they treat them kindly--and
all without producing any sensible effect. But, instead of this, she
adopted a different plan. She took the child up into her lap, and after