_Management of Nurses and Servants_.

Nurses and attendants upon children from certain nationalities in Europe
are peculiarly disposed to employ this method of governing children placed
under their care. One reason is that they are accustomed to this mode of
management at home; and another is that many of them are brought up under
an idea, which prevails extensively in some of those countries, that it
is right to tell falsehoods where the honest object is to accomplish a
charitable or useful end. Accordingly, inasmuch as the restraining of the
children from wrong is a good and useful object, they can declare the
existence of giants and hobgoblins, to carry away and devour bad girls and
boys, with an air of positiveness and seeming honesty, and with a calm and
persistent assurance, which aids them very much in producing on the minds
of the children a conviction of the truth of what they say; while, on the
other hand, those who, in theory at least, occupy the position that
the direct falsifying of one's word is _never_ justifiable, act at a
disadvantage in attempting this method. For although, in practice, they are
often inclined to make an exception to their principles in regard to truth
in the case of what is said to young children, they can not, after all,
tell children what they know to be not true with that bold and confident
air necessary to carry full conviction to the children's minds. They are
embarrassed by a kind of half guilty feeling, which, partially at least,
betrays them, and the children do not really and fully believe what they
say. They can not suppose that their mother would really tell them what
she knew was false, and yet they can not help perceiving that she does not
speak and look as if what she was saying was actually true.

_Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine_.

In all countries there are many, among even the most refined and highly