rooms at night. _Malbrook_ would be comparatively modern, were not all
things that are sung to a drowsing child as distant as the day of
Abraham.

If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some of
them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate races
that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to the white
child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep in the tropical
night. His closing eyes are filled with alien images.




THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS


It is generally understood in the family that the nurse who menaces a
child, whether with the supernatural or with simple sweeps, lions, or
tigers--goes. The rule is a right one, for the appeal to fear may
possibly hurt a child; nevertheless, it oftener fails to hurt him. If he
is prone to fears, he will be helpless under their grasp, without the
help of human tales. The night will threaten him, the shadow will
pursue, the dream will catch him; terror itself have him by the heart.
And terror, having made his pulses leap, knows how to use any thought,
any shape, any image, to account to the child's mind for the flight and
tempest of his blood. "The child shall not be frightened," decrees
ineffectual love; but though no man make him afraid, he is frightened.
Fear knows him well and finds him alone.

Such a child is hardly at the mercy of any human rashness and impatience;