wings and clutching hands. That was too bad ever to be spoken of;
and as I did not remember which volume it was, I was never able to
look at the set of magazines again for fear of encountering it; and
strange to say some years afterwards, when I was an Eton boy, I
looked curiously for the picture, and again experienced the same
overwhelming horror.

My youngest brother, too, an imaginative child, could never be
persuaded by any bribes or entreaties to go into a dark room to
fetch anything out. Nothing would induce him. I remember that he
was catechised at the tea-table as to what he expected to find, to
which he replied at once, with a horror-stricken look and a long
stammer, "B--b--b--bloodstained corpses!"

It seems fantastic and ridiculous enough to older people, but the
horror of the dark and of the unknown which some children have is
not a thing to be laughed at, nor should it be unsympathetically
combated. One must remember that experience has not taught a child
scepticism; he thinks that anything in the world may happen; and
all the monsters of nursery tales, goblins, witches, evil fairies,
dragons, which a child in daylight will know to be imaginary,
begin, as the dusk draws on, to become appalling possibilities.
They may be somewhere about, lurking in cellars and cupboards and
lofts and dark entries by day, and at night they may slip out to do
what harm they can. For children, not far from the gates of birth,
are still strongly the victims of primeval and inherited fears, not
corrected by the habitual current of life. It is not a reason for
depriving children of the joys of the old tales and the exercise of
the faculty of wonder; but the tendency should be very carefully
guarded and watched, because these sudden shocks may make indelible