artificial fruit of lip service, which could have little meaning to
the heart of one so young. I believe that the severe check which the
natural growth of faith experienced in my brother's case was due
almost entirely to this cause, and to the school of literalism in
which he had been trained; but, however this may be, we both of us
hated being made to say our prayers--morning and evening it was our
one bugbear, and we would avoid it, as indeed children generally
will, by every artifice which we could employ. Thus we were in the
habit of feigning to be asleep shortly before prayer time, and would
gratefully hear my father tell my mother that it was a shame to wake
us; whereon he would carry us up to bed in a state apparently of the
profoundest slumber when we were really wide awake and in great fear
of detection. For we knew how to pretend to be asleep, but we did
not know how we ought to wake again; there was nothing for it
therefore when we were once committed, but to go on sleeping till we
were fairly undressed and put to bed, and could wake up safely in the
dark. But deceit is never long successful, and we were at last
ignominiously exposed.

It happened one evening that my mother suspected my brother John, and
tried to open his little hands which were lying clasped in front of
him. Now my brother was as yet very crude and inconsistent in his
theories concerning sleep, and had no conception of what a real
sleeper would do under these circumstances. Fear deprived him of his
powers of reflection, and he thus unfortunately concluded that
because sleepers, so far as he had observed them, were always
motionless, therefore, they must be quite rigid and incapable of
motion, and indeed that any movement, under any circumstances (for
from his earliest childhood he liked to carry his theories to their
legitimate conclusion), would be physically impossible for one who