Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1858-04-07
VOL. 4.--N0. 80.
FRIGHTENING CHILDREN.

We know of nothing more reprehensible,
nothing more dangerous and injurious, than
the practice of frightening children in the
nursery, at the family fireside, and in the
clal circle, by relating TO them ghost stories,
goblin tales, and witchcrait tictions. They re-
ceive painful impressions from which their
nervous system does not recover for years,
perhaps not during their whole lives.
Children and young folks have generally
great curiosity in relation TO these tales of tho
Imagination, especially when they are attend
ed by some gossIpping nurse, whose head, be-
ing empty of good sense, has been filled brim
full OF ghost legends and black letter recol-
lcctions. We happen to know something a.
bout this matter 10y most unhappy and pain
ful experience. We know what melancholy
effects attend these revelations of goblins and
ghosts in the nursery. We have even now,
while we write, dim, shuddcring recollec-
tion of these appalling horrors, which makes
the blood chill, creep and curdle about tho
heart--cven after the finger of time has plant
ed furrows on the brow, and sown silver
threads in the hair. 1t was the practice of a
full grown boy of nineteen or twenty years OF
age 1--WE are certain he never became a mdnl
to take the writer upon his knee 0hen three
or four years old,) when the twilight was grad
ually fading into darkness, veil his face with
4 black handkerchief, and then, for our espe
ciaI edifcation, affirm that he was the unmen-
tionable parsonage who is supposed to be no
tGlltE IMAM Ilt Sloulu bG- iIA hOuiN ioiiO"
a long dissertation upon witches, ghosts, hob
goblins, whole family of horrible monstro-
sites, by way of giving tone TO the infantile
Imagination. The lessons operated upon the
young mind like potent spell. Soon it be-
came as much as the life worth to attempt
to cross dark entry after nightfafl. If left
alone in 4 sleeping apartment. the avenue to
the eyes was carefully barricaded by the pill
low and bed clothes; there, painting, tremb-
ling, shivering, huge drops OF cold perspira-
tion oozng out at every pore. the writer lay q
full believer in all monstrous shapes and ter
rible forms, the shuddering victim of most
cruel delusion, at times but single removal
| from a maniac.
Those terrible night time solitudes, tho
| darkness peopled by the Imagination with
! spectres the most terrific, how viyidly do they
I come back, even now in the days of maturer
! judgment and ripper reason, never to be erased
! from the recollection by the hand of time
! If there is worse condition upon earth than
! that into which this mOnstrous superstition
| plunges an Imaginative child, we have no con-
! ception of its curdling horrors. Never to lay
| the head upon the pillow, from the time it is
| two or three years of age, until, seven, eight
! or ten, without feeling the most perfect assu-
rance in its own mind ofrealzing its own pro-
phecy, and seeing some hideous spectre before
morning This is the pnrgatory OF early, in
nocent and otherwise happy childhood.
These midnight horrors haunt the imagina-
tion even to old age. They may lose some-
what of their painful viyidness, their appal-
ling Notwithstanding of their crud.
ling horror, so potent in its mystery and SO
terrific even in its impossibility-but these
terrOrs linger in the Imagination still, ready
to be called up in every suspicious spot, awak-
ened in every solitude, in spite of all the judg-
ment can DC or the reason urge. For
moment, at certain times, even to old age, the
heart will throb with painful distinctness, the
hair Will become perpendicular, and disagree
BILE shuddcr will make the blood cold in the
veins, even when manhood has reached its
prime. To be sure the judgment soon dispcls
these unfounded fears, but they viii haunt the
victim at times to his dying day. These are
some of the painfully deleterious effects of
frightening children in the early season Of
their growth. How important is it, that pa
rents should guard them against these ground
less terrors, exciting the early Imagination,
and claiming the trembling victim to the in
descUibahle agony of this nervous bondage Tor
all its future life.