Arkansas true Democrat., 1860-01-04
Frightening Children.

Children and young persons have gener- ally great curiosity in relation to tales of the imagination, especially when they are attended by some gossoping nurse. whose head being empty ofgood sense has been fill ed brim full of ghost legend and black let ter recollections. We have even now. while we write, dim shuddering recollec- ton of these appalling horrors which makes the blood chill, creep and curdle about the heart-even after the finger of time has planted furrows on the brow and sown silver threads Tn the hair. It was the practice of full grown boy of nineteen or twenty years of age, (we are certain he never be- came man, to take the writer upon his knee (then four years old, when the twi- light was gradually falling into darkness, veil his face with black handkerchief and then for our special edifcation affirm that he was the unmentionable parsonage who is supposed to be no better than he should be. Then would follow long dissertations upon witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, whole fami ly of horrible monstrosities, by way of gv- ing tone to the infantile imagination. The lessons operated upon the young mind like potent spell; soon it became as much as the life was worth 70 attempt to cross dark entry after night fall. Ifleft alone in sleeping apartment, the avenue to the eyes was carefully barricaded by the pillows and bed-ciothes; the panting, trembling, shiver- lng' huge drops of cold precipitation oozing out at every pore, the flesh creeping all over With horror, the writer lay a full believer in all monstrous shapes and terrible forms, the shuddering victim of most cruel delusion at times, but single remove from mani ac!
 Those terrible nighttime solitudes, the darkness peopled the imagination with spec tres the most terrific, how vividlv they do come back. even now in the days of malur- CT judgment and riper reason, never to be erased from the recollection by the hand of time! Ii there Is worse condition upon earth than that into which this monstrous superstition plmges an imaginative child, we have no conception of its curdling hor- TOTS. Never to lay the head upon the pill low. from the time it is two or three years of age, until seven, eight or ten, without feeling the most perfect assurance in its own mind of realising its own prophecy and seeing some hideous spectre before mornipg This IS the purgatory of early, innocent, and otherwise happy children.
 These midnight horrors haunt the imag- ination even to old age. They may loose somewhat of their painful vividness, their appalling istinctness-something of their curdllng horror, so potent in its mystery and so terrific even in its impossibilty- but these terrors finger in the imagination still, ready to be called up in every suspi- eious spot, awakened in every solitude in spite of all the judgment can do, or the req son can urge. For moment, at certain tlmes-even to old age, the heart will throb with painful distinctness, the hair will be- come perpendicular, and a disagreeable shudder will make the blood run cold in the veins, even when manhood has reached Its prime. To be sure the judgment soon dlspells these unfounded fears, but they will haunt the victim at times, to his dying days. These are some of the painful dele terious effects of frightening children in the early season of their growth. How important it is, that parents should guard them against such groundless terlors excit- ing the early imagination, and chaining the trembling victim to the indescribable ago. ny of this nervous bondage for all its flu. ture life.