Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1868-01-22
From the Philadelphia Pennsylvania.
Frightening Children.

From the Philadelphia Pennsylvania.
Frightening Children.
The late distressing circumstances at
Troy, N. ~, in relation to the little
daughter of Mr.. James HARRISON ,sof that
city, too nearly and too deeply interest
every parent in the whole country, to be
allowed to be passed over in silence. The
little girl was at school, and the teacher,
by series of most injudicious threats
and punishments, so terrified the child
that a most alarming illness followed,
which came near proving fatal. Even if
she is restored to health, she will not re-
cover from the effects of her fright per-
haps for years, if ever.
1t is not to this particular case that we,
are anxious to call the public attention,
any further than it affords usgan oppor-
tunity to animadvert upon the dangerous
and exceedingly injurious practice of
frightening children in the nursery, at the
family 6reside, and the social circle, by
retailing ghoststories, goblin tales and
witchcraft fictions.
Children and young persons have gen.
orally great curiosity in relation to these
tales Of the imagination, especially when
they are attended by some gossiping
nurse, whose head being empty of good
sense he's been filled brim full of ghost
legends and black letter recollections. We
happened to know something about this
matter by most unhappy and painful ex-
perience. We know what melancholy
effects attend these revelations of gobins
and ghosts in the nursery. We have
even now while we write, dim, shudder.
ing recollection of these appalling hor.
rors, which make the blood chill, creep
and curdle about the heart-even after
the finger of time has planted burrows on
the brow and sown silver threads in the
hair. 1t was the practice of full grown
boy of 10 or 20 years of age, 1--WE are
certain he never became A MAN, to take
the writer upon his knee, (then three or
four years DID, when the twilight was
gradually fading into darkness, veil his
face with black handkerchief, and then
for our especial edifcation, affirm that he
was the unmentionable parsonage who is
supposed to be no better than he should
be. Then would follow long dissertation
upon witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, whole
family of horrible monstrosities, by way
of giving tone to the infantile imagination.
The lessons operated upon the young
mind like potent spell. Soon it became
as much as life was worth to attempt to
cross dark entry after nightfall. If
left alone in sleeping apartment, the
avenue to the eyes was carefully barri.
caded by the pillows and bcd-cloths;
there, painting, trembling. shivering, huge
drops of cold perspiration oozing out at
every pore, the flesh creeping all over
with horror, the writer lay full believer
in all monstrous shapes and terrible forms,
the shuddering victim of q most cruel
delusion, at times but single remove
from maniac
Those terrible night time solitudes, the
darkness peopled by the imagination,
with spectres the most terrific, how yiv-
idly do they come back, even now, in the
days of maturer judgment and ripper
season, never to be erased from the recol-
lection by the hand of time If there is
a worse condition upon earth than that
into which this monstrous superstition
plunges an imaginative child, we have no
conception of its curdIing 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 assurance in its own mind of
realizing its own prophecy, and seeing
some hideous spectre before morning
This is the purgatory Of early, innocent
and otherwise happy childhood.
These midnight horrors haunt the i'm.
agination even to old age. They may
lose somewhat of.their painful vividness,
their appalling Notwithstanding
of their curdling horror, so potent in its
but these terrors linger in
the imagination still, ready to be called
up in every suspicious spot, awakened in
every solitude, in spite of;all the judg-
nent can do or the reason can urge. For
1 moment, at certain times, even to old
ige, the heart will throb with painful dis
,inctness, the hair will become perpen.
licular, and disagreeable shudder viii
make the, blood cold in the veins, even
Rhen manhood has reached its prime. To
De sure the judgment soon dispells these i
lnfounded fears, but they will haunt the
,ictim at times, to his dying day. These ,
ire some of the painfully deleterious
fleets of the frightening children in the 4
.arly season of their growth. How i'm. +
,ortant is it, that parents should guard
hem against these groundless terrors, !.
xciting the early imagination, and chain
ng the trembling victim to the indescri.
,able agony of this nervous bondage for
II its future life. .