The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-09
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS


 the front door and walk into a dark house.
 Any married man who reads this will know what am talking about. There Is something absolutely wrong. The wife. with her cheery greeting, is missed, and the lack of romping children makes the human stiffness almost uncanny.
 The lights are unit, the fire is smoth cred, and the walls are like sounding boards to echo every crealxing door. rat ting window, and ones steps on the stairs seem to shake the very house, while a scuttling mouse sends cold up ones spine.
 I know brave men wno can face open danger without fear, yet get into a 'blue funk, when left alone in a house | by themselves. This ought to at least give them more sympathy for their wives, who get a case of nerves if they have to stay at home in the evenings while the husband goes to his lodge. | The thing we call courage has many angles, and book could be written around it, for some of the worlds bravest men have confessed to having certain weak nesses am now only speaking of phys- cal courage for if we get into the realm of moral or business courage it would l take a whole library to do the subject justice.
 | I know a man who when it comes to being afraid of any other man. does not know what fear is; and yet, at night he almost barricades himself in his room, sleep without seeing that the doors were locked and the windows fastened down 1 than he would think of throwing himself | in front of moving train. He is unable to account for it. but is not at all ashamed of the fact.
 | I think it is criminal to frightsn chill dren. Perhaps 'criminar is too strong word for minimizing parents who, to
  them with ghoets who will torment them. animals which will eat them up, or bad men who will come and steal them away. They do it with small thought of the harm they are committing against theft own offspring. It's bad enough for nurses toe be guilty of it.
 It's hard for us after we grow up and our imaginations get blunted to realize how real imaginary things are to chl- dren, for most tots live in a land of | make-believe. If you doubt this, all you will have to do will be to watch your boy Or girl at play when they are uncon- scious that anyone is observing them A doll is real-to-goodness baby to the little mother who fondles it.
 
 l have seen little boys take sticks and get astride of them, and give them names and play. horse and have races and be as earnest about it as though they were really mounted, They switch the sticks, and make them prance and cavort, and talk to them as if they iwere alive and understanding every word that was be- ing uttered; praising them if they came out ahead and abusing them if beaten. sNs
 1 T know some children who are afraid Of ! the dark, and while temperament mays | have great deal to do with it. yet I am sure that if traced to the source it could be ascertained, that at some time | some playmate, nurse, or parent had c<;rr or warning. am aware that the night has it's terrors for even some grown-ups but as. rule this is not the case. | I remember when was a boy we used l to challenge one> another to run around 1 the house after supper It was the test of courage. I do not care how brave any of the boys were, there was always one place they went by on the run after sundown, and that was what was called l the "hearse house. It was on resi- dence street down towards the bluff, and | if any of us got caught out on the river late. We always saved our breaths to scoot by it on the way up town. | Of course. no normal boy ever fooled about a graveyard after dark-that is, if he was reared in the south-for none in Dixie land escaped the weird tales of the black servants about "sperts" which haunted the graves; and. to be perfectly truthful, do not relish being alone in one after nightfall even now. I am not ''scairt.' but I am, to use another negro l term, "jes nat'lly restless and want to be somewhere else.
 l have a neighbor whose little boy and | girl have all their lives been taught that l they were just as safe by night as by day, and whenever happen to be in the home around bedtime both of them come and kiss father and mother and go up to bed without any ado whatsoever Now, this is as it should be, and as it would be if 1 fathers and mothers, nurses and the big ger lads and lassies could keep from | frightening them.
 l I am afraid that many tales about | ''hanted'' houses plant the germs of fear I in the minds of the little ones. Fairy stories are all right and proper, but any talk about things abnormal which gen. crates forebodings in the thoughts of the young should be severely cut out for | there is danger of producing conditions which will make for future unhappiness. | I believe that parents should tell their ! children stories, but let them be bright and happy ones. or. if sad, without any