There is not a word of truth in them. I know how you feel--some of you
who are quite young, and who have been entertained with stories of this
class--when any body asks you to go alone into a dark room. You are
afraid of something, and for your life cannot tell what. I should not
wonder very much if some of you were _afraid of the dark_. I have heard
children talk about being afraid of the dark. You laugh, perhaps. It is
rather funny--almost too funny to be treated seriously. Well, if it is
not the dark, what is it you are afraid of? Your parents, and others who
are older than you, are alone in the dark a thousand times in the course
of a year. Did you ever hear them say any thing about meeting a single
one of the heroes of the frightful stories you have heard? Do you think
they ever came across a ghost, or an apparition, or a fairy, or an elf,
or a witch, or a hobgoblin, or a giant, or a Blue-Beard, or a wolf? It
makes you smile to think of it. Well, then, after all, don't you think
it would be a great deal wiser and better to turn all these foolish
fancies out of your head, just as one would get rid of a company of
saucy rats and mice that were doing mischief in the cellar or
corn-house? I think so.
Before I have done with the wolf, I must recite that fable of AEsop's,
about one who dressed himself up in the garb of a sheep, to impose upon
the shepherd, but who shared a very different fate from the one he
anticipated.
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