miles across a
moor because she had had a dream that something terrible was happening to
a bosom friend of hers. The bosom friend and her husband were rather
indignant at being waked at two o'clock in the morning, but their
indignation was mild compared with that of the dreamer on learning that
nothing was the matter. From that day forward a coldness sprang up
between the two families.

I would give much to believe in ghosts. The interest of life would be
multiplied by its own square power could we communicate with the myriad
dead watching us from their mountain summits. Mr. Zangwill, in a poem
that should live, draws for us a pathetic picture of blind children
playing in a garden, laughing, romping. All their lives they have lived
in darkness; they are content. But, the wonder of it, could their eyes
by some miracle be opened!

Blind Children playing in a World of Darkness.

May not we be but blind children, suggests the poet, living in a world of
darkness--laughing, weeping, loving, dying--knowing nothing of the wonder
round us?

The ghosts about us, with their god-like faces, it might be good to look
at them.

But these poor, pale-faced spooks, these dull-witted, table-thumping
spirits: it would be sad to think that of such was the kingdom of the
Dead.

CHAPTER XVII

Parents and their Teachers.

My heart has been much torn of late, reading of the wrongs of Children.
It has lately been discovered that Children are being hampered and
harassed in their career by certain brutal and ignorant persons called,
for want of a better name, parents. The parent is a selfish wretch who,
out of pure devilment, and without consulting the Child itself upon the
subject, lures innocent Children into the world, apparently for the
purpose merely of annoying them. The parent does not understand the
Child when he has got it; he does not understand anything, not much. The
only person who understands the Child is the young gentleman fresh from
College and the elderly maiden lady, who, between them, produce most of
the literature that explains to us the Child.

The parent does not even know how to dress the Child. The parent will
persist in dressing the Child in a long and trailing garment that
prevents the Child from kicking. The young gentleman fresh from College
grows almost poetical in his contempt. It appears that the one thing
essential for the health of a young child is that it should have perfec