especially the case in those countries in Europe,
particularly on the Continent, where the idea above referred to, of the
allowableness of falsehood in certain cases as a means for the attainment
of a good end, is generally entertained. The French have two terrible
bugbears, under the names of Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine, who are as
familiar to the imaginations of French children as Santa Claus is, in a
much more agreeable way, to the juvenile fancy at our firesides. Monsieur
and Madame Croquemitaine are frightful monsters, who come down the chimney,
or through the roof, at night, and carry off bad children. They learn from
their _little fingers_--which whisper in their ears when they hold them
near--who the bad children are, where they live, and what they have done.
The instinctive faith of young children in their mother's truthfulness is
so strong that no absurdity seems gross enough to overcome it.

_The Black Man and the Policeman_.

There are many mothers among us who--though not quite prepared to call
in the aid of ghosts, giants, and hobgoblins, or of Monsieur and Madame
Croquemitaine, in managing their children--still, sometimes, try to eke out
their failing authority by threatening them with the "black man," or the
"policeman," or some other less, supernatural terror. They seem to imagine
that inasmuch as, while there is no such thing in existence as a hobgoblin,
there really are policemen and prisons, they only half tell an untruth by
saying to the recalcitrant little one that a policeman is coming to carry
him off to jail.

_Injurious Effects_.

Although, by these various modes of exciting imaginary fears, there is no
direct and outward infliction of bodily suffering, the effect produced on
the delicate organization of the brain by such excitements is violent in
the extreme. The paroxysms of agitation and terror which they sometimes
excite, and which are often spontaneously renewed by darkness and solitude,
and by other exciting causes, are of the nature of temporary insanity.
Indeed, the extreme nervous excitability which they produce sometimes
becomes a real insanity, which, though it may, in many cases, be finally
outgrown, may probably in many others lead to lasting and most deplorable
results.

_Harsh Reproofs and Threatenings_.

3. There is a third mode of treatment, more common, perhaps, among _us_
than either of the preceding, which, though much milder in its character
than they, we still