Next in importance to the unsuggested imaginings are those to which a sensitive child gives way on the slightest hint. This is a very practical matter, and one to which those who have to do with children should take heed.
Imaginary Terrors.
It is impossible to say at how early an age a suggestion of any kind may bear fruit. A lady once said that her childhood was one long misery owing to a vivid imagination of the terrors that awaited her for having committed a certain fault when a baby in the nursery. It was not, she said, that much had been made of it at the time, but there was some suggestion of an awful unknown punishment, which her childish brain worked upon and developed until she dared not be left alone and became a thoroughly morbid and wretched little being.
It is obvious that too great care cannot possibly be taken by those to whom children are entrusted, inasmuch as a chance word may set a child’s imagination working and affect the tendency of its thoughts and actions for years.
Untruthfulness and Imagination.
It was suggested at the beginning of this chapter that there is probably some relation between this power of imagination and the tendency to untruthfulness which is found in so many children. It is one of the most difficult things possible to define exactly where the knowledge of untruthfulness comes in. Probably no two children are alike in this, and it requires the utmost tact and a close knowledge of a particular child’s character to determine the point where the one thing ends and the other begins.
Here is an example. A short time ago a little boy still in the nursery was taken out by his father in the carriage for a drive. When they arrived at the farther end of the town the little chap was sent home in the carriage by himself, his father having been deposited at his place of business. When the carriage arrived back at the door of the house the parlourmaid came out and carried the child indoors, being surprised to find him in tears. Struggling out of her arms he set off upstairs to the nursery, sobbing bitterly all the way. “What is the matter, dear?” said the nurse. “I’se had to walk by mine own self all froo the town, and I was dreffly frightened,” was the reply. “How ever did you get across the High Street, my poor darling?” “There was lots of cabs and cawwiages and things, and I knewed I would be runned over!” All this with many sobs and much burying of his head in nurse’s lap. Hearing the wailing in the nursery up came the parlourmaid, to whom the nurse poured out her indignation. “Just fancy! Making this poor lamb walk home all through the town by himself! It’s a mercy he was not killed again and again!” “Walk through the town! Why, whatever do you mean? Why, I lifted him out of the carriage at this very door not ten minutes ago!”
Well, the temptation to punish the little fellow must have been great. One hopes it was resisted. There can be small doubt that a vivid imagination had mastered him as he drove home alone. It was all “what might have been,” and it became so real to him that it seemed to be “what was.”
Confession of an Imaginary Sin.
Again, a case recurs to the recollection of the writer where a small child was summoned into the presence of an angry parent who listened to no excuses, but insisted so strongly and so often on the guilt of the small boy, that at last he actually seemed convinced by the reiterated accusation and, imagining that his parent must know best, actually confessed to a sin which subsequent events proved the impossibility of his having committed.