When I was quite a little boy, it used to be the fashion for many people to fill children's heads with all manner of frightful stories about wolves, and bears, and gentry of that sort—stories that had not a word of truth in them, and which did a great deal of mischief. I remember to this day, the horror I used to have, when obliged to go away alone in the dark. Many a time I have looked behind me, thinking it quite likely that a furious wolf was at my heels. The reason for this foolish fear—for it was foolish, of course—was, that a servant girl, in the employ of my mother, used to tell me scores of stories in which wolves always played a very prominent part. I remember one story in particular, which cost me a world of terror. The principal scene in the tale, and the one which most frightened me, was at the time pictured so strongly on my imagination, that it never entirely wore off. It was much after this fashion. The wolf's jaws were opened wide enough to take a poor fellow's head in, and fancy pictured that event as being about to happen scores of times. Indeed, the nurse told me, over and over again, that unless I kept out of mischief—which I did not always, I am sorry to say—I should be sure to come to some such end. Boys and girls, if you have ever heard such stories, don't let them trouble you for a moment. 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 Æsop'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.
A wolf, clothing himself in the skin of a sheep, and getting in among the flock, by this means took the opportunity to devour many of them. At last the shepherd discovered him, and cunningly fastening a rope about his neck, tied him up to a tree which stood hard by. Some other shepherds happening to pass that way, and observing what he was about, drew near and expressed their amazement. "What," says one of them, "brother, do you make a practice of hanging sheep?" "No," replies the other; "but I make a practice of hanging a wolf whenever I catch him, though in the habit and garb of a sheep." Then he showed them their mistake, and they applauded the justice of the execution. The moral of this fable is so plain, that it is quite useless to repeat it.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A drawn game at chess, as some of my readers may not be aware, is one in which neither party is the victor.