STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 35 1 



One can not part from the theme of children's fears without a 

 reference to a closely connected subject, the problem of their hap- 

 piness. To ask whether childhood is a happy time, still more to 

 ask whether it is the happiest, is to raise perhaps a foolish and 

 insoluble question. Later reminiscences are in this case rather 

 treacherous evidence to build upon. Children themselves, no 

 doubt, may have very definite views on the subject. A child will 

 tell you with the unmistakable marks of profound conviction 

 that he is so unhappy. But, paradoxical as it may seem, children 

 really know very little about the matter. At the best they can 

 only tell you how they feel at particular moments. To seek 

 for a precise and satisfactory solution of the problem is thus 

 futile. Only rough comparisons of childhood and later life are 

 possible. 



In any such comparison the fears of early years claim, no 

 doubt, careful consideration. There seem to be people who have 

 no idea what the agony of these early terrors amounts to. And 

 since it is the unknown that excites this fear and the unknown 

 in childhood is almost everything the possibilities of suffering 

 from this source are great enough : 



'* Alike the good, the ill offend thy sight, 

 And rouse the stormy sense of shi'ill affright." 



George Sand hardly exaggerates when she writes, " Fear is, 

 I believe, the greatest moral suffering of children." In the case 

 of weakly, nervous, and imaginative children, more especially, 

 this susceptibility to terror may bring miserable days and yet 

 more miserable nights. 



Nevertheless, it is easy here to pass from one extreme of bru- 

 tal indifference to another of sentimental exaggeration. Childish 

 suffering is terrible while it lasts, but happily it has a way of not 

 lasting. The cruel, distorting fit of terror passes and leaves the 

 little face with its old sunny outlook. It is not remembered, too, 

 that although children are pitiably fearful in their own way, they 

 are, as we have seen in the case of the little Walter Scott, delight- 

 fully fearless also as judged by our standards. How oddly fear 

 and fearlessness go together is illustrated in a story sent me. A 

 little boy fell into a brook. On his being fished out by his 

 mother, his sister, aged four, asked him, " Did you see any croco- 

 diles ? " " No/' answered the boy, " I wasn't in long enough." 

 The absence of fear of the water itself was as characteristic as 

 the fear of the crocodile. 



It is refreshing to find that in certain cases, at least, where 

 older people have done their worst to excite terror, a child has 

 escaped its suffering. Prof. Barnes tells us that a Californian 

 child's belief in the supernatural takes on a happy tone, directing 



