“My dear Roderick,” she would say sometimes, “if I send in some candles, will you go into the drawing room?”

“O yes, Mamma.”

“Then do you really mean to say you think the Candles take care of you?”

“No, Mamma.”

“Then why won’t you go into the room without; you know there is a fire?

“Because it is so dark, Mamma.”

Here was a difficulty indeed; for you see he would come back to the old point, and would not listen to reason.

One day some conversation of this sort having passed between them, Madeline, as she was wont to do, asked him if God could not take care of him by night as well as by day; in the dark as well as in light, for “the darkness and light are both alike to him.”

“Oh yes,” cried poor Roderick, with great animation, “and I can tell you a story about that.  There was, once upon a time, a little Boy and a Nurse who went out walking, and they walked so long they got benighted in a very dark wood, and because it was so dark the Nurse screamed and was very much frightened; and the little boy said, ’Nurse, why are you frightened?  Don’t be frightened; I am not frightened.  God can take care of us in the dark as well as in the light,’”

“Oh Roderick! what a pretty story,” cried his Mamma.

And so thought Roderick; for his eye glistened and his cheek flushed as he came to the conclusion.

And here, dear readers, was the worst difficulty of all; for though Roderick’s reason was quite convinced that God could take care of him in the dark, he still could not bear to be in the dark without the help of candles besides, though he quite knew they could not take care of him at all.  So you see by this that Reason, though it may convince a person he is wrong, cannot put him right.  There wants some other help for that.  And here let me just stop a moment to beg you to beware of bad habits; for you see they become at last more powerful than reason itself.

I do not know how Roderick first got into his foolish habit, and it does not much matter.  I know he at one time had a fancy there was something unpleasant about the pipes that carried the water about the house, and he would not for a long time go by the pipes alone.  Now, how you laugh! well, but he got out of that nonsense; and I hope to be able to tell you that he got out of the other too:  but at the time I speak of, he made his Mamma full of sorrow for his want of sense and courage.

It must be admitted that there were one or two excuses to be made for the child.  There was a great contrast between the Town House and the Sea Castle.  The Town House was full of lights.  All the sitting rooms were generally lighted, for a great deal of company came there, and there were always lights along the passages; and the nursery windows looked into a square, and the square was lighted up by lamps every night; and it was one of Roderick’s greatest