An extremely wicked way of punishing children is by shutting them up in a dark place.  Darkness is naturally fearful to human beings, and the stupid ghost-stories of many nurses make it especially fearful to a child.  It is a stupid and wicked thing to send a child on an errand in a dark night.  I do not remember passing through a greater trial in my youth than once walking three miles alone (it was not going on an errand) in the dark, along a road thickly shaded with trees.  I was a little fellow; but I got over the distance in half an hour.  Part of the way was along the wall of a church-yard, one of those ghastly, weedy, neglected, accursed-looking spots where stupidity has done what it can to add circumstances of disgust and horror to the Christian’s long sleep.  Nobody ever supposed that this walk was a trial to a boy of twelve years old:  so little are the thoughts of children understood.  And children are reticent:  I am telling now about that dismal walk for the very first time.  And in the illnesses of childhood, children sometimes get very close and real views of death.  I remember, when I was nine years old, how every evening, when I lay down to sleep, I used for about a year to picture myself lying dead, till I felt as though the coffin were closing round me.  I used to read at that period, with a curious feeling of fascination, Blair’s poem, “The Grave.”  But I never dreamed of telling anybody about these thoughts.  I believe that thoughtful children keep most of their thoughts to themselves, and in respect of the things of which they think most are as profoundly alone as the Ancient Mariner in the Pacific.  I have heard of a parent, an important member of a very strait sect of the Pharisees, whose child, when dying, begged to be buried not in a certain foul old hideous church-yard, but in a certain cheerful cemetery.  This request the poor little creature made with all the energy of terror and despair.  But the strait Pharisee refused the dying request, and pointed out with polemical bitterness to the child that he must be very wicked indeed to care at such a time where he was to be buried, or what might be done with his body after death.  How I should enjoy the spectacle of that unnatural, heartless, stupid wretch tarred and feathered!  The dying child was caring for a thing about which Shakspeare cared; and it was not in mere human weakness, but “by faith,” that “Joseph, when he was a-dying, gave commandment concerning his bones.”

I believe that real depression of spirits, usually the sad heritage of after-years, is often felt in very early youth.  It sometimes comes of the child’s belief that he must be very bad, because he is so frequently told that he is so.  It sometimes comes of the child’s fears, early felt, as to what is to become of him.  His parents, possibly, with the good sense and kind feeling which distinguish various parents, have taken pains to drive it into the child, that, if his father should die, he will certainly starve, and may very probably have to become a wandering beggar.  And these sayings have sunk deep into the little heart.  I remember how a friend told me that his constant wonder, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, was this:  If life was such a burden already, and so miserable to look back upon, how could he ever bear it when be had grown older?