This was the lachrymose epoch in a career not otherwise given to weeping, for I must tell one more tale of tears.  About this time,—­the autumn of 1855,—­my parents were disturbed more than once in the twilight, after I had been put to bed, by shrieks from my crib.  They would rush up to my side, and find me in great distress, but would be unable to discover the cause of it.  The fact was that I was half beside myself with ghostly fears, increased and pointed by the fact that there had been some daring burglaries on our street.  Our servant-maid, who slept at the top of the house, had seen, or thought she saw, upon a moonlight night the figure of a crouching man, silhouetted against the sky, slip down from the roof and leap into her room.  She screamed, and he fled away.  Moreover, as if this were not enough for my tender nerves, there had been committed a horrid murder at a baker’s shop just around the corner in the Caledonian Road, to which murder actuality was given to us by the fact that my Mother had been ‘just thinking’ of getting her bread from this shop.  Children, I think, were not spared the details of these affairs fifty years ago; at least, I was not, and my nerves were a packet of spilikins.

But what made me scream at nights was that when my Mother had tucked me up in bed, and had heard me say my prayer, and had prayed aloud on her knees at my side, and had stolen downstairs—­ noises immediately began in the room.  There was a rustling of clothes, and a slapping of hands, and a gurgling, and a sniffing, and a trotting.  These horrible muffled sounds would go on, and die away, and be resumed; I would pray very fervently to God to save me from my enemies; and sometimes I would go to sleep.  But on other occasions, my faith and fortitude alike gave way, and I screamed ‘Mama!  Mama!’ Then would my parents come bounding up the stairs, and comfort me, and kiss me, and assure me it was nothing.  And nothing it was while they were there, but no sooner had they gone than the ghostly riot recommenced.  It was at last discovered by my Mother that the whole mischief was due to a card of framed texts, fastened by one nail to the wall; this did nothing when the bedroom door was shut, but when it was left open (in order that my parents might hear me call), the card began to gallop in the draught, and made the most intolerable noises.

Several things tended at this time to alienate my conscience from the line which my Father had so rigidly traced for it.  The question of the efficacy of prayer, which has puzzled wiser heads than mine was, began to trouble me.  It was insisted on in our household that if anything was desired, you should not, as my Mother said, ’lose any time in seeking for it, but ask God to guide you to it’.  In many junctures of life this is precisely what, in sober fact, they did.  I will not dwell here on their theories, which my Mother put forth, with unflinching directness, in her published writings.