The Frightening System.

2.  There is a second grade of violence in the treatment of such a case, which consists in exciting pain or terror, or other painful or disagreeable emotions, through the imagination, by presenting to the fancy of the child images of phantoms, hobgoblins, and other frightful monsters, whose ire, it is pretended, is greatly excited by the misdeeds of children, and who come in the night-time to take them away, or otherwise visit them with terrible retribution.  Domestic servants are very prone to adopt this mode of discipline.  Being forbidden to resort to personal violence as a means of exciting pain and terror, they attempt to accomplish the same end by other means, which, however, in many respects, are still more injurious in their action.

Management of Nurses and Servants.

Nurses and attendants upon children from certain nationalities in Europe are peculiarly disposed to employ this method of governing children placed under their care.  One reason is that they are accustomed to this mode of management at home; and another is that many of them are brought up under an idea, which prevails extensively in some of those countries, that it is right to tell falsehoods where the honest object is to accomplish a charitable or useful end.  Accordingly, inasmuch as the restraining of the children from wrong is a good and useful object, they can declare the existence of giants and hobgoblins, to carry away and devour bad girls and boys, with an air of positiveness and seeming honesty, and with a calm and persistent assurance, which aids them very much in producing on the minds of the children a conviction of the truth of what they say; while, on the other hand, those who, in theory at least, occupy the position that the direct falsifying of one’s word is never justifiable, act at a disadvantage in attempting this method.  For although, in practice, they are often inclined to make an exception to their principles in regard to truth in the case of what is said to young children, they can not, after all, tell children what they know to be not true with that bold and confident air necessary to carry full conviction to the children’s minds.  They are embarrassed by a kind of half guilty feeling, which, partially at least, betrays them, and the children do not really and fully believe what they say.  They can not suppose that their mother would really tell them what she knew was false, and yet they can not help perceiving that she does not speak and look as if what she was saying was actually true.

Monsieur and Madame Croquemitaine.