Page:Books and men.djvu/50

 40 the most astonishing things about our modern progress. They have ceased to read fairy stories, because they no longer believe in fairies; they find Hans Andersen silly, and the Arabian Nights stupid; and the very babies, "skeptics in long-coats," scorn you openly if you venture to hint at Santa Claus. "What did Kriss Kringle bring you this Christmas?" I rashly asked a tiny mite of a girl; and her answer was as emphatic as Betsey Prig's, when, with folded arms and a contemptuous mien, she let fall the ever memorable words, "I don't believe there's no sich a person."

Yet the supernatural, provided it be not too horrible, is legitimate food for a child's mind, nourishes its imagination, inspires a healthy awe, and is death to that precocious pedantry which is the least pleasing trait that children are wont to manifest. While few are willing to go as far as Mr. Ruskin, who, having himself been brought up on fairy legends, confesses that his "first impulse would be to insist upon every story we tell to a child being untrue, and every scene we paint for it impossible," yet a fair proportion of the untrue and