Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/136

 child, it may be said, would not understand such things. Possibly not, but the germ has been implanted, and in due course, the half-remembered, half-understood words will have their effect, and will stimulate into rampant growth a whole host of morbid and deleterious fancies that otherwise might have died of inanition.

I had thought that the final blow had been given to this most deplorable side of our human nature, that mysteries and masses, ghosts and goblins, crystal gazings and astrologies had been definitely relegated to the museum of the follies and horrors of the past. It seems that I was wrong; that the quack and the charlatan are still amongst us, anxious and willing to corrupt and deceive both youth and old age; and that an English journalist is not ashamed to make his living by pandering to some of the most noxious delusions that have haunted and enslaved the race of man.