Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/22

 I hated it. The last of these moral tales I listened to was called "Cassy." I particularly disliked it, but I can remember now only one scene, where Cassy comes into an empty house at night, and discovers a corpse there. This had an effect on my mind which for several days made me extremely reluctant to go upstairs by myself after dark. "Jessica's First Prayer," "Vinegar Hill," "The Golden Ladder"—how I loathed them all! Every Sunday, after dinner, my father would take some such volume from the shelf, open if, and put on his spectacles, Holding the book at a long distance from his eyes, he would read aloud in a monotonous, unanimated voice, while I sat on a high-backed chair and listened, for I was not allowed to play the most innocent game, nor even to go out for a walk. These miserable tales were full of the conversions of priggish children; of harrowing scenes in public-houses or squalid city dens. Some of them were written to illustrate the Ten Commandments; others to illustrate the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. They contained not the faintest glimmer of imagination or life: from cover to cover they were ugly, dull, unintelligent, full of death, poverty and calamity. On the afternoon when "Cassy's" successor was produced—I forget its name—in a state of exasperation, brought about by mingled boredom and depression, I snatched the book out of my father’s hands and flung it on the fire. I was whipped and sent to bed, but anything was better than "Vinegar Hill," and next Sunday, also, I refused to listen. Again, with tingling buttocks, I was banished to the upper regions, but really I had triumphed, for when the fateful day came round once more, the book-case was not opened, and I had never again to listen to one of those sanctimonious tales.

Fairy stories and animal stories were what I liked best, while some of the old nursery rhymes and jingles had a fascination for me.