Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/26

 On my return home, I recollect being placed between my father's knees, and his giving me a glass of castor oil, which I took from his hand.

My father at that time possessed a collection of pictures. He sat on a chair on the right hand side of the chimney-piece in the breakfast room, under a fine picture of our Saviour taken down from the cross. On the opposite wall was a still-celebrated "Interior of Antwerp Cathedral."

In after-life I several times mentioned the subject both to my father and to my mother; but neither of them had the slightest recollection of the matter.

Having suffered in health at the age of five years, and again at that of ten by violent fevers, from which I was with difficulty saved, I was sent into Devonshire and placed under the care of a clergyman (who kept a school at Alphington, near Exeter), with instructions to attend to my health; but, not to press too much knowledge upon me: a mission which he faithfully accomplished. Perhaps great idleness may have led to some of my childish reasonings.

Relations of ghost stories often circulate amongst children, and also of visitations from the devil in a personal form. Of course I shared the belief of my comrades, but still had some doubts of the existence of these personages, although I greatly feared their appearance. Once, in conjunction with a companion, I frightened another boy, bigger than myself, with some pretended ghost; how prepared or how represented by natural objects I do not now remember: I believe it was by the accidental passing shadows of some external objects upon the walls of our common bedroom.

The effect of this on my playfellow was painful; he was much frightened for several days; and it naturally occurred to me, after some time, that as I had deluded him with ghosts,