Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/184

174 him by gentle word and action, leads him up to the object, and shows him that it is not a savage beast, eager for horseflesh, but an empty barrel, and that the fierce eye that he believed to be glaring upon him is nothing but the handle of a shovel protruding above the top, Then the horse, if there is any good in him, will be content to walk by that barrel; and the next time he sees it will be likely to pass it with perhaps but a hasty glance or two to see that its nature has not changed; and, in time, he will learn that barrels, and other things that he may not have noticed before, are not ravenous, and so become a better, because a wiser, horse. We know well that there are parents who, plodding along as quietly as any son or daughter could desire, will suddenly stop short at the sight of something thoroughly understood, and not at all disapproved of by his offspring, but which to him appears as objectionable and dangerous as the empty barrel to the high-strung horse. Now let not the youngster apply the mental lash, and urge that startled and reluctant parent forward. Better far if it take him figuratively by the bridle, and make him understand that that which appeared to him a vision of mental or physical ruin to a young person, or a frightful obstacle in the way of rational progress, is nothing but a pleasant form of intellectual recreation, which all persons ought to like very much, or to which, at least, they should have no objections. How many such phantasms will arise before a parent, and how necessary is it for a child, if it wish to carry on without disturbance its work of training, to get that parent into the habit of thinking that these things are really nothing but phantasms!