Explore "The Man with Two Heads" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is generally understood in the family that the nurse who menaces a child, whether with the supernatural or with simple sweeps, lions, or tigers -- goes. The rule is a right one, for the appeal to fear may possibly hurt a child; nevertheless, it oftener fails to hurt him. If he is prone to fears, he will be helpless under their grasp, without the help of human tales. The night will threaten him, the shadow will pursue, the dream will catch him; terror itself have him by the heart.
And terror, having made his pulses leap, knows how to use any thought, any shape, any image, to account to the child's mind for the flight and tempest of his blood. "The child shall not be frightened," decrees ineffectual love; but though no man make him afraid, he is frightened. Fear knows him well and finds him alone.