The disciples of this school of fun are sure to find plenty of nerves admirably suited for them to work upon. Children are prepared for the sport almost in their cradles. Nine out of ten are trained up in terror. They are taught the destructive lesson of fear, before they can even spell the word. Before they can speak plainly, they become practised in the instinctive expression of their feelings, by shuddering, screaming, and crying their little hearts out, at the idea of "bogie," and the horror of being left alone in the dark. The very moment this idea is engrafted upon the sensitive mind, the instant this horror takes possession of the child's imagination, it loses something of the health and happiness to which it was born. The dread of being in the dark--of being alone, and in the dark--clouds perhaps all its after life. It sees nothing that really is, in its true light, from the fear of seeing something which is not. The influence of the first horror of "bogie," remains for years and years after the particular species of "bogie" that had excited the agony of alarm has become an absurdity too childish to be even laughed at. Unconsciously, the mind is sensibly affected, in ten thousand different forms, by the very image which it despises and ridicules. The silly bugbear of the nursery has an abundant and most appalling progeny. In this, more perhaps than in any other respect, may it be said that "the child is father of the man." The idea of darkness as something terrible would in few instances be fixed in the mind, were it not for the cruel and senseless practices, by which servants of all grades--we may add, teachers of some--work upon the imagination of children. They are taught to see in darkness a natural enemy, as they are sometimes taught to regard school as a punishment. "If you are not good, you shall be shut in the dark closet,"--or "If you don't behave better, you shall be sent to school immediately." These are family phrases not yet quite out of fashion. The consequences now and then take an unexpected turn. A little damsel of our acquaintance was shut up in a dark room; she cried bitterly, violently, for the first five minutes; then all was suddenly still--quite still; ten minutes went on, and yet there was a dead silence within. The family at length began to be uneasy--then frightened--too frightened to go and ascertain the cause of the phenomenon. At length they rush forth and burst open the door, when they discover that the little victim had--alone and in the dark--found her way to a plate of cheesecakes left accidentally in the apartment, and was making herself extremely ill for want of other amusement. * * * * *