"Two immigrants in New York brought up their daughter, born here, on a diet of literal truth, and tabooed fiction, poetry, and imagination as lies. She was bright, at twelve had never read a fairy tale or a story book, but was continually dreamy and ardent-souled, with a great passion and talent for music. Her mother once told her that she might, perhaps, play some time to the President. Soon after, at the dedication of Grant's Tomb, she saw Mr. and Mrs. McKinley. One day, soon afterwards, she rushed in, breathless, saying that they had visited her school, heard her play, might adopt her, would give papa a place in Washington, and so on; but Mrs. McKinley was out of funds, and her husband was in Washington. "Accordingly, Gertrude's father drew a hundred from his fortune of fourteen hundred dollars in the bank and sent it by his daughter, who brought back costly flowers. Upon more excuses, more money was loaned, and more presents were sent to Gertrude's parents--a canary, a puppy, a diamond ring. Gertrude conversed intelligently on political topics, and her father gave up his position, as he was about to accept a five-thousand-dollar job in Washington. "Then came the crash. Gertrude had never met the President or his wife, but had made lavish presents and had bought many articles, which she had stored with a neighbour; and, to her parents' especial horror, had laid in a large stock of fairy tales and other fiction." With justification, President Hall adds: "This points a moral against the pedagogic theory that would starve the imagination."[16] In truth, the cultivation of the imaginative faculty by means of the fairy tale is one of the great opportunities of parenthood. Only see to it that the fairy tales employed for this purpose do not reek of brutality and gore, of treachery and cunning. And see to it that elements like these are not unduly conspicuous in any other kind of tales you put into the hands of your children. Give them no books to read, tell them no stories that may react on a sensitive mind to the development either of callousness or fear. Be careful even with regard to the tales you tell your children in the course of their religious education. Dwell on the rewards of goodness rather than on the punishments of sin. In the religious instruction of the young, as in all other instruction, over-emphasis on the grim and the terrifying may have unfavourable consequences, persisting to the end of life. Recall, if you please, the case of the overworked Boston young man, mentioned in "Psychology and Parenthood" (p. 273). Obsessed with an idea that he had committed "the unpardonable sin," he was surely drifting to some institution for the insane, when he was fortunate enough to come under the care of a physician familiar with the new psychological discoveries and methods. Recall this young man's autobiographical statement, given to his physician, after the latter had helped him back to health: