In our enlightened days, and in the present improved state of education, it may appear incredible that any nursery-maid could be so wicked as to relate, or any child of six years old so foolish as to credit, such tales; but I am speaking of what happened many years ago: nursery-maids and children, I believe, are very different now from what they were then; and in further proof of the progress of human knowledge and reason, we may recollect that many of these very stories of the Jews, which we now hold too preposterous for the infant and the nursery-maid to credit, were some centuries ago universally believed by the English nation, and had furnished more than one of our kings with pretexts for extortion and massacres. But to proceed with my story. The impression made on my imagination by these horrible tales was greater than my nursery-maid intended. Charmed by the effect she had produced, she was next afraid that I should bring her into disgrace with my mother, and she extorted from me a solemn promise that I would never tell any body the secret she had communicated. From that moment I became her slave, and her victim. I shudder when I look back to all I suffered during the eighteen months I was under her tyranny. Every night, the moment she and the candle left the room, I lay in an indescribable agony of terror; my head under the bed-clothes, my knees drawn up, in a cold perspiration. I saw faces around me grinning, glaring, receding, advancing, all turning at last into the same face of the Jew with the long beard and the terrible eyes; and that bag, in which I fancied were mangled limbs of children--it opened to receive me, or fell upon my bed, and lay heavy on my breast, so that I could neither stir nor scream; in short, it was one continued nightmare; there was no refreshing sleep for me till the hour when the candle returned and my tyrant--my protectress, as I thought her--came to bed. In due course she suffered in her turn; for I could not long endure this state, and, instead of submitting passively or lying speechless with terror, the moment she left the room at night I began to roar and scream till I brought my mother and half the house up to my bedside. “What could be the matter with the child?” Faithful to my promise, I never betrayed the secrets of my prison-house. Nothing could be learned from me but that “I was frightened,” that “I could not go to sleep;” and this, indeed, my trembling condition, and convulsed countenance, sufficiently proved. My mother, who was passionately fond of me, became alarmed for my health, and ordered that Fowler should stay in the room with me every night till I should be quite fast asleep.