ch I thought great sport. Often, too, he would give us
picture-books, and sit in his arm-chair silent and thoughtful, puffing
out such thick clouds of smoke that we all seemed to be swimming in the
clouds. On such evenings as these my mother was very melancholy, and
immediately the clock struck nine, she would say: "Now children, to
bed--to bed! The Sandman is coming, I can see." And certainly on all
these occasions I heard something with a heavy, slow step go bouncing
up the stairs. That I thought must be the Sandman. Once that dull
noise and footstep were particularly fearful, and I asked my mother,
while she took us away: "Eh, mamma, who is this naughty Sandman, who
always drives us away from papa? What does he look like?" "There is
no Sandman, dear child," replied my mother. "When I say the Sandman
comes, I only mean that you are sleepy and cannot keep your eyes
open,--just as if sand had been sprinkled into them." This answer of
my mother's did not satisfy me--nay, in my childish mind the thought
soon matured itself that she only denied the existence of the Sandman
to hinder us from being terrified at him. Certainly I always heard him
coming up the stairs. Full of curiosity to hear more of this Sandman,
and his particular connection with children, I at last asked the old
woman who tended my youngest sister what sort of man he was. "Eh,
Natty," said she, "do you not know that yet? He is a wicked man, who
comes to children when they will not go to bed, and throws a handful of
sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleeding from their heads.
These eyes he puts in a bag and carries them to the half-moon to feed
his own children, who sit in the nest up yonder, and have crooked beaks
like owls with which they may pick up the eyes of the naughty human
children."

A most frightful image of the cruel Sandman was horribly depicted in my
mind, and when in the evening I heard the noise on the stairs, I
trembled with agony and alarm. My mother could get nothing out of me,
but the cry of "The Sandman, the Sandman!" which was stuttered forth
through my tears. I then ran into the bed-room, where the frightful
apparition of the Sandman terrified me during the whole night. I had
already grown old enough to perceive that the nurse's tale about the
Sandman and the nest of children in the half-moon could not be quite
true, but, nevertheless, this Sandman remained a fearful spectre, and I
was seized with the utmos