n meeting the plague
one day. "I am going to Bagdad to kill five thousand people," was the
reply. A few days later the same pilgrim met the plague returning.
"You told me you were going to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,"
said he, "but instead, you killed fifty thousand." "No," said the
plague. "_I killed only five thousand_, as I told you I would; _the
others died of fright_."

Fear can paralyze every muscle in the body. Fear affects the flow of
the blood, likewise the normal and healthy action of all the life
forces. Fear can make the body rigid, motionless, and powerless to
move.

Not only do we attract to ourselves the things we fear, but we also aid
in attracting to others the conditions we in our own minds hold them in
fear of. This we do in proportion to the strength of our own thought,
and in the degree that they are sensitively organized and so influenced
by our thought, and this, although it be unconscious both on their part
and on ours.

Children, and especially when very young, are, generally speaking, more
sensitive to their surrounding influences than grown people are. Some
are veritable little sensitive plates, registering the influences about
them, and embodying them as they grow. How careful in their prevailing
mental states then should be those who have them in charge, and
especially how careful should a mother be during the time she is
carrying the child, and when every thought, every mental as well as
emotional state has its direct influence upon the life of the unborn
child. Let parents be careful how they hold a child, either younger or
older, in the thought of fear. This is many times done, unwittingly on
their part, through anxiety, and at times through what might well be
termed over-care, which is fully as bad as under-care.

I know of a number of cases where a child has been so continually held
in the thought of fear lest this or that condition come upon him, that
the very things that were feared have been drawn to him, which probably
otherwise never would have come at all. Many times there has been no
adequate basis for the fear. In case there is a basis, then far wiser
is it to take exactly the opposite attitude, so as to neutralize the
force at work, and then to hold the child in the thought of wisdom and
strength that it may be able to meet the condition and master it,
instead of being mastered by it.

But a day or two ago a friend was telling me of an experience of