o control themselves,
suppress their tears, and prevent themselves from crying out, but it
is nevertheless easy to detect the struggle.

Often we find those distressing attacks to which the name
"night-terrors" has been given. The child wakes with a cry,--usually
soon after he has gone to sleep,--sits up in bed and shows signs of
extreme terror, gazing at some object of his dreams with wide-open
startled eyes, begging his nurse or mother to keep off the black dog,
or the man, or whatever the vision may be. Even after the light is
turned up and the child has been comforted, the terror continues, and
half an hour may elapse before he becomes quiet and can be persuaded
to go back to bed. In the morning as a rule he remembers nothing at
all.

Phobias of all sorts are common in nervous children, and result from a
morbid exaggeration of the instinct for self-preservation. Some cannot
bear to look from a height, others grow confused and frightened in a
crowd; dread of travelling, of being in an enclosed space such as a
church or a schoolroom, or of handling sharp objects may develop into
a constant obsession. I have known a little girl who was seized with
violent fear whenever her father or mother was absent from the house,
and she would stand for hours at the window in an agony of terror lest
some harm should have befallen them. As if with some strange notion of
propitiating the powers of darkness these children will often
constantly perform some action and will refuse to be happy until they
have done so. The same little girl who suffered such torments of
anxiety in her parents' absence would always refuse to go to bed
unless she had stood in turn on all the doormats on the staircase of
her home. Other children feel themselves forced to utter certain words
or to go through certain rhythmical movements. They fully understand
that the fear in their mind is irrational and devoid of foundation,
but they are unable to expel it. Often it is hugged as a jealous
secret, so that the childish suffering is only revealed to others
years afterwards, when adult age has brought freedom from it. We will
do well to try by skilful questioning to gain an insight into the
mental processes of a child when we find him showing an uncontrollable
desire to touch lamp-posts or to stand in certain positions; or when
he develops an excessive fear of getting dirty, or is constantly
washing his hands to purify them from some fancied contamination.

Th