The central doctrine of the prevalent
religious faith of Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized
in my mind for years by one of those too common stories of actual
life, which I overheard repeated in a whisper.--Why did I not ask?
you will say.--You don't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive
children. The first instinctive movement of the little creatures
is to make a cache, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes,
and terrors. I am uncovering one of these CACHES. Do you think I
was necessarily a greater fool and coward than another?
I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked
frightfully tall,--but they were not so tall as the steeple of our
old yellow meeting-house. At any rate I used to hide my eyes from
the sloops and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the
bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted
very long.--One other source of alarm had a still more fearful
significance. There was a great wooden HAND,--a glove-maker's
sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a
pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city.
Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a
little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed,-
-whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his
half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them.
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