A COLONY OF PENGUINS
tirely missed Brierley’s humor, fumbled for an instant with the end of a match he had picked from the cloth, and then, tossing it quickly from him as if he had at last framed the sentence he was about to utter, said in a thoughtful tone:
“I have often wondered what the world would be like if all fear of every kind was abolished—of punishment, of bodily hurt, and of pain? Everything that swims, flies, or walks is afraid of something else—women of men, men of each other. The first thing an infant does is to cry out—not from the pain, but from fright—just as a small dog or the cub of a bear hides under its mother’s coat before its eyes are open. It is the ogre, Fear, that begins with the milk and ends with the last breath in terror over the unknown, and it is our fault. Half the children in the world—perhaps three-fourths of them—have been brought up by fear and not by love.”
“How about the lambasting your father gave you, Herbert, when you hooked it from school? ‘Spare the rod and spoil the—’ You know the rest of it. Did you deserve it?”
“Probably I did,” laughed Herbert. “But, all the same, Louis, that foolish line has done
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