m m Bf'-'i ■ BBurc I liS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/artofstorytellin01shed THE ART OF STORY-TELLING THE ART OF STORY -TELLING By MARIE L. SHEDLOCK WITH A PREFACE BY Professor JOHN ADAMS CHAIR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1915 vh \ o& ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©Ci.Aillt.24 85 tiv- nrj 30 I9!5 ! TS CONTENTS. PAGE Preface vii Introduction ... ... ... ... ... ... i Chapter I. The Difficulties of Story-Telling con- nected with Libraries and Clubs ... 6 II. The Essentials of Story-Telling ... 25 III. The Artifices of Story-Telling ... 32 IV. Elements to Avoid 42 V. Elements to Seek : ... 61 VI. How to Obtain and Maintain the Effect 89 VII. Questions and Answers • ... 117 VIII. List of Stories Told in Full 138 List of Titles of Individual Stories and of Collections of Stories 210 Index 235' PREFACE. By Professor John Adams, Chair of Education, University of London. Those who do not love schoolmasters tell us that the man who can do something supremely well contents himself with doing it, while the man who cannot do it very well must needs set about showing other people how it should be done. The masters in any craft are prone to magnify their gifts by maintaining that the poet — or the stove-pipe maker — is born, not made. Teachers will accordingly be gratified to find in the following pages the work of a lady who is at the same time a brilliant executant and an admirable expositor. Miss Shedlock stands in the very first rank of story-tellers. No one can claim with greater justice that the gift of Scheherazade is hers by birth- right. Yet she has recognised that even the highest natural gifts may be well or ill manipulated : that in short the poet, not to speak of the stove-pipe maker, must take a little more trouble than to be merely born. It is well when the master of a craft begins to take thought and to discover what underlies his method. It does not, of course, happen that every master is able to analyse the processes that secure him success in his art. For after all the expositor has to be born as well as the executant; and it is perhaps one of the main causes of the popularity of the born-not-made theory that so few people are born both good artists vii Vlll. PREFACE and good expositors. Miss Shedlock has had this rare good fortune, as all those who have both read her book and heard her exemplify her principles on the platform will readily admit. Let no one who lacks the gift of story-telling hope that the following pages will confer it. Like Comenius and like the schoolmaster in Shakespeare. Miss Shedlock is entitled to claim a certain capacity or ingenuity in her pupils, before she can promise effective help. But on the other hand let no successful story-teller form the impression that he has nothing to learn from the exposition here given. The best craftsmen are those who are not only most able but most willing to learn from a fellow master. The most inexperienced story-teller who has the love of the art in his soul will gather a full harvest from Miss Shedlock's teaching, while the most experienced and skilful will not go empty away. The reader will discover that the authoress is first and last an artist. " Dramatic joy " is put in the forefront when she is enumerating the aims of the story-teller. But her innate gifts as a teacher will not be suppressed. She objects to "didactic emphasis" and yet cannot say too much in favour of the moral effect that may be produced by the use of the story. She raises here the whole problem of direct versus indirect moral instruction, and decides in no uncertain sound in favour of the indirect form. There is a great deal to be said on the other side, but this is not the place to say it. On the wide question Miss Shedlock has on her side the great body of public opinion among professional teachers. The orthodox master proclaims that he is, of course, a moral instructor, but adds that in the schoolroom the less said about the matter the better. Like the authoress, the orthodox PREFACE ix. teacher has much greater faith in example than in precept : so much faith indeed that in many schools precept does not get the place it deserves. But in the matter of story-telling the artistic element introduces something that is not necessarily involved in ordinary school work. For better or for worse modern opinion is against the explicitly stated lesson to be drawn from any tale that is told. Most people agree with Mark Twain's condemnation of " the moral that wags its crippled tail at the end of most school-girls' essays." The justification of the old-fashioned " moral " was not artistic but didactic. It embodied the determina- tion of the story-teller to see that his pupils got the full benefit of the lesson involved. If the moral is to be cut out, the story-teller must be sure that the lesson is so clearly conveyed in the text that any further elaboration would be felt as an impertinent addition. Whately assures us that men prefer metaphors to similes because in the simile the point is baldly stated, whereas in the metaphor the reader or hearer has to be his own interpreter. All education is in the last resort self-education, and Miss Shedlock sees to it that her stories compel her hearers to make the application she desires. In two other points modern opinion is prepared to give our authoress rein where our forefathers would have been inclined to restrain her. The sense of humour has come to its proper place in our school- rooms — pupils' humour, be it understood, for there always was scope enough claimed for the humour of the teacher. So with the imagination. The time is past when this "mode of being conscious" was looked at askance in school. Parents and teachers no longer speak contemptuously about " the busy faculty," and quote Genesis in its condemnation. x. PREFACE Miss Shedlock has been well advised to keep to her legitimate subject instead of wandering afield in a Teutonic excursion into the realms of folk-lore. What parents and teachers want is the story as here and now existing and an account of how best to manipulate it. This want the book now before us admirably meets. JOHN ADAMS. INTRODUCTION. Story-telling is almost the oldest Art in the world — the first conscious form of literary communication. In the East it still survives, and it is not an uncommon thing to see a crowd at a street-corner held by the simple narration of a story. There are signs in the West of a growing interest in this ancient art, and we may yet live to see the renaissance of the troubadours and the minstrels whose appeal will then rival that of the mob orator or itinerant politician. One of the surest signs of a belief in the educational power of the story- is its introduction into the curriculum of the Training-College and the classes of the Elementary and Secondary Schools. It is just at the time when the imagination is most keen — the mind being unham- pered by accumulation of facts — that stories appeal most vividly and are retained for all time. It is to be hoped that some day stories will only be told to school groups by experts who have devoted special time and preparation to the art of telling them. It is a great fallacy to suppose that the systematic study of story-telling destroys the spontaneity of narrative. After a long experience, I find the exact converse to be true, namely, that it is only when one has overcome the mechanical difficulties that one can "let oneself go" in the dramatic interest of the story. By the expert story-teller I do not mean the profes- sional elocutionist. The name — wrongly enough — has become associated in the mind of the public with persons who beat their breast, tear their hair, and 2 THE ART OF STORY-TELLING declaim blood-curdling episodes. A decade or more ago, the drawing-room reciter was of this type, and was rapidly becoming the bugbear of social gather- ings. The difference between the stilted reciter and the simple story-teller is perhaps best illustrated by an episode in Hans C. Andersen's immortal story of the Nightingale. 1 The real Nightingale and the artificial Nightingale have been bidden by the Emperor to unite their forces and to sing a duet at a Court function. The duet turns out most disas- trously, and whilst the artificial Nightingale is singing his one solo for the thirty-third time, the real Nightingale flies out of the window back to the green wood — a true artist, instinctively choosing his right atmosphere. But the bandmaster — symbol of the pompous pedagogue — in trying to soothe the outraged feelings of the courtiers, says, " Because, you see, Ladies and Gentlemen, and, above all, Your Imperial Majesty, with the real nightingale you never can tell what you will hear, but in the artificial nightingale everything is decided beforehand. So it is, and so it must remain. It cannot be otherwise." And as in the case of the two nightingales, so it is' with the stilted reciter and the simple narrator : one is busy displaying the machinery, showing " how the tunes go " — the other is anxious to conceal the art. Simplicity should be the keynote of story -telling, but (and here the comparison with the Nightingale breaks down) it is a simplicity which comes after much training in self-control, and much hard work in overcoming the difficulties which beset the presenta- tion. I do not mean that there are not born story-tellers who could hold an audience without preparation, but 1. See p. 138. INTRODUCTION 3 hey are so rare in number that we can afford to neglect them in our general consideration ; for this vork is dedicated to the average story-tellers anxious to make the best use of their dramatic ability, and it is to them that I present my plea for special study and preparation before telling a story to a group of hildren — that is, if they wish for the far-reaching ffects I shall speak of later on. Only the preparation must be of a much less stereotyped nature than that oy which the ordinary reciters are trained for their icareer. Some years ago, when I was in the States, I was asked to put into the form of lectures my views upon the educational value of telling stories. A sudden inspiration seized me. I began to cherish a dream of ong hours to be spent in the British Museum, the Congressional Library in Washington and the Public Library at Boston — and this is the only portion of the dream which has been realized. I planned an elaborate scheme of research work which was to result in a magnificent (if musty) philological treatise. I thought of trying to discover by long and patient researches what species of lullaby were crooned by Egyptian mothers to their babes, and what were the elementary dramatic poems in vogue among Assyrian nursemaids which were the prototypes of " Little Jack Horner," " Dickory, Dickory Dock," and other nursery classics. I intended to follow up the study of these ancient documents by making an appendix of modern variants, showing what progress we had made — if any — among modern nations. But there came to me suddenly one day the remem- brance of a scene from Racine's " Plaideurs " in which the counsel for the defence, eager to show how fundamental is his knowledge, begins his speech : — 4 THE ART OF STORY-TELLING " Before the Creation of the World "—And the Judge (with a touch of weariness tempered by humour) suggests : — " Let us pass on to the Deluge." And thus I, too, have " passed on to the Deluge." I have abandoned an account of the origin and past of stories which at the best would only have displayed a little recently-acquired book-knowledge. When I thought of the number of scholars who could treat this part of the question so infinitely better than myself, I realized how much wiser it would be — though the task is much more humdrum — to deal with the present possibilities of story-telling for our generation of parents and teachers, and, leaving out the folk-lore side, devote myself to the story itself. My objects in urging the use of stories in the education of children are at least five-fold : First, to give them dramatic joy, for which they have a natural craving. Secondly, to develop a sense of humour, which is really a sense of proportion. Thirdly, to correct certain tendencies by showing the consequences in the career of the hero in the story. (Of this motive the children must be quite unconscious, and there must be no didactic emphasis.) Fourthly, by means of example, not precept, to present such ideals as will sooner or later (I care not which) be translated into action. Fifthly, to develop the imagination, which really takes in all the other points. So much for the purely educational side of the book. - But the art of story-telling, quite apart from the subject, appeals not only to the educational world or to parents as parents, but also to a wider outside public, who may be interested in the purely human point of view. In great contrast to the lofty scheme I had originally INTRODUCTION 5 proposed to myself, I now simply place before all those who are interested in the Art of Story-telling in any form the practical experience I have had in my travels across the United States and through England ; and, because I am confining myself to personal experience which must of necessity be limited, I am very anxious not to appear dogmatic or to give the impression that I wish to lay down the law on the subject. But I hope my readers may profit by my errors, improve on my methods, and thus help to bring- about the revival of an almost lost art — one which appeals more directly and more stirringly than any other method to the majority of listeners. In Sir Philip Sidney's " Defence of Poesy " we find these words : " Forsooth he cometh to you with a tale, which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste." MARIE L. SHEDLOCK. CHAPTER I. The Difficulties of the Story. I propose to deal in this chapter with the difficulties or dangers which beset the path of the Story-teller, because, until we have overcome these, we cannot hope for the finished and artistic presentation which is to bring out the full value of the story. The difficulties are many, and yet they ought not to discourage the would-be narrators, but only show them how all-important is the preparation for the story, if it is to have the desired effect. I propose to illustrate by concrete examples, thereby hoping to achieve a two-fold result : one to fix the subject more clearly in the mind of the student — the other to use the Art of Story -telling to explain itself. I have chosen one or two instances from my own personal experience. The grave mistakes made in my own case may serve as a warning to others, who will find, however, that experience is the best teacher. For positive work, in the long run, we generally find out our own method. On the negative side, however, it is useful to have certain pitfalls pointed out to us, in order that we may save time by avoiding them : it is for this reason that I sound a note of warning. These are : — I. — The danger of side issues. An inexperienced story-teller is exposed to the temptation of breaking off from the main dramatic interest in a short exciting story, in order to introduce a side issue, which is often interesting and helpful, but should be reserved for a longer and less dramatic story. If the interest turns 6 SIDE ISSUES 7 on some dramatic moment, the action must be quick and uninterrupted, or it will lose half its effect. I had been telling a class of young children the story of Polyphemus and Ulysses, and, just at the most dramatic moment in it, some impulse prompted me to go off on a side issue to describe the personal appearance of Ulysses. The children were visibly bored, but with polite indifference they listened to my elaborate description of the hero. If I had given them an actual description from Homer, I believe that the strength of the language would have appealed to their imagination (all the more strongly because they might not have understood the individual words) and have lessened their disappointment at the dramatic issue being postponed ; but I trusted to my own lame verbal efforts, and signally failed. Attention flagged, fidget- ing began, the atmosphere was rapidly becoming spoiled, in spite of the patience and toleration still shown by the children. At last, however, one little girl in the front row, as spokeswoman for the class, suddenly said : " If you please, before you go any further, do you mind telling us whether, after all, that Poly (slight pause) that (final attempt) Polyanthus died?" Now, the remembrance of this question has been of extreme use to me in my career as a story-teller. I have realized that in a short dramatic story the mind of the listeners must be set at ease with regard to the ultimate fate of the special " Polyanthus " who takes the centre of the stage. I remember too the despair of a little boy at a dramatic representation of "Little Red Riding-Hood," when that little person delayed the thrilling catastrophe with the Wolf, by singing a pleasant song on her way 8 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY through the wood. " Oh, why," said the little boy, "does she not get on?" And I quite shared his impatience. This warning is only necessary in connection with the short dramatic narrative. There are occasions when we can well afford to offer short descriptions for the sake of literary style, and for the purpose of enlarging the vocabulary of the child. I have found, however, in these cases, it is well to take the children into your confidence — warning them that they are to expect nothing particularly exciting in the way of dramatic event : they will then settle down with a freer mind (though the mood may include a touch of resignation) to the description you are about to offer them. 1 II. — The danger of altering the story to suit special occasions. This is done sometimes from extreme conscientiousness, sometimes from sheer ignorance of the ways of children ; it is the desire to protect them from knowledge which they already possess and with which they (equally conscientious) are apt to " turn and rend " the narrator. I remember once when I was telling the story of the siege of Troy to very young children, I suddenly felt anxious lest there should be anything in the story of the Rape of Helen not altogether suitable for the average age of the class — namely, nine years. I threw therefore, a domestic colouring over the whole subject, and presented an imaginary conversation between Paris and Helen, in which Paris tried to persuade Helen that she was a strong-minded woman, thrown away on a limited society in Sparta, and that she should come away and visit some of the institutions of the 1. With regard to the right moment for choosing this kind of story, I shall return to the subject in a later chapter. ALTERING THE STORY 9 world with him, which would doubtless prove a mutually instructive journey. 1 I then gave the children the view taken by Herodotus that Helen never went to Troy, but was detained in Egypt. The children were much thrilled by the story, and responded most eagerly when, in my inexperience, I invited them to reproduce for the next day the tale I had just told them. A small child in the class presented me, as you will see, with the ethical problem from which I had so laboriously protected her. The essay ran : " Once upon a time the King of Troy's son was called Paris. And he went over to Greace to see what it was like. And here he saw the beautiful Helener, and likewise her husband Menelayus. And one day, Menelayus went out hunting, and left Paris and Helener alone, and Paris said : ' Do you not feel dul in this polls ? ' And Helener said : ' I feel very dull in this pallice, 2 and Paris said : ' Come away and see the world with me.' So they sliped off together, and they came to the King of Egypt, and he said : ' Who is the young lady ? ' So Paris told him. ' But,' said the King, ' it is not propper for you to go off with other people's wifes. So Helener shall stop here.' Paris stamped his foot. When Menelayus got home, he stamped his foot. And he called round him all his soldiers, and they stood round Troy for eleven years. At last 1. I venture to hope (at this long distance of years) that my language in telling the story was more simple than appears from this account. 2. This difference of spelling in the same essay will be much appreciated by those who know how gladly children offer an orthographical alternative, in hopes that one if not the other may satisfy the exigency of the situation. io THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY they thought it was no use standing any longer, so they built a wooden horse in memory of Helener and the Trojans and it was taken into the town." Now the mistake I made in my presentation was to lay particular stress on the reason for elopement by my careful readjustment, which really called more attention to the episode than was necessary for the age of my audience ; and evidently caused confusion in the minds of some of the children who knew the story in its more accurate original form. Whilst travelling in the States, I was provided with a delightful appendix to this story. I had been telling- Miss Longfellow and her sister the little girl's version of the Siege of Troy, and Mrs. Thorpe made the following comment, with the American humour whose dryness adds so much to its value : " I never realised before," she said, " how glad the Greeks must have been to sit down even inside a horse, when they had been standing for eleven years." III. — The danger of introducing unfamiliar words. This is the very opposite danger of the one to which I have just alluded; it is the taking for granted that children are acquainted with the meaning of certain words upon which turns some important point in the story. We must not introduce (without at least a passing explanation) words which, if not rightly understood, would entirely alter the picture we wish to present. I had once promised to tell stories to an audience of Irish peasants, and I should like to state here that, though my travels have brought me into touch with almost every kind of audience, I have never found one where the atmosphere is so " self-prepared " as in that of a group of Irish peasants. To speak to them UNFAMILIAR WORDS n (especially on the subject of Fairy-tales) is like playing on a delicate harp : the response is so quick and the sympathy is so keen. Of course the subject of Fairy- tales is one which is completely familiar to them and comes into their every-day life. They have a feeling of awe with regard to fairies, which in some parts of Ireland is very deep. 1 On this particular occasion I had been warned by an artist friend who had kindly promised to sing songs between the stories, that my audience would be of varying age and almost entirely illiterate. Many of the older men and women, who could neither read nor write, had never been beyond their native village. I was warned to be very simple in my language and to explain any difficult words which might occur in the particular Indian story I had chosen for that night, namely, " The Tiger, The Jackal and the Brahman." 2 It happened that the older portion of the audience had scarcely ever seen even the picture of wild animals. I profited by the advice, and offered a word of expla- nation with regard to the Tiger and the Jackal. I also explained the meaning of the word Brahman — at a proper distance, however, lest the audience should class him with wild animals. I then went on with my story, in the course of which I mentioned the Buffalo. In spite of the warning I had received, I found it impossible not to believe that the name of this animal would be familiar to any audience. I therefore went on with the sentence containing this word, and ended it thus : "And then the Brahman went a little further and met an old Buffalo turning a wheel." The next day, whilst walking down the village 1. I refer, of course, to the Irish in their native atmosphere. 2. See List of Stories. 12 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY street, I entered into conversation with a thirteen-year- old girl who had been in my audience the night before, and who began at once to repeat in her own words the Indian story in question. When she came to the particular sentence I have just quoted, I was greatly startled to hear her version, which ran thus : "And the priest went on a little further, and he met another old gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow." I stopped her at once, and not being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word Buffalo had evidently conveyed to her mind an old " buffer " whose name was " Lo " (probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated with tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound). Then, not knowing of any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young narrator completed the picture in her own mind — which, doubtless, was a vivid one — but one must admit that it had lost something of the Indian atmosphere which I had intended to gather about it. IV. — The danger of claiming the co-operation of the class by means of questions. The danger in this case is more serious for the teacher than the child, who rather enjoys the process and displays a fatal readiness to give any sort of answer if only he can play a part in the conversation. If we could depend on the children giving the kind of answer we expect, all might go well, and the danger would be lessened; but children have a perpetual way of frustrating our hopes in this direction, and of landing us in unex- pected bypaths from which it is not always easy to return to the main road without a very violent reaction. As illustrative of this, I quote from " The Madness of Philip," by Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, a truly THE DANGER OF QUESTIONS 13 Idelightful essay on Child Psychology, in the guise |of the lightest of stories. The scene takes place in a Kindergarten — where a bold and fearless visitor has undertaken to tell a story on the spur of the moment to a group of restless children. She opens thus : " Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, what do you think I saw? " The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious that Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested "an el'phunt." rr Why, no. Why should I see an elephant in my yard ? It was not nearly so big as that — it was a little thing." 'A fish," ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in the corner. The raconteuse smiled patiently. " Now, how could a fish, a live fish, get into my front yard? " "A dead fish," says Eddy. He had never been known to relinquish voluntarily an idea. "No; it was a little kitten," said the story-teller decidedly. "A little white kitten. She was standing right near a big puddle of water. Now, what else do you think I saw? " "Another kitten," suggests Marantha, conserva- tively. " No ; it was a big Newfoundland dog. He saw the little kitten near the water. Now, cats don't like water, do they? What do they like?" " Mice," said Joseph ZukofTsky abruptly. "Well, yes, they do; but there were no mice in my yard. I'm sure you know what I mean. If they don't like water, what do they like? " " Milk," cried Sarah Fuller confidently. i 4 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY "They like a dry place," said Mrs. R. B. Smith. " Now, what do you suppose the dog did? " It may be that successive failures had disheartened the listeners. It may be that the very range of choice presented to them and the dog alike dazzled their imagination. At all events, they made no answer. " Nobody knows what the dog did?" repeated the story-teller encouragingly. " What would you do if you saw a little kitten like that ? ' ' And Philip remarked gloomily : " I'd pull its tail." "And what do the rest of you think? I hope you are not as cruel as that little boy." A jealous desire to share Philip's success prompted the quick response : " I'd pull it too." Now, the reason of the total failure of this story was the inability to draw any real response from the children, partly because of the hopeless vagueness of the questions, partly because, there being no time for reflection, the children said the first thing that comes into their head without any reference to their real thoughts on the subject. I cannot imagine anything less like the enlightened methods of the best Kindergarten teaching. Had Mrs. R. B. Smith been a real, and not a fictional, person, it would certainly have been her last appear- ance as a raconteuse in this educational institution. V. — The difficulty of gauging the effect of a story upon the audience. This rises from lack of observa- tion and experience; it is the want of these qualities trhich leads to the adoption of such a method as I ave just presented. We learn in time that want of expression on the faces of the audience and want of any kind of external response does not always mean MISJUDGING THE EFFECT 15 either lack of interest or attention. There is often real interest deep down, but no power, or perhaps no wish, to display that interest, which is deliberately concealed at times so as to protect oneself from questions which may be put. I was speaking on one occasion in Davenport in the State of Iowa. I had been engaged to deliver a lecture to adults on the " Fun and Philosophy " of Hans C. Andersen's Fairy Tales. When I arrived at the Hall, I was surprised and somewhat annoyed to find four small boys sitting in the front row. They seemed to be about ten years old, and, knowing pretty well from experience what boys of that age usually like, I felt rather anxious as to what would happen, and I must confess that for once I wished children had the useful faculty, developed in adults, of success- fully concealing their feelings. Any hopes I had conceived on this point were speedily shattered. After listening to the first few sentences, two of the boys evidently recognised the futility of bestowing any further attention on the subject, and consoled them- selves for the dulness of the occasion by starting a "scrap." I watched this proceeding for a minute with great interest, but soon recalled the fact that I had not been engaged in the capacity of spectator, so, addressing the antagonists in as severe a manner as I could assume, I said : " Boys, I shall have to ask you to go to the back of the hall." They responded with much alacrity, and evident gratitude, and even exceeded my instructions by leaving the hall altogether. My sympathy was now transferred to the two remaining boys, who sat motionless, and one of them never took his eyes off me during the whole lecture. I feared lest they might be simply cowed by the treat- 16 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY ment meted out to their companions, whose joy in their release had been somewhat tempered by the disgrace of ejection. I felt sorry that I could not provide these model boys with a less ignominious retreat, and I cast about in my mind how I could make it up to them. At the end of the lecture, I addressed them personally and, congratulating them on their quiet behaviour, said that, as I feared the main part of the lecture could scarcely have interested them, I should conclude, not with the story I had intended for the adults, but with a special story for them, as a reward for their good behaviour. I then told Hans C. Andersen's "Jack the Dullard," which I have always found to be a great favourite with boys. These particular youths smiled very faintly, and left any expression of enthusiasm to the adult portion of the audience. My hostess, who was eager to know what the boys thought, enquired of them how they liked the lecture. The elder one said guardedly : "1 liked it very well, but I was piqued at her underrating my appreciation of Hans Andersen." I was struck with the entirely erroneous impression I had received of the effect I was producing upon the boys. I was thankful at least that a passing allusion to Schopenhauer in my lecture possibly provided some interest for this " young old " child. I felt somewhat in the position of a Doctor of Divinity in Canada to whom a small child confided the fact that she had written a parody on " The Three Fishers," but that it had dropped into the fire. The Doctor made some facetious rejoinder about the impertinence of the flames in consuming her manu- script. The child reproved him in these grave words : " Nature, you know, is Nature, and her laws are inviolable." DRAMATIC POWER 17 VI. — The danger of over illustration. After long experience, and after considering the effect produced on children when pictures are shown to them during the narration, I have come to the conclusion that the appeal to the eye and the ear at the same time is of doubtful value, and has, generally speaking, a distracting effect; the concentration on one channel of communication attracts and holds the attention more completely. I was confirmed in this theory when I addressed an audience of blind people for the first time, and noticed how closely they attended, and how much easier it seemed to them, because they were so completely " undistracted by the sights around them." 1 I have often suggested to young teachers two experiments in support of this theory. They are not practical experiments, nor could they be repeated often with the same audience, but they are intensely interesting and they serve to show the actual effect of appealing to one sense at a time. The first of these experiments is to take a small group of children and suggest that they should close their eyes whilst you tell them a story. You will then notice how much more attention is given to the intonation and inflection of the voice. The reason is obvious : because there is nothing to distract the attention, it is concentrated on the only thing offered to the listeners (that is, sound), to enable them to seize the dramatic interest of the story. We find an example of the dramatic power of the voice in its appeal to the imagination, in one of the tributes brought by an old pupil to Thomas Edward Brown (Master at Clifton College) : 1. This was at the Congressional Library at Washington. i8 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY " My earliest recollection is that his was the most vivid teaching I ever received : great width of view and poetical, almost passionate, power of present- ment. We were reading Fronde's History, and I shall never forget how it was Brown's words, Brown's voice, not the historian's, that made me feel the great democratic function which the monasteries performed in England : the view became alive in his mouth." And in another passage : "All set forth with such dramatic force and aided by such a splendid voice, left an indelible impres- sion on my mind." (Letters of T. E. Brown, p. 55.) A second experiment, and a much more subtle and difficult one, is to take the same group of children on another occasion, telling them a story in pantomime form, giving them first the briefest outline of it. In this case this must be of the simplest construction, until the children are able (if you continue the experi- ment) to look for something more subtle. I have never forgotten the marvellous performance of a play given in London, many years ago, entirely in pantomime form. The play was called L'Enfant Pro digue, and was presented by a company of French artists. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the strength of that "silent appeal" to the public. One was so unaccustomed to reading meaning and development of character into gesture and facial expression that it was really a revelation to most present — certainly to all Anglo-Saxons. I cannot touch on this subject without admitting the enormous dramatic value connected with the kinematograph. Though it can never take the place PICTURES, ACTUAL AND MENTAL 19 of an actual performance, whether in story form or on the stage, it has a real educational value in its p&ssibilities of representation which it is difficult to over-estimate, and I believe that its introduction into the school curriculum, under the strictest supervision, will be of extraordinary benefit. The movement, in its present chaotic condition, and in the hands of a commercial management, is more likely to stifle than to awaken or stimulate the imagination, but the educational world is fully alive to the danger, and I am convinced that in the future of the movement good will predominate. The real value of the cinematograph in connection wi£h stories is that it provides the background that is wanting to the inner vision of the average child, and does not prevent its imagination from filling in the details later. For instance, it would be quite impos- sible for the average child to get an idea from mere word-painting of the atmosphere of the Polar regions, as represented lately on the film in connection with Captain Scott's expedition; but any stories told later on ^ibout these regions would have an infinitely greater interest. There is, however, a real danger in using pictures to illustrate the story— especially if it be one which contains a direct appeal to the imagination of the child (as quite distinct from the stories which deal with facts) — which is that you force the whole audience of children to see the same picture, instead of giving each individual child the chance of making his own mental picture, which is of far greater joy, and of much greater educational value, since by this process the child co-operates with you instead of having all the work done for it. Queyrat, in his work on " La Logique chez 1' 20 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY Enfant " quotes Madame Necker de Saussure i 1 "To children and animals actual objects present, themselves, not the terms of their manifestations. For them thinking is seeing over again, it is going through the sensations that the real object would have produced. Everything which goes on within them is in the form of pictures, or rather, inanimate scenes in which Life is partially reproduced Since the child has, as yet, no capacity for abstraction, he finds a stimu- lating power in words and a suggestive inspiration which holds him enchanted. They awaken vividly- coloured images, pictures far more brilliant than would be called into being by the objects themselves." Surely, if this be true, we are taking from children that rare power of mental visualisation by offering to their outward vision an actual picture. I was struck with the following note by a critic of the "Outlook," referring to a Japanese play but bearing directly on the subject in hand. " First, we should be inclined to put insistence upon appeal by imagination. Nothing is built up by lath and canvas; everything has to be created by the poet's speech." He alludes to the decoration of one of the scenes, which consists of three pines, showing what can be conjured up in the mind of the spectator. Ah, yes. Unfolding now before my eyes The views I know : the Forest, River, Sea And Mist — the scenes of Ono now expand. I have often heard objections raised to this theory by teachers dealing with children whose knowledge of objects outside their own little limited circle is so scanty that words we use without a suspicion that they 1 Page 55. OVER-ELABORATION 21 are unfamiliar are really foreign expressions to them. Such words as sea, woods, fields, mountains would mean nothing to them, unless some explanation were offered. To these objections I have replied that where we are dealing with objects that can actually be seen with the bodily eyes, then it is quite legitimate to show pictures of those objects before you begin the story, so that the distraction between the actual and mental presentation may not cause confusion ; but, as the foregoing example shows, we should endeavour to accustom the children to seeing much more than the mere objects themselves, and in dealing with abstract qualities we must rely solely on the power and choice of words and dramatic qualities of presen- tation, nor need we feel anxious if the response is not immediate, or even if it is not quick and eager. 1 VII. — The danger of obscuring the point of the story with too many details. This is not peculiar to teachers, nor is it only shown in the narrative form. I have often heard really brilliant after-dinner stories marred by this defect. One remembers the attempt made by Sancho Panza to tell a story to Don Quixote, and I have always felt a keen sympathy with the latter in his impatience over the recital. " ' In a village of Estramadura there was a shepherd — no, I mean a goatherd — which shepherd — or goatherd — as my story says, was called Lope Ruiz — and this Lope Ruiz was in love with a shepherdess called Torralva, who was daughter to a rich herdsman, and this rich herdsman ' " 'If this be thy story, Sancho,' said Don Quixote, 1. In further illustration of this point see " When Burbage played" (Austin Dobson) and "In the Nursery" (Hans C. Andersen). 22 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY ' thou wilt not have done these two days. Tell it concisely like a man of sense, or else say no more.' " ' I tell it in the manner they tell all stories in my country,' answered Sancho, ' and I cannot tell it otherwise, nor ought your Worship to require me to make new customs.' " 'Tell it as thou wilt, then,' said Don Quixote; ' since it is the will of fate that I should hear it, go on.' " Sancho continued : " ' He looked about him until he espied a fisherman with a boat near him, but so small that it could only hold one person and one goat. The fisherman got into the boat and carried over one goat ; he returned and carried another ; he came back again and carried another. Pray, sir, keep an account of the goats which the fisherman is carrying over, for if you lose count of a single one, the story ends, and it will be impossible to tell a word more ... I go on, then . . . He returned for another goat, and another, and another and another ' " ' Suppose them all carried over,' said Don Quixote, ' or thou wilt not have finished carrying them this twelve months.' "'Tell me, how many have passed already?' said Sancho. " ' How should I know? ' answered Don Quixote. " ' See there, now ! Did I not tell thee to keep an exact account? There is an end of the story. I can go no further.' " ' How can this be? ' said Don Quixote. ' Is it so essential to the story to know the exact number of goats that passed over, that if one error be made the story can proceed no further ? ' " ' Even so,' said Sancho Panza." NEED FOR A HIGH STANDARD 23 VIII. — The danger of over-explanation. Again, another danger lurks in the temptation to offer over much explanation of the story, which is common to most story-tellers. This is fatal to the artistic success of any story, but it is even more serious in connection with stories told from an educational point of view, because it hampers the imagination of the listener ; and since the development of that faculty is one of our chief aims in telling these stories, we must let it have free play, nor must we test the effect, as I have said before, by the material method of asking questions. My own experience is that the fewer explanations you offer (provided you have been careful with the choice of your material and artistic in the presentation) the more readily the child will supplement by his own thinking power what is necessary for the understand- ing of the story. Queyrat says : " A child has no need of seizing on the exact meaning of words ; on the contrary, a certain lack of precision seems to stimulate his imagination only the more vigorously, since it gives it a broader liberty and firmer independence." 1 IX. One special danger lies in the lowering of the standard of the story in order to cater to the undeveloped taste of the child. I am alluding here only to the story which is presented from the educational point of view. There are moments of relaxation in a child's life, as in that of an adult, when a lighter taste can be gratified. I am alluding now to the standard of story for school purposes. There is one development of the subject which seems to have been very little considered either in the United States or in our own country, namely, the 1. From " Les Jeux des Enfants," page 16, C 24 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY telling of stories to old people, and that not only in institutions or in quiet country villages, but in the heart of the busy cities and in the homes of these old people. How often, when the young people are able to enjoy outside amusements, the old people, neces- sarily confined to the chimney-corner and many unable to read much for themselves, might return to the joy of their childhood by hearing some of the old stories told them in dramatic form. Here is a delightful occupation for those of the leisured class who have the gift, and a much more effective way of capturing attention than the more usual form of reading aloud. Lady Gregory, in talking to the workhouse folk in Ireland, was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tale. She says : " The stories they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings' daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and of lovers' flight on the backs of eagles, and music- loving witches, and journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for 700 years." I fear it is only the Celtic imagination that will glory in such romantic material; but I am sure the men and women of the poorhouse are much more interested than we are apt to think in stories outside the small circle of their lives. CHAPTER II. The Essentials of the Story. It would be a truism to suggest that dramatic instinct and dramatic power of expression are naturally the first essentials for success in the Art of Story-telling, and that, without these, no story-teller would go very far ; but I maintain that, even with these gifts, no high standard of performance will be reached without certain other qualities — among the first of which I place apparent simplicity, which is really the art of concealing the art. I am speaking here of the public story-teller, or of the teachers with a group of children — not the spontaneous (and most rare) power of telling stories at the fireside by some gifted village grandmother, such as Beranger gives us in his poem, Souvenirs du Peuple : Mes enfants, dans ce village, Suivi de rois, il passa; Voila bien longtemps de ca ; Je venais d'entrer en menage. A pied grimpant le coteau, Ou pour voir je m'etais mise. II avait petit chapeau Avec redingote grise. Pres de lui je me troublai ! II me dit : Bonjour, ma chere, Bonjour, ma chere. II vous a parle, grand 'mere ? II vous a parle ? I am sceptical enough to think that it is not the spontaneity of the grandmother but the art of Beranger which enhances the effect of the story told in the poem. 25 26 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE STORY This intimate form of narration, which is delightful in its special surroundings, would fail to reach, much less hold, a large audience, no t because of its simplicity but often because of the want of skill in arranging material and of the artistic sense of selection which brings the interest to a focus and arranges the side- lights. In short, the simplicity we need for the ordinary purpose is that which comes from ease and produces a sense of being able to let ourselves go, because we have thought out our effects : it is when we translate our instinct into art that the story becomes finished and complete. I find it necessary to emphasise this point because people are apt to confuse simplicity of delivery with carelessness of utterance, loose stringing of sentences of which the only connections seem to be the ever- recurring use of " and " and " so," and " er . . ."— this latter inarticulate sound has done more to ruin a story and distract the audience than many more glaring errors of dramatic form. The real simplicity holds the audience because the lack of apparent effort in the artist has the most comforting effect upon the listener. It is like turning from the whirring machinery of process to the finished article, bearing no trace of manufacture except in the harmony and beauty of the whole, from which we realise that the individual parts have received all proper attention. And what really brings about this apparent sim- plicity which ensures the success of the story ? It has been admirably expressed in a passage from Henry James's lecture on Balzac : " The fault in the Artist which amounts most completely to a failure of dignity is the absence of saturation with his idea. When saturation fails, no SATURATION 27 other real presence avails, as when, on the other hand, it operates, no failure of method fatally interferes." I now offer two illustrations of the effect of this saturation, one to show that the failure of method does not prevent successful effect, the other to show that when it is combined with the necessary secondary qualities the perfection of art is reached. In illustration of the first point, I recall an experience in the North of England when the Head Mistress of an elementary school asked me to hear a young, inexperienced girl tell a story to a group of very small children. When she began, I felt somewhat hopeless, because of the complete failure of method, She seemed to have all the faults most damaging to the success of a speaker. Her voice was harsh, her gestures awkward, her manner was restless and melodramatic; but as she went on, I soon began to discount all these faults and, in truth, I soon forgot about them, for so absorbed was she in her story, so saturated with her subject, that she quickly communicated her own interest to her audience, and the children were absolutely spellbound. The other illustration is connected with a memorable peep behind the stage, when the late M. Coquelin had invited me to see him in the green-room between the first and second Acts of " L'Abbe Constantin," one of the plays given during his last season in London, the year before his death. The last time I had met M. Coquelin was at a dinner-party, where I had been dazzled by the brilliant conversation of this great artist in the role of a man of the world. But on this occasion, I met the simple, kindly priest, so absorbed in his role that he inspired me with the wish to offer a donation for his poor, and on taking leave to ask 28 THE ESSENTIALS OF THE STORY for his blessing for myself. Whilst talking to him, I had felt puzzled : it was only when I had left him that I realised what had happened — namely, that he was too thoroughly saturated with his subject to be able to drop his role during the interval, in order to assume the more ordinary one of host and man of the world. Now, it is this spirit I would wish to inculcate into the would-be story-tellers. If they would apply them- selves in this manner to their work, it would bring about a revolution in the art of presentation, that is, in the art of teaching. The difficulty of the practical application of this theory is the constant plea, on the part of the teachers, that there is not the time to work for such a standard in an art which is so apparently simple that the work expended on it would never be appreciated. My answer to this objection is that, though the counsel of perfection would be to devote a great deal of time to the story, so as to prepare the atmosphere quite as much as the mere action of the little drama (just as photographers use time exposure to obtain sky effects, as well as the more definite objects in the picture), yet it is not so much a question of time as concentration on the subject which is one of the chief factors in the preparation of the story. So many story-tellers are satisfied with cheap results, and most audiences are not critical enough to encourage a high standard. 1 The method of "showing the machinery " has more immediate results, and it is easy to become discouraged over the drudgery which 1. A noted Greek gymnast struck his pupil, though he was applauded by the whole assembly. " You did it clumsily, and not as you ought, for these people would never have praised you for anything really artistic." THE DRUDGERY OF PREPARATION 29 is not necessary to secure the approbation of the largest number. But, since I am dealing with the essentials of really good story-telling, I may be pardoned for suggesting the highest standard and the means for reaching it. Therefore I maintain that capacity for work, and even drudgery, is among the essentials of story work. Personally I know of nothing more interesting than to watch the story grow gradually from mere outline into a dramatic whole. It is the same pleasure, I imagine, which is felt over the gradual development of a beautiful design on a loom. I do not mean machine-made work, which has to be done under adverse conditions, in a certain time, and is similar to thousands of other pieces of work; but that work upon which we can bestow unlimited time and con- centrated thought. The special joy in the slowly-prepared story comes in the exciting moment when the persons, or even the inanimate objects, become alive and move as of themselves. I remember spending two or three discouraging weeks with Andersen's story of the "Adventures of a Beetle." I passed through times of great depres- sion, because all the little creatures — beetles, earwigs, frogs, etc. — behaved in such a conventional, stilted way (instead of displaying the strong individuality which Andersen had bestowed upon them) that I began to despair of presenting a live company at all. But one day the Beetle, so to speak, " took the stage," and at once there was life and animation among the minor characters. Then the main work was done, and there remained only the comparatively easy task of guiding the movement of the little drama, suggesting side issues and polishing the details, 3 o THE ESSENTIALS OF THE STORY always keeping a careful eye on the Beetle, that he might "gang his ain gait" and preserve to the full his own individuality. There is a tendency in preparing stories to begin with detail work (often a gesture or side issue which one has remembered from hearing a story told), but if this is done before the contemplative period, only scrappy, jerky and ineffective results are obtained, on which one cannot count for dramatic effects. This kind of preparation reminds one of a young peasant woman who was taken to see a performance of Wilhelm Tell, and when questioned as to the plot, could only sum it up by saying, " I know some fruit was shot at." 1 I realise the extreme difficulty for teachers to devote the necessary time to the perfecting of the stories they tell in school, because this is only one of the subjects they have to take in an already over-crowded curri- culum. To them I would offer this practical advice : Do not be afraid to repeat your stories. 2 If you did not undertake more than seven stories a year (chosen with infinite care), and if you repeated these stories six times during the year of forty-two weeks, you would be able to do artistic (and therefore lasting) work; you would give a very great deal of pleasure to the children, who delight in hearing a story many times. You would be able to avoid the direct moral application (to which subject I shall return later on); for each time a child hears a story artistically told, a little more of the meaning underlying the simple story 1. For further details on the question of preparation of the story, see chapter on " Questions asked by Teachers." 2. Sully says that children love exact repetition because of the intense enjoyment bound up with the process of imaginative realisation. THE IMPORTANCE OF POLISH 31 will come to him without any explanation on your part. The habit of doing one's best, instead of one's second-best, means, in the long run, that one has no interest except in the preparation of the best, and the stories, few in number, polished and finished in style, will have an effect of which one can scarcely over-state the importance. In the story of the Swineherd, 1 Hans Andersen says : " On the grave of the Prince's father there grew a rose-tree. It only bloomed once in five years, and only bore one rose. But what a rose ! Its perfume was so exquisite that whoever smelt it forgot at once all his cares and sorrows." Lafcadio Hearn says : " Time weeds out the errors and stupidities of cheap success, and presents the Truth. It takes, like the aloe, a long time to flower, but the blossom is all the more precious when it appears." 1. See p. 150. CHAPTER III. The Artifices of Story-telling. By this term I do not mean anything against the gospel of simplicity which I am so constantly preach- ing, but, for want of a better term, I use the word " artifice ' ' to express the mechanical devices by which we endeavour to attract and hold the attention of the audience. The art of telling stories is, in truth, much more difficult than acting a part on the stage : first, because the narrator is responsible for the whole drama and the whole atmosphere which surrounds it. He has to live the life of each character and under- stand the relation which each bears to the whole. Secondly, because the stage is a miniature one, gestures and movements must all be so adjusted as not to destroy the sense of proportion. I have often noticed that actors, accustomed to the more roomy public stage, are apt to be too broad in their gestures and movements when they tell a story. The special training for the Story-teller should consist not only in the training of the voice and in choice of language, but above all in power of delicate suggestion, which cannot always be used on the stage because this is hampered by the presence of actual things. The Story-teller has to present these things to the more delicate organism of the " inward eye." So deeply convinced am I of the miniature character of the Story-telling Art that I do not believe you can ever get a perfectly artistic presentation of this kind in a very large hall or before a very large audience. 32 PAUSING FOR EFFECT 33 I have made experiments along this line, having twice told a story to an audience exceeding five thousand, in the States, 1 but on both occasions, though the dramatic reaction upon oneself from the response of so large an audience was both gratifying and stimulating, I was forced to sacrifice the delicacy of the story and to take from its artistic value by the necessity of emphasis, in order to be heard by all present. Emphasis is the bane of all story -telling, for it destroys the delicacy, and the whole performance suggests a struggle in conveying the message ; the indecision of the victory leaves the audience restless and unsatisfied. Then, again, as compared with acting on the stage, in telling a story you miss the help of effective entrances and exits, the footlights, the costume, the facial expression of your fellow-actor which interprets so much of what you yourself say without further elaboration on your part; for, in the story, in case of a dialogue which necessitates great subtlety and quickness in facial expression and gesture, you have to be both speaker and listener. Now, of what artifices can we make use to take the place of all the extraneous help offered to actors on the stage ? First and foremost, as a means of suddenly pulling up the attention of the audience, is the judicious Art of Pausing. For those who have not actually had experience in the matter, this advice will seem trite and unnecessary, but those who have even a little experience will realise with me the extraordinary efficacy of this very simple I. Once at the Summer School at Chatauqua, New York, and once in Lincoln Park, Chicago. 34 THE ARTIFICES OF STORY-TELLING means. It is really what Coquelin spoke of as a "high light," where the interest is focussed, as it were, to a point. I have tried this simple art of pausing with every kind of audience, and I have very rarely known it to fail. It is very difficult to offer a concrete example of this, unless one is giving a "live" representation; but I shall make an attempt, and at least I shall hope to make myself understood by those who have heard me tell stories. In Hans C. Andersen's " Princess and the Pea," 1 the King goes down to open the door himself. Now, you may make this point in two ways. You may either say : "And then the King went to the door, and at the door there stood a real Princess," or, "And then the King went to the door, and at the door there stood — (pause) — a real Princess." It is difficult to exaggerate the difference of effect produced by so slight a cause. 2 With children it means an unconscious curiosity which expresses itself in a sudden muscular tension — there is just time, during that instant's pause, to feel, though not to formulate, the question : " What is standing at the door?" By this means half your work of holding the attention is accomplished. It is not necessary for me to enter into the psychological reason of this, but I strongly recommend those who are interested in the question to read the chapter in Ribot's work on this subject, Essai sur V Imagination creatrice, as well as Mr. Keatinge's work on " Suggestion." I would advise all teachers to revise their stories with a view to introducing the judicious Pause, and to vary its use according to the age, the number and, 1. See p. 156. 2. There must be no more emphasis in the second manner than the first. THE USE OF GESTURE 35 above all, the mood of the audience. Experience alone can ensure success in this matter. It has taken me many years to realise the importance of this artifice. Among other means of holding the attention of the audience and helping to bring out the points of the story is the use of gesture. I consider, however, it must be a sparing use, and not of a broad or definite character. We shall never improve on the advice given by Hamlet to the actors on this subject : " See that ye o'erstep not the modesty of Nature." And yet, perhaps, it is not necessary to warn Story- tellers against abase of gesture : it is more helpful to encourage them in the use of it, especially in Anglo- Saxon countries, where we are fearful of expressing ourselves in this way, and, when we do, the gesture often lacks subtlety. The Anglo-Saxon, when he does move at all, moves in solid blocks — a whole arm, a whole leg, the whole body — but if you watch a Frenchman or an Italian in conversation, you suddenly realise how varied and subtle are the things which can be suggested by the mere turn of the wrist or the movement of a finger. The power of the hand has been so wonderfully summed up in a passage from Quintilian that I am justified in offering it to all those who wish to realise what can be done by gesture : "As to the hands, without the aid of which all delivery would be deficient and weak, it can scarcely be told of what a variety of motions they are suscep- tible, since they almost equal in expression the power of language itself. For other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these, I may almost say, speak themselves. With our hands we ask, promise, call persons to us and send them away, threaten, suppli- 36 THE ARTIFICES OF STORY-TELLING cate, intimate dislike or fear; with our hands we signify joy, grief, doubt, acknowledgment, penitence, and indicate measure, quantity, number and time. Have not our hands the power of inciting, of restrain- ing, or beseeching, of testifying approbation So that amidst the great diversity of tongues per- vading all nations and peoples, the language of the hands appears to be a language common to all men." (From " Education of an Orator," Book II, Chap. 3.) One of the most effective artifices in telling stories to young children is the use of mimicry — the imitation of animals' voices and sounds in general is of never- ending joy to the listeners. Only, I should wish to introduce a note of grave warning in connection with this subject. This special artifice can only be used by such narrators as have special aptitude and gifts in this direction. There are many people with good imaginative power but wholly lacking in the power of mimicry, whose efforts in this direction, however painstaking, would remain grotesque and therefore ineffective. When listening to such performances (of which children are strangely critical) one is reminded of the French story in which the amateur animal painter is showing her picture to an undiscriminating friend : "Ah !" says the friend, " this is surely meant for a lion?" " No," says the artist, with some slight show of temper; " it is my little lap-dog." Another artifice which is particularly successful with very small children is to ensure their attention by inviting their co-operation before you actually begin the story. The following has proved quite effective as a short introduction to my stories when I was addressing large audiences of children: INVITING CO-OPERATION 37 " Do you know that last night I had a very strange dream, which I am going to tell you before I begin the stories. I dreamed that I was walking along the streets of (here would follow the town in which I happened to be speaking), with a large bundle on my shoulders, and this bundle was full of stories which I had been collecting all over the world in different countries ; and I was shouting at the top of my voice : 1 Stories ! Stories ! Stories ! Who will listen to my stories ? ' And the children came flocking round me in my dream, saying : ' Tell us your stories. We will listen to your stories.' So I pulled out a story from my big bundle and I began in a most excited way, ' Once upon a time there lived a King and a Queen who had no children, and they ' Here a little boy, very much like that little boy I see sitting in the front row, stopped me, saying : ' Oh ! I know that old story ; it's Sleeping Beauty.' " So I pulled out a second story, and began : ' Once upon a time there was a little girl who was sent by her mother to visit her grandmother ' Then a little girl, so much like the one sitting at the end of the second row, said : ' Oh ! everybody knows that story ! It's ' " Here I would make a judicious pause, and then the children in the audience would shout in chorus, with joyful superiority: "Little Red Riding-Hood!" (before I had time to explain that the children in my dream had done the same). This method I repeated two or three times, being careful to choose very well-known stories. By this time the children were all encouraged and stimulated. I usually finished with congratulations on the number of stories they knew, expressing a hope that some of those I was going to tell that afternoon would be new to them. ' 38 THE ARTIFICES OF STORY-TELLING I have rarely found this plan fail for establishing a friendly relation between oneself and the juvenile audience. It is often a matter of great difficulty, not to win the attention of an audience but to keep it, and one of the most subtle artifices is to let the audience down (without their perceiving it) after a dramatic situation, so that the reaction may prepare them for the interest of the next situation. An excellent instance of this is to be found in Rudyard Kipling's story of "The Cat that walked . ." where the repetition of words acts as a sort of sedative until you realise the beginning of a fresh situation. The great point is never to let the audience quite down, that is, in stories which depend on dramatic situations. It is just a question of shade and colour in the language. If you are telling a story in sections, and spread over two or three occasions, you should always stop at an exciting moment. It encourages speculation between whiles in the children's minds, which increases their interest when the story is taken up again. Another very necessary quality in the mere artifice of story-telling is to watch your audience, so as to be able to know whether its mood is for action or reaction, and to alter your story accordingly. The moods of reaction are rarer, and you must use them for presenting a different kind of material. Here is your opportunity for introducing a piece of poetic description, given in beautiful language, to which the children cannot listen when they are eager for action and dramatic excitement. Perhaps one of the greatest artifices is to take a quick hold of your audience by a striking beginning which will enlist their attention from the start; you VIVID OPENINGS 39 can then relax somewhat, but you must be careful also of the end, because that is what remains most vivid for the children. If you question them as to which story they like best in a programme, you will constantly find it to be the last one you have told, which has for the moment blurred out the others. Here are a few specimens of beginnings which seldom fail to arrest the attention of the child : " There was once a giant ogre, and he lived in a cave by himself." — From " The Giant and the Jackstraws," Starr Jordan. " There were once twenty-five tin soldiers, who were all brothers, for they had been made out of the same old tin spoon." — From " The Tin Soldier/' Hans C. Andersen. " There was once an Emperor who had a horse shod with gold." —From " The Beetle" Hans C. Andersen. " There was once a merchant who was so rich that he could have paved the whole street with gold, and even then he would have had enough for a small alley." — From " The Flying Trunk," Hans C. Andersen. " There was once a shilling which came forth from the mint springing and shouting, ' Hurrah ! Now I am going out into the wide world.' " — From- " The Silver Shilling," Hans C. Andersen. " In the High and Far Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk." —From " The Elephant's Child " : Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling. 4 o THE ARTIFICES OF STORY-TELLING " Not always was the Kangaroo as now we behold him, but a Different Animal with four short legs." — From "Old Man Kangaroo " : Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling. " Whichever way I turn," said the weather-cock on a high steeple, " no one is satisfied." — From " Fireside Fables," Edwin Barrow. "A set of chessmen, left standing on their board, resolved to alter the rules of the game." — From the same source. " The Pink Parasol had tender whalebone ribs and a slender stick of cherry-wood." —From "Very Short Stories," Mrs. W. K. Clifford. " There was once a poor little Donkey on Wheels; it had never wagged its tail, or tossed its head, or said ' Hee-haw,' or tasted a tender thistle." — From the same source. Now, some of these beginnings are, of course, for very young children, but they all have the same advantage, that of plunging in medias res, and there- fore are able to arrest attention at once, as distinct from the stories which open on a leisurely note of description. In the same way we must be careful about the endings of the stories ; in some way or other they must impress themselves either in a very dramatic climax to which the whole story has worked up, such as we have in the following : " Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods, or up the Wet Wild Trees, or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his Wild Tail, and walking by his Wild Lone." — From " Just So Stories" Rudyard Kipling. DRAMATIC ENDINGS 41 Or by an anti-climax for effect : " We have all this straight out of the alderman's newspaper, but it is not to be depended on." — From " Jack the Dullard," Hans C. Andersen. Or by evading the point : " Whoever does not believe this must buy shares in the Tanner's yard." — From "A Great Grief," Hans C. Andersen. Or by some striking general comment : " He has never caught up with the three days he missed at the beginning of the world, and he has never learnt how to behave." — From " How the Camel got his Hump " : Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling. CHAPTER IV. Elements to Avoid in Selection of Material. 1 am confronted, in this portion of my work, with a great difficulty, because I cannot afford to be as catholic as I could wish (this rejection or selection of material being primarily intended for those story- tellers dealing with normal children) ; but I wish from the outset to distinguish between a story told to an individual child in the home circle or by a personal friend, and a story told to a group of children as part of the school curriculum. And if I seem to reiterate this difference, it is because I wish to show very clearly that the recital of parents and friends may be quite separate in content and manner from that offered by the teaching world. In the former case, almost any subject can be treated, because, knowing the individual temperament of the child, a wise parent or friend knows also what can be presented or not presented to the child ; but in dealing with a group of normal children in school, much has to be eliminated that could be given fearlessly to the abnormal child : I mean the child who, by circumstances or temperament, is developed beyond its years. I shall now mention some of the elements which experience has shown me to be unsuitable for class stories, 44 ANALYSIS OF MOTIVE AND FEELING 43 L — Stories dealing with analysis of motive and feeling. This warning is specially necessary to-day, because this is above all an age of introspection and analysis. We have only to glance at the principal novels and plays during the last quarter of a century — most especially during the last ten years — to see how this spirit has crept into our literature and life. Now, this tendency to analyse is obviously more dangerous for children than for adults, because, from lack of experience and knowledge of psychology, the child's analysis is incomplete. He cannot see all the causes of the action, nor can he make that philosophical allowance for mood which brings the adult to truer conclusions. Therefore we should discourage children who show a tendency to analyse too closely the motives of their actions, and refrain from presenting in our stories any example which might encourage them to persist in this course. I remember, on one occasion, when I went to say good-night to a little girl of my acquaintance, I found her sitting . up in bed, very wide awake. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed, and when I asked her what had excited her so much, she said : , " I know I have done something wrong to-day, but I cannot quite remember what it was." I said : '* But Phyllis, if you put your hand, which is really quite small, in front of your eyes, you could not see the shape of anything else, however large it might be. Now, what you have done to-day appears very large because it is so close, but when it is a little further off, you will be able to see better and know more about it. So let us wait till to-morrow morning." I am happy to say that she took my advice. She was soon fast asleep, and the next morning she had 44 ELEMENTS TO AVOID forgotten the wrong over which she had been unhealthily brooding the night before. 1 II. — Stories dealing too much with sarcasm and satire. These are weapons which are too sharply polished, and therefore too dangerous, to place in the hands of children. For here again, as in the case of analysis, they can only have a very incomplete concep- tion of the case. They do not know the real cause which produces the apparently ridiculous situation : it is experience and knowledge which lead to the discovery of the pathos and sadness which often underlie the ridiculous appearance, and it is only the abnormally gifted child or grown-up person who discovers this by instinct. It takes a lifetime to arrive at the position described in Sterne's words : " I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of misery to be entitled to all the Wit which Rabelais has ever scattered." I will hasten to add that I should not wish children to have their sympathy too much drawn out, or their emotions kindled too much to pity, because this would be neither healthy nor helpful to themselves or others. I only want to protect the children from the dangerous critical attitude induced by the use of satire : it sacrifices too much of the atmosphere of trust and belief in human beings which ought to be an essential of child-life. If we indulge in satire, the sense of kindness in children tends to become perverted, their sympathy cramped, and they themselves to become old before their time. We have an excellent example of this in Hans C. Andersen's "Snow Queen." When Kay gets the piece of broken mirror into his 1. Such works as " Ministering Children," " The Wide, Wide World," " The Fairchild Family," are instances of the kind of story I mean, as containing too much analysis of emotion. SENTIMENTALITY 45 eye, he no longer sees the world from the normal child's point of view : he can no longer see anything but the foibles of those about him — a condition usually only reached by a course of pessimistic experience. Andersen sums up the unnatural point of view in these words : " When Kay tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he could only remember the multiplication table." Now, without taking these words in any literal sense, we can admit that they represent the development of the head at the expense of the heart. An example of this kind of story to avoid is Andersen's " Story of the Butterfly." The bitterness of the Anemones, the sentimentality of the Violets, the schoolgirlishness of the Snowdrops, the domes- ticity of the Sweet-peas — all this tickles the palate of the adult, but does not belong to the plane of the normal child. Again I repeat that the unusual child may take all this in and even preserve its kindly attitude towards the world, but it is a dangerous atmosphere for the ordinary child. III. — Stories of a sentimental kind. Strange to say, this element of sentimentality often appeals more to the young teachers than to the children themselves. It is difficult to define the difference between sentiment and sentimentality, but the healthy normal boy or girl of — let us say ten or eleven years old seems to feel it unconsciously, though the distinction is not so clear a few years later. Mrs. Elizabeth McKracken contributed an excellent article some years ago to the American Outlook on the subject of literature for the young, in which we find a good illustration of this power of discrimination on the part of a child. A young teacher was telling her pupils the story of 46 ELEMENTS TO AVOID the emotional lady who, to put her lover to the test, bade him pick up the glove which she had thrown down into the arena between the tiger and the lion. The lover does her bidding, in order to vindicate his character as a brave knight. One boy, after hearing the story, at once states his contempt for the knight's acquiescence, which he declares to be unworthy. " But," says the teacher, " you see he really did it to show the lady how foolish she was." The answer of the boy sums up what I have been trying to show : "■ There was no sense in his being sillier than she was, to show her she was silly." If the boy had stopped there, we might have concluded that he was lacking in imagination or romance, but his next remark proves what a balanced and discriminating person he was, for he added : " Now, if she had fallen in, and he had leapt after her to rescue her, that would have been splendid and of some use." Given the character of the lady, we might, as adults, question the last part of the boy's statement, but this is pure cynicism and fortunately does not enter' into the child's calculations. In my own personal experience (and I have told this story often in the German ballad form to girls of ten and twelve in the High Schools in England) I have never found one girl who sympathised with the lady or who failed to appreciate the poetic justice meted out to her in the end by the dignified renunciation of the knight. Chesterton defines sentimentality as " a tame, cold, or small and inadequate manner of speaking about certain matters which demand very large and beautiful expression." I would strongly urge upon young teachers to revise, by this definition, some of the stories they have , SENSATIONAL EPISODES 47 included in their repertory, and see whether they would stand the test or not. IV. — Stories containing strong sensational episodes. The danger is all the greater because many children delight in it, and some crave for it in the abstract, but fear it in the concrete. 1 An affectionate aunt, on one occasion, anxious to curry favour with a four-year-old nephew, was taxing her imagination to find a story suitable for his tender years. She was greatly startled when he suddenly said, in a most imperative tone : " Tell me the story of a bear eating a small boy." This was so remote from her own choice of subject that she hesitated at first, but coming to the conclusion that as the child had chosen the situation he would feel no terror in the working up of its details, she began a most thrilling and blood-curdling story, leading up to the final catastrophe. But just as she had reached the great dramatic moment, the child raised his hands in terror and said : " Oh ! Auntie, don't let the bear really eat the boy!" " Don't you know," said an impatient boy who had been listening to a mild adventure story considered suitable to his years, " that I don't take any interest in the story until the decks are dripping with gore?" Here we have no opportunity of deciding whether or not the actual description demanded would be more alarming than the listener had realised. Here is a poem of James Stephens, showing a child's taste for sensational things : — A man was sitting underneath a tree Outside the village, and he asked me What name was upon this place, and said he Was never here before. He told a Lot of stories to me too. His nose was flat. 1. One child's favourite book bore the exciting title of " Birth, Life and Death of Crazy Jane." 48 ELEMENTS TO AVOID I asked him how it happened, and he said, The first mate of the " Mary Ann " done that, With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead, And a jolly job too, but he'd have gone a long way to have killed him. A gold ring in one ear, and the other was bit off by a crocodile, bedad, That's what he said : He taught me how to chew. He was a real nice man. He liked me too. The taste that is fed by the sensational contents of the newspapers and the dramatic excitement of street life, and some of the lurid representations of the Kinematograph, is so much stimulated that the interest in normal stories is difficult to rouse. I will not here dwell on the deleterious effects of over dramatic stimulation, which has been known to lead to crime, since I am keener to prevent the telling of too many sensational stories than to suggest a cure when the mischief is done. Kate Douglas Wiggin has said : "Let us be realistic, by all means, but beware, O Story-teller, of being too realistic. Avoid the shudder- ing tale of ' the wicked boy who stoned the birds,' lest some hearer should be inspired to try the dreadful experiment and see if it really does kill." I must emphasise the fact, however, that it is only the excess of this dramatic element which I deplore. A certain amount of excitement is necessary ; but this question belongs to the positive side of the subject, and I shall deal with it later on. V. — Stories presenting matters quite outside the plane of the child (unless they are wrapped in mystery, which is of great educational value). The element I wish to eliminate is the one which would make children world-wise and old before their time. A small American child who had entertained a guest in her mother's absence, when questioned as to whether EXCESSIVE REALISM 49 she had shown all the hospitality the mother would have considered necessary, said : " Oh ! yes. And I talked to her in the kind of ' dressy ' tone you use on your ' At Home ' days." On one occasion I was lecturing in the town of Cleveland, and was to stay in the house of a lady whom I had met only once, in New York, but with true American hospitality she had begged me to make her house my home during the whole of my stay in Cleveland. In writing to invite me, she mentioned the pleasure it would afford her little ten-year-old daughter to make my acquaintance, and added this somewhat enigmatic sentence : " Mignon has asked permission to dedicate her last work to you." I was alarmed at the word last, given the age of the author, and felt sorry that the literary faculty had developed quite so early, lest the unfettered and irresponsible years of childhood should have been sacrificed. I was still more troubled when, upon my arrival, I learned that the title of the book which was to be dedicated to me was " The Two Army Girls," and contained the elaborate history of a double courtship. But, as the story was read to me, I was soon disarmed. A more innocent recital I never heard — and it was all the quainter because of certain little grown-up sentences gathered from the conversation of elders in unguarded moments, which evidently conveyed but slight mean- ing to the youthful authoress. The final scene between two of the lovers is so characteristic that I cannot refrain from quoting the actual words. Said John : " I love you, and I wish you to be my wife." " That I will," said Mary, without any hesitation. "That's all right," said John. " And now let us get back to the Golf Links." Oh, that modern writers of fiction would " get back 50 ELEMENTS TO AVOID to the Golf Links " sooner than they do, realising with this little unconscious philosopher that there are some reactions from love-making which show a healthy and balanced constitution. Experience with children ought to teach us to avoid stories which contain too much allusion to matters of which the hearers are entirely ignorant; but, judging from the written stories of to-day, supposed to be for children, it is still a matter of difficulty to realise that this form of allusion to " foreign " matters, or making a joke the appreciation of which depends solely on a special and " inside " knowledge, is always bewilder- ing and fatal to sustained dramatic interest. It is a matter of intense regret that so very few people have sufficiently clear remembrance of their own childhood to help them to understand the taste and point of view of the normal child. There is a passage in the " Brownies" (by Mrs. Ewing) which illustrates the confusion created in the child mind by a facetious allusion in a dramatic moment which needed a more direct treatment. When the nursery toys have all gone astray, one little child exclaims joyfully : " Why, the old Rocking-Horse's nose has turned up in the oven !" " It couldn't " remarks a tiresome, facetious doctor, far more anxious to be funny than to sympathise with the joy of the child ; " it was the purest Grecian, modelled from the Elgin marbles." Now, for grown-up people this is an excellent joke, but for a child who has not yet become acquainted with these Grecian masterpieces, the whole remark is point- less and hampering. 1 1. This does not imply that the child would not appreciate in the right context the thrilling and romantic story in connection with the finding of the Elgin marbles. ENCOURAGEMENT OF PRIGGISHNESS 51 VI. — Stories which appeal to fear or priggishness. This is a class of story to be avoided which scarcely counts to-day and against which the teacher does not need a warning ; but I wish to make a passing allusion to it, partly to round off my subject and partly to show that we have made some improvement in choice of subject. When I study the evolution of the story from the crude recitals offered to our children within the last hundred years, I feel that, though our progress in intelligent mental catering may be slow, it is real and sure. One has only to take some examples from the Chap Books of the beginning of last century to realise the difference of appeal. Everything offered then was either an appeal to fear or to priggishness, and one wonders how it is that our grandparents and their parents ever recovered from the effects of such stories as were offered to them. But there is the consoling thought that no lasting impression was made upon them, such as I believe may be possible by the right kind of story. I offer a few examples of the old type of story : Here is an encouraging address offered by a certain Mr. Janeway to children about the year 1828 : " Dare you do anything which your parents forbid you, and neglect to do what they command? Dare you to run up and down on the Lord's Day, or do you keep in to read your book, and learn what your good parents command?" Such an address would have almost tempted children to envy the lot of orphans, except that the guardians and less close relations might have been equally, if not more, severe. From "The Curious Girl," published about 1809: " Oh ! papa, I hope you will have no reason to be 52 ELEMENTS TO AVOID dissatisfied with me, for I love my studies very much, and I am never so happy at my play as when I have been assiduous at my lessons all day." " Adolphus : How strange it is, papa, you should believe it possible for me to act so like a child, now that I am twelve years old ! ' ' Here is a specimen taken from a Chap-book about 1825: Edward refuses hot bread at breakfast. His hostess asks whether he likes it. " Yes, I am extremely fond of it." "Why did you refuse it?" "Because I know that my papa does not approve of my eating it. Am I to disobey a Father and Mother I love so well, and forget my duty, because they are a long way off ? I would not touch the cake, were I sure nobody could see me. I myself should know it, and that would be sufficient." " Nobly replied !" exclaimed Mrs. C. " Act always thus, and you must be happy, for although the whole world should refuse the praise that is due, you must enjoy the approbation of your conscience, which is beyond anything else." Here is a quotation of the same kind from Mrs. Sherwood : " Tender-souled little creatures, desolated by a sense of sin, if they did but eat a spoonful of cupboard jam without Mamma's express permission. . . . Would a modern Lucy, jealous of her sister Emily's doll, break out thus easily into tearful apology for her guilt ? — ' I know it is wicked in me to be sorry that Emily is happy, but I feel that I cannot help it.' And would a modern mother retort with heartfelt joy ? — ' My dear child, I am glad you have confessed. Now I shall tell you why you feel this wicked sorrow ' — proceeding to an account of the depravity of human nature so un- UNWHOLESOME EXTRAVAGANCE 53 redeemed by comfort for a childish mind of common intelligence that one can scarcely imagine the interview ending in anything less tragic than a fit of juvenile hysteria." Description of a Good Boy. "A good boy is dutiful to his Father and Mother, obedient to his master and loving to his playfellows. He is diligent in learning his book, and takes a pleasure in improving himself in everything that is worthy of praise. He rises early in the morning, makes himself clean and decent, and says his prayers. He loves to hear good advice, is thankful to those who give it and always follows it. He never swears x or calls names or uses ill words to companions. He is never peevish and fretful, always cheerful and good-tempered." VII. — Stories of exaggerated and coarse fun. In the chapter on the positive side of this subject I shall speak more in detail of the educational value of robust and virile representation of fun and of sheer nonsense, but as a representation to these statements, I should like to strike a note of warning about the element of exaggerated and coarse fun being encouraged in our school stories, partly because of the lack of humour in such presentations — a natural product of stifling imagination — and partly because the train of the abnormal has the same effect as the too frequent use of the melodramatic. You have only to read the adventures of Buster Brown, which for years formed the Sunday reading of millions of children in the United States, to realise what would be the effect of coarse fun and entire absence of humour upon the normal child in its every- 1. One is almost inclined to prefer Marjorie Fleming's little innocent oaths. "But she was more than usual calm. She did not give a single dam," 54 ELEMENTS TO AVOID day experience, an effect all the greater because of the real skill with which the illustrations are drawn. It is only fair to state that this series was not originally prepared or intended for the young, but it is a matter of regret (shared by most educationists in the States) that they should ever have been given to children at all. In an article in Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1869, Miss Yonge writes : " A taste for buffoonery is much to be discouraged, an exclusive taste for extravagance most unwholesome and even perverting. It becomes destructive of reverence and soon degenerates into coarseness. It permits nothing poetical or imaginative, nothing sweet or pathetic to exist, and there is a certain self-satisfaction and superiority in making game of what others regard with enthusiasm and sentiment which absolutely bars the way against a higher or softer tone." Although these words were written nearly half a century ago, they are so specially applicable to-day that they seem quite "up-to-date": indeed, I think they will hold equally good fifty years hence. In spite of a strong taste on the part of children for what is ugly and brutal, I am sure that we ought to eliminate this element as far as possible from the school stories — especially among poor children. Not because I think children should be protected from all knowledge of evil, but because so much of this know- ledge comes into their life outside school that we can well afford to ignore it during school hours. At the same time, however, as I shall show by example when I come to the positive side, it would be well to show children by story illustration the difference between brute ugliness without anything to redeem it and surface ugliness, which may be only a veil oyer the MORAL TALES 55 Deauty that lies underneath. It might be possible, for instance, to show children the difference between the real ugliness of a brutal story of crime and an illustra- tion of it in the sensational papers, and the apparent ugliness in the priest's face of the " Laocoon " group, because of the motive of courage and endurance behind the suffering. Many stories in everyday life could be found to illustrate this. VIII. Stories of infant piety and death-bed scenes. The stories for children forty years ago contained much of this element, and the following examples will illustrate this point : Notes from poems written by a child between six and eight years of age, by name Philip Freeman, after- wards Archdeacon of Exeter : Poor Robin, thou canst fly no more, Thy joys and sorrows all are o'er. Through Life's tempestuous storms thou'st trod, But now art sunk beneath the sod. Here lost and gone poor Robin lies, He trembles, lingers, falls and dies. He's gone, he's gone, forever lost, No more of him they now can boast. Poor Robin's dangers all are past, He struggled to the very last. Perhaps he spent a happy Life, Without much struggle and much strife. Published by John Loder, bookseller, Woodbridge, in 1829.. The prolonged gloom of the main theme is some- what lightened by the speculative optimism of the last verse. Life, transient Life, is but a dream, Like Sleep which short doth lengthened seem Till dawn of day, when the bird's lay Doth charm the soul's first peeping gleam. E 56 ELEMENTS TO AVOID Then farewell to the parting year, Another's come to Nature dear. In every place, thy brightening face Does welcome winter's snowy drear, Alas ! our time is much mis-spent. Then we must haste and now repent. We have a book in which to look, For we on Wisdom should be bent. Should God, the Almighty, King of all, Before His judgment-seat now call Us to that place of Joy and Grace Prepared for us since Adam's fall. I think there is no doubt that we have made con- siderable progress in this matter. Not only do we refrain from telling these highly moral (sic) stories but we have reached the point of parodying them, in sign of ridicule, as, for instance, in such writing as Belloc's " Cautionary Tales." These would be a trifle too grim for a timid child, but excellent fun for adults. It should be our study to-day to prove to children that the immediate importance to them is not to think of dying and going to Heaven, but of living and — shall we say? — going to College, which is a far better preparation for a life to come than the morbid dwelling upon the possibility of an early death. In an article signed " Muriel Harris," I think, from a copy of the Tribune, appeared a delightful article on Sunday Books, from which I quote the following : " All very good little children died young in the story-books, so that unusual goodness must have been the source of considerable anxiety to affectionate parents. I came across a little old book the other day called ' Examples for Youth.' On the yellow fly-leai was written in childish, carefully sloping hand SCIENCE AID FAIRY STORIEvS 57 1 Presented to Mary Palmer Junior, by her sister, to be read on Sundays,' and was dated 1828. The accounts are taken from a work on Piety Promoted, and all of them begin with unusual piety in early youth and end with the death-bed of the little paragon, and his or her dying words." IX. — Stories containing a mixture of Fairy Tale and Science. By this combination you lose what is essential to each, namely, the fantastic on the one side, and accuracy on the other. The true Fairy Tale should be unhampered by any compromise of probability even — the scientific representation should be sufficiently marvellous along its own lines to need no supernatural aid. Both appeal to the imagination in different ways. As an exception to this kind of mixture, I should quote "The Honey Bee, and Other Stories," translated from the Danish of Evald by C. G. Moore Smith. There is a certain robustness in these stories dealing with the inexorable laws of Nature, though some of them will appear hard to the child ; but they will be of interest to all teachers. Perhaps the worst element in choice of stories is that which insists upon the moral detaching itself and explaining the story. In " Alice in Wonderland " the Duchess says, " ' And the moral of that is : Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of them- selves.' ' How fond she is of finding morals in things,' thought Alice to herself." (This gives the point of view of the child.) The following is a case in point, found in a rare old print in the British Museum : " Jane S. came home with her clothes soiled and hands badly torn. ' Where have you been ?' asked her mother. ' I fell down the bank near the mill/ said Jane, ' and I should have been drowned if Mr. M. 58 ELEMENTS TO AVOID had not seen me and pulled me out.' ' Why did you go so near the edge of the brink?' 'There was a pretty flower there that I wanted, and I only meant to take one step, but I slipped and fell down.' Moral : Young people often take but one step in sinful indul- gence (Poor Jane !), but they fall into soul-destroying sins. There is a sinful pleasure which they wish to enjoy. They can do it by a single act of sin (the heinous act of picking a flower !). They do it ; but that act leads to another, and they fall into the Gulf of Perdition, unless God interposes." Now, apart from the folly of this story, we must condemn it on moral grounds. Could we imagine a lower standard of a Deity than that presented here to the child ? To-day the teacher would commend Jane for a laudable interest in botany, but might add a word of caution about choosing inclined planes as a hunting- ground for specimens and a popular, lucid explanation of the inexorable law of gravity. Here we have an instance of applying a moral when we have finished our story, but there are many stories where nothing is left to chance in this matter, and where there is no means for the child to use ingenuity or imagination in making out the meaning for himself. Henry Morley has condemned the use of this method as applied to Fairy Stories. He says : " Moralising in a Fairy Story is like the snoring of Bottom in Titania's lap." But I think this applies to all stories, and most especially to those by which we do wish to teach something. John Burroughs says in his article, 1 " Thou shalt not preach ' ' : 1, From "Literary Values,' 5 MORALISING IN STORIES 59 " Didactic fiction can never rank high. Thou shalt not preach or teach ; though shalt pourtray and create, and have ends as universal as nature What Art demands is that the Artist's personal convictions and notions, his likes and dislikes, do not obtrude them- selves at all ; that good and evil stand judged in his work by the logic of events, as they do in nature, and not by any special pleading on his part. He does not hold a brief for either side ; he exemplifies the working of the creative energy The great artist works in and through and from moral ideas ; his works are indirectly a criticism of life. He is moral without having a moral. The moment a moral obtrudes itself, that moment he begins to fall from grace as an artist. .... The great distinction of Art is that it aims to see life steadily and to see it whole It affords the one point of view whence the world appears harmonious and complete." It would seem, then, from this passage, that it is of moral importance to put things dramatically. In Froebel's " Mother Play " he demonstrates the educational value of stories, emphasising that their highest use consists in their ability to enable the child, through suggestion, to form a pure and noble idea of what a man may be or do. The sensitiveness of a child's mind is offended if the moral is forced upon him, but if he absorbs it unconsciously, he has received its influence for all time. To me the idea of pointing out the moral of the story has always seemed as futile as tying a flower on to a stalk instead of letting the flower grow out of the stalk, as Nature intended. In the first case, the flower, showy and bright for the moment, soon fades away. In the second instance, it develops slowly, coming to perfection in fulness of time because of the life within. 60 ELEMENTS TO AVOID X. Lastly, the element to avoid is that which rouses emotions which cannot be translated into action. Mr. Earl Barnes, to whom all teachers owe a debt of gratitude for the inspiration of his education views, insists strongly on this point. The sole effect of such stories is to produce a form of hysteria, fortunately short-lived, but a waste of force which might be directed into a better channel. 1 Such stories are so easy to recognise that it would be useless to make a formal list, but I shall make further allusion to this in dealing with stories from the lives of the saints. These, then, are the main elements to avoid in the selection of material suitable for normal children. Much might be added in the way of detail, and the special tendency of the day may make it necessary to avoid one class of story more than another; but this care belongs to another generation of teachers and parents. 1. A story is told of Confucius, that having attended a funeral he presented his horse to the chief mourner. When asked why he bestowed this gift, he replied : " I wept with the man, so I feel I ought to do something for him." CHAPTER V. Elements to Seek in Choice of Material. In "The Choice of Books" Frederic Harrison has said : " The most useful help to reading is to know what we shall not read, .... what we shall keep from that small cleared spot in the overgrown jungle of information which we can call our ordered patch of fruit-bearing knowledge." 1 Now, the same statement applies to our stories, and, having busied myself, during the last chapter, with " clearing my small spot " by cutting away a mass of unfruitful growth, I am now going to suggest what would be the best kind of seed to sow in the patch which I have " reclaimed from the Jungle." Again I repeat that I have no wish to be dogmatic, and that in offering suggestions as to the stories to be told, I am only catering for a group of normal school- children. My list of subjects does not pretend to cover the whole ground of children's needs, and just as I exclude the abnormal or unusual child from the scope of my warning in subjects to avoid, so do I also exclude that child from the limitation in choice of subjects to be sought, because you can offer almost any subject to the unusual child, especially if you stand in close relation to him and know his powers of apprehension. In this matter, age has very little to say : it is a question of the stage of development. Experience has taught me that for the group of 1. Chapter I, page 3. 61 6 2 ELEMENTS TO SEEK: normal children, almost irrespective of age, the first kind of story suitable will contain an appeal to conditions to which they are accustomed. The reason of this is obvious : the child, having limited experience, can only be reached by this experience, until his imagination is awakened and he is enabled to grasp through this faculty what he has not actually passed through. Before this awakening has taken place he enters the realm of fiction (represented in the story) by comparison with his personal experience. Every story and every point in the story mean more as that experience widens, and the interest varies, of course, with temperament, quickness of perception, power of visualising and of concentration. In " The Marsh King's Daughter," H. C. Andersen says : " The Storks have a great many stories which they tell their little ones, all about the bogs and marshes. They suit them to their age and capacity. The young ones are quite satisfied with Kribble, Krabble, or some such nonsense, and find it charming; but the elder ones want something with more meaning." One of the most interesting experiments to be made in connection with this subject is to tell the same story at intervals of a year or six months to some individual child. 1 The different incidents in the story which appeal to it (and you must watch it closely, to be sure the interest is real, and not artificially stimulated by any suggestion on your part) will mark its mental development and the gradual awakening of its imagination. This experiment is a very delicate one, and will not be infallible, because children are secretive and the appreciation is often (unconsciously) simulated, 1. This experiment cannot be made with a group of children, for obvious reasons. APPEAL TO EXPERIENCE 63 Or concealed through shyness or want of articulation* But it is, in spite of this, a deeply interesting and helpful experiment. To take a concrete example : let us suppose the story of Andersen's Tin Soldier told to a child of five or six years. At the first recital, the point which will interest the child most will be the setting up of the tin soldiers on the table, because he can understand this by means of his own experience, in his own nursery : it is an appeal to conditions to which he is accustomed and for which no exercise of the imagination is needed, unless we take the effect of memory to be, according to Queyrat, retrospective imagination. The next incident that appeals is the unfamiliar behaviour of the toys, but still in familiar surround- ings; that is to say, the unusual activities are carried on in the safe precincts of the nursery — in the usual atmosphere of the child. I quote from the text : " Late in the evening the other soldiers were put in their box, and the people of the house went to bed. Now was the time for the toys to play ; they amused themselves with paying visits, fighting battles and giving balls. The tin soldiers rustled about in their box, for they wanted to join the games, but they could not get the lid off. The nut-crackers turned somer- saults, and the pencil scribbled nonsense on the slate." Now, from this point onwards in the story, the events will be quite outside the personal experience of the child, and there will have to be a real stretch of imagination to appreciate the thrilling and blood- curdling adventures of the little tin soldier, namely, the terrible sailing down the gutter under the bridge, the meeting with the fierce rat who demands the soldier's passport, the horrible sensation in the fish's body, etc. 64 ELEMENTS TO SEEK Last of all, perhaps, will come the appreciation of the best qualities of the hero : his modesty, his dignity, his reticence, his courage and his constancy : he seems to combine all the qualities of the best soldier with those of the best civilian, without the more obvious qualities which generally attract first. As for the love-story, we must not expect any child to see its tenderness and beauty, though the individual child may intuitively appreciate these qualities, but it is not what we wish for or work for at this period of child-life. This method could be applied to various stories. I have chosen the Tin Soldier because of its dramatic qualities and because it is marked off (probably quite unconsciously on the part of Andersen) into periods which correspond to the child's development. In Eugene Field's exquisite little poem of " The Dinkey Bird " we find the objects familiar to the child in unusual places, so that some imagination is needed to realise that " big red sugar-plums are clinging to the cliffs beside that sea " ; but the introduction of the fantastic bird and the soothing sound of the Amfalula Tree are new and delightful sensations, quite out of the child's personal experience. Another such instance is to be found in Mrs. W. K. Clifford's story of Master Willie. The abnormal behaviour of familiar objects, such as a doll, leads from the ordinary routine to the paths of adventure. This story is to be found in a little book called " Very Short Stories," a most interesting collection for teachers and children. We now come to the second element we should seek in material — namely, the element of the unusual, which we have already anticipated in the story of the Tin Soldier. This element is necessary in response to the demand THE ' UNUSUAL ' ELEMENT 65 of the child who expressed the needs of his fellow- playmates when he said : ■" I want to go to the place where the shadows are real." This is the true defini- tion of " Faerie " lands, and is the first sign of real mental development in the child when he is no longer content with the stories of his own little deeds and experiences, when his ear begins to appreciate sounds different from the words in his own everyday language, and when he begins to separate his own personality from the action of the story. George Goschen says x : " What I want for the young are books and stories which do not simply deal with our daily life. I like the fancy (even) of little children to have some larger food than images of their own little lives, and I confess I am sorry for the children whose imaginations are not sometimes stimulated by beautiful Fairy Tales which carry them to worlds different from those in which their future will be passed I hold that what removes them more or less from their daily life is better than what reminds them of it at every step." It is because of the great value of leading children to something beyond the limited circle of their own lives that I deplore the twaddling boarding-school stories written for girls and the artificially-prepared Public School stories for boys. Why not give them the dramatic interest of a larger stage ? No account of a cricket match, or a football triumph, could present a finer appeal to boys and girls than the description of the Peacestead in the " Heroes of Asgaard " : " This was the playground of the ^Esir, where they practised trials of skill one with another and held tournaments and sham fights. These last were always conducted in the gentlest and most honourable 1. From an address on the "Cultivation of the Imagination." 66 ELEMENTS TO SEEK manner ; for the strongest law of the Peacestead was, that no angry blow should be struck, or spiteful word spoken upon the sacred field." For my part, I would unhesitatingly give to boys and girls an element of strong romance in the stories which are told them even before they are twelve. Miss Sewell says : " The system that keeps girls in the schoolroom reading simple stories, without reading Scott and Shakespeare and Spenser, and then hands them over to the unexplored recesses of the Circulating Library, has been shown to be the most frivolizing that can be devised." She sets forward the result of her experi- ence that a good novel, especially a romantic one, read at twelve or fourteen, is really a beneficial thing. At present many of the children from the elementary schools get their first idea of love (if one can give it such a name) from vulgar pictures displayed in the shop windows, or jokes on marriage culled from the lowest type of paper, or the proceedings of a divorce- court. What an antidote to such representation might be found in the story of Hector and Andromache, Siegfreid and Brunhild, Dido and ^Eneas, Orpheus and Eurydice, St. Francis and St. Clare. One of the strongest elements we should introduce into our stories for children of all ages is that which calls forth love of beauty. And the beauty should stand out, not necessarily only in delineation of noble qualities in our heroes and heroines, but in beauty and strength of language and form. In this latter respect the Bible stories are of such THE NEED FOR ROMANCE 67 inestimable value — all the greater because a child is familiar with the subject, and the stories gain fresh significance from the spoken or winged word as compared with the mere reading. Whether we should keep to the actual text is a matter of individual experience. Professor R. G. Moulton, whose interpre- tations of the Bible Stories are so well known both in England and the States, does not always confine himself to the actual text, but draws the dramatic elements together, rejecting what seems to him to break the narrative, but introducing the actual language where it is the most effective. Those who have heard him will realise the success of his method. There is one Bible story which can be told with scarcely any deviation, and that is the story oT Nebuchadnezzar and the Golden Image. Thus, I think it wise, if the children are to succeed in partially visualizing the story, that they should have some idea of the dimensions of the Golden Image as it would stand out in a vast plain. It might be well to compare those dimensions with some building with which the child is familiar. In London the matter is easy, as the height will compare, roughly speaking, with that of Westminster Abbey. The only change in the text I should adopt is to avoid the constant enumeration of the list of rulers and the musical instruments. In doing this, I am aware that I am sacrificing something of beauty in the rhythm, — on the other hand, for narrative purpose, the interest is not broken. The first time the announcement is made, that is, by the Herald, it should be in a perfectly loud, clear and toneless voice, such as you would naturally use when shouting through a trumpet to a vast concourse of people scattered over a wide plain ; reserving all the dramatic tone of voice for the passage where Nebuchadnezzar is 68 ELEMENTS TO SEEK making the announcement to the three men by them- selves. I can remember Professor Moulton saying that all the dramatic interest of the story is summed up in the words " But if Not. ..." This suggestion is a very helpful one, for it enables us to work up gradually to this point, and then, as it were, unwind, until we reach the words of Nebuchadnezzar's dramatic recantation. In this connection, it is a good plan occasionally during the story hour to introduce really good poetry which, delivered in a dramatic manner (far removed, of course, from the melodramatic), might give children their first love of beautiful form in verse. And I do not think it necessary to wait for this. Even the normal child of seven (though there is nothing arbitrary in the suggestion of this age) will appreciate the effect — if only on the ear — of beautiful lines well spoken. Mahomet has said, in his teaching advice : " Teach your children poetry : it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes heroic virtues hereditary." To begin with the youngest children of all, here is a poem which contains a thread of story, just enough to give a human interest : MILKING-TIME. When the cows come home, the milk is coming, Honey's made when the bees are humming. Duck, Drake on the rushy lake, And the deer live safe in the breezy brake, And timid, funny, pert little bunny Winks his nose, and sits all sunny. Christina Rossetti. Now, in comparing this poem with some of the THE VALUE OF GOOD POETRY 69 doggerel verse offered to small children, one is struck with the literary superiority in the choice of words. Here, in spite of the simplicity of the poem, there is not the ordinary limited vocabulary, nor the forced rhyme, nor the application of a moral, by which the artist falls from grace. Again, in Eugene Field's "Hushaby Lady," the language of which is most simple, the child is carried away by the beauty of the sound. I remember hearing some poetry repeated by the children in one of the elementary schools in Sheffield which made me feel that they had realised romantic possibilities which would prevent their lives from ever becoming quite prosaic again, and I wish that this practice were more usual. There is little difficulty with the children. I can remember, in my own experi- ence as a teacher in London, making the experiment of reading or repeating passages from Milton and Shakespeare to children from nine to eleven years of age, and the enthusiastic way they responded by learn- ing those passages by heart. I have taken, with several sets of children, such passages from Milton as "Echo Song," "Sabrina," "By the rushy fringed Bank," " Back, shepherds, back," from Comus, "May Morning," "Ode to Shakespeare," "Samson on his blindness," etc. I even ventured on several passages from Paradise Lost, and found " Now came still evening on " a particular favourite with the children. It seemed even easier to interest them in Shake- speare, and they learned quite readily and easily many passages from "As You Like It," "Merchant of Venice," "Julius Cassar " ; from "Richard II," " Henry IV," and " Henry V." The method I should recommend in the introduction 7 o ELEMENTS TO SEEK of both poets occasionally into the Story-hour would be threefold. First, to choose passages which appeal for beauty of sound or beauty of mental vision called up by those sounds: such as, " Tell me where is Fancy bred," Titania's Lullaby, " How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank." Secondly, passages for sheer interest of content, such as the Trial Scene from " The Merchant of Venice," or the Forest Scene in " As You Like It." Thirdly, for dramatic and historical interest, such as, " Men at some time are masters of their fates," the whole of Mark Antony's speech, and the scene with Imogen and her foster-brothers in the Forest. It may not be wholly out of place to add here that the children learned and repeated these passages themselves, and that I offered them the same advice as I do to all Story-tellers. I discussed quite openly with them the method I considered best, trying to make them see that simplicity of delivery was not only the most beautiful but the most effective means to use; and, by the end of a few months, when they had been allowed to experiment and express themselves, they began to see that mere ranting was not force, and that a sense of reserve power is infinitely more impressive and inspiring than mere external presentation. I encouraged them to criticise each other for the common good, and sometimes I read a few lines with over-emphasis and too much gesture, which they were at liberty to point out, so that they might avoid the same error. A very good collection of poems for this purpose of narrative is to be found in : Mrs. P. A. Barnett's series of Song and Story, Published by A. and C. Black. COMMON SENSE AND RESOURCEFULNESS 7* And for older children : The Call of the Homeland, Anthology. Edited by Dr. Scott and Miss Katharine Wallas, Published by Blackie and Son. Also in a collection published (I believe) in Boston by Miss Agnes Repplier. Golden Numbers. (K. D. Wiggin and N. A. Smith). It will be realised from the scanty number of examples offered in this section that it is only a side issue, a mere suggestion of an occasional alternative for the Story-hour, as likely to develop the imagination. I think it is well to have a good number of stories illustrating the importance of common sense and resourcefulness. For this reason I consider that stories treating of the ultimate success of the youngest son are very admirable for the purpose, because the youngest child, who begins by being considered inferior to the elder ones, triumphs in the end, either from resourcefulness, or from common sense, or from some high quality, such as kindness to animals, courage in overcoming difficulties, etc. 1 Thus we have the story of Cinderella. The cynic might imagine that it was the diminutive size of her foot that ensured her success : the child does not realise any advantage in this, but, though the matter need not be pressed, the story leaves us with the impression that Cinderella had been patient and industrious, forbearing with her sisters. We know that she was strictly obedient to her godmother, and in order to be this she 1. " The House in the Wood " (Grimm) is a good instance of triumph for the youngest child, F 72 ELEMENTS TO SEEK makes her dramatic exit from the ball which is the beginning of her triumph. There are many who might say that these qualities do not meet with reward in life and that they end in establishing a habit of drudgery, but, after all, we must have poetic justice in a Fairy Story, occasionally, at any rate. Another such story is " Jesper and the Hares." Here, however, it is not at first resourcefulness that helps the hero, but sheer kindness of heart, which prompts him first to help the ants, and then to show civility to the old woman, without for a moment expecting any material benefit from such actions. At the end, he does win by his own ingenuity and resourcefulness, and if we regret that his trickery has such wonderful results, we must remember that the aim was to win the princess for herself, and that there was little choice left him. I consider the end of this story to be one of the most remarkable I have found in my long years of browsing among Fairy Tales. I should suggest stopping at the words : " The Tub is full," as any addition seems to destroy the subtlety of the story. 1 Another story of this kind, admirable for children from six years and upwards, is " What the Old Man does is alway Right." Here, perhaps, the entire lack of common sense on the part of the hero would serve rather as a warning than a stimulating example, but the conduct of the wife in excusing the errors of her foolish husband is a model of resourcefulness. In the story of " Hereafter — this " 2 we have just the converse : a perfectly foolish wife shielded by a most patient and forbearing husband, whose tolerance and common sense save the situation. 1. To be found in Andrew Lang's Collection. See list of Stories. %. To be found in Jacob's " More English Tales," DEVELOPING A SENSE OF HUMOUR 73 One of the most important elements to seek in our choice of stories is that which tends to develop, even- tually, a fine sense of humour in a child. I purposely use the word "eventually," because I realise first that humour has various stages, and that seldom, if ever, can you expect an appreciation of fine humour from a normal child, that is, from an elemental mind. It seems as if the rough-and-tumble element were almost a necessary stage through which children must pass — a stage, moreover, which is normal and healthy ; but up to now we have quite unnecessarily extended the period of elephantine fun, and though we cannot control the manner in which children are catered for along this line in their homes, we can restrict the folly of appealing too strongly or too long to this elemental faculty in our schools. Of course, the temptation is strong, because the appeal is so easy. But there is a tacit recognition that horse-play and practical jokes are no longer considered an essential part of a child's education. We note this in the changed attitude in the schools, taken by more advanced educationists, towards bullying, fagging, hazing, etc. As a reaction, then, from more obvious fun, there should be a certain number of stories which make appeal to a more subtle element, and in the chapter on the questions put to me by teachers on various occasions, I speak more in detail about the educational value of a finer humour in our stories. At some period there ought to be presented in our stories the superstitions connected with the primitive history of the race, dealing with the Fairy (proper), giants, dwarfs, gnomes, nixies, brownies and other elemental beings. Andrew Lang says : " Without our savage ancestors we should have had no poetry. Conceive the human race born into the world in its 74 ELEMENTS TO SEEK present advanced condition, weighing, analysing, examining everything. Such a race would have been destitute of poetry and flattened by common sense. Barbarians did the dreaming of the world." But it is a question of much debate among educa- tionists what should be the period of the child's life in which these stories are to be presented. I myself was formerly of opinion that they belonged to the very primitive age of the individual, just as they belong to the primitive age of the race, but experience in telling stories has taught me to compromise. Some people maintain that little children, who take things with brutal logic, ought not to be allowed the Fairy Tale in its more limited form of the Super- natural ; whereas, if presented to older children, this material can be criticised, catalogued and (alas !) rejected as worthless, or retained with flippant tolera- tion. Now, whilst recognising a certain value in this point of view, I am bound to admit that if we regulate our stories entirely on this basis, we lose the real value of the Fairy Tale element — it is the one element which causes little children to wonder, simply because no scientific analysis of the story can be presented to them. It is somewhat heartrending to feel that Jack and the Bean-Stalk and stories of that ilk are to be handed over to the critical youth who will condemn the quick growth of the tree as being contrary to the order of nature, and wonder why Jack was not playing football in the school team instead of climbing trees in search of imaginary adventures. A wonderful plea for the telling of early superstitions to children is to be found in an old Indian Allegory called "The Blazing Mansion." " An old man owned a large, rambling mansion — am THE RIGHT AGE FOR FAIRY TALES 75 the pillars were rotten, the galleries tumbling down, the thatch dry and combustible, and there was only one door. Suddenly, one day, there was a smell of fire : the old man rushed out. To his horror he saw that the thatch was aflame, the rotten pillars were catching fire one by one, and the rafters were burning like tinder. But inside, the children went on amusing themselves quite happily. The distracted father said : ' I will run in and save my children. I will seize them in my strong arms, I will bear them harmless through the falling rafters and the blazing beams.' Then the sad thought came to him that the children were romp- ing and ignorant. ' If I say the house is on fire, they will not understand me. If I try to seize them, they will romp about and try to escape. Alas ! not a moment to be lost!' Suddenly a bright thought flashed across the old man's mind. ' My children are ignorant,' he said; 'they love toys and glittering playthings. I will promise them playthings of unheard-of beauty. Then they will listen.' "So the old man shouted : ' Children, come out of the house and see these beautiful toys ! Chariots with white oxen, all gold and tinsel. See these exquisite little antelopes. Whoever saw such goats as these ? Children, children, come quickly, or they will all be gone !' " Forth from the blazing ruin the children came in hot haste. The word ' plaything ' was almost the only word they could understand. " Then the Father, rejoiced that his offspring was freed from peril, procured for them one of the most beautiful chariots ever seen : the chariot had a canopy like a pagoda : it had tiny rails and balustrades and rows of jingling bells. Milk-white oxen drew the 76 ELEMENTS TO SEEK chariot. The children were astonished when they were placed inside." (From the " Thabagata") Perhaps, as a compromise, one might give the gentler superstitions to very small children, and leave such a blood-curdling story as Bluebeard to a more robust age. There is one modern method which has always seemed to me much to be condemned, and that is the habit of changing the end of a story, for fear of alarming the child. This is quite indefensible. In doing this we are tampering with folk-lore and con- fusing stages of development. Now, I know that there are individual children that, at a tender age, might be alarmed at such a story, for instance, as Little Red Riding-Hood ; in which case, it is better to sacrifice the " wonder stage " and present the story later on. I live in dread of finding one day a bowdlerized form of " Bluebeard " (prepared for a junior standard), in which, to produce a satisfactory finale, all the wives come to life again, and " live happily for ever after " with Bluebeard and each other ! And from this point it seems an easy transition to the subject of legends of different kinds. Some of the old country legends in connection with flowers are very charming for children, and as long as we do not tread on the sacred ground of the Nature Students, we may indulge in a moderate use of such stories, of which a few will be found in the Story Lists. With regard to the introduction of legends connected with saints into the school curriculum, my chief plea is the element of the unusual which they contain, and an appeal to a sense of mysticism and wonder which MIRACLES AND CONVERSIONS 77 is a wise antidote to the prosaic and commercial tendencies of to-day. Though many of the actions of the saints may be the result of a morbid strain of self- sacrifice, at least none of them were engaged in the sole occupation of becoming rich : their ideals were often lofty and unselfish ; their courage high, and their deeds noble. We must be careful, in the choice of our legends, to show up the virile qualities rather than to dwell on the elements of horror in details of martyrdom, or on the too-constantly recurring miracles, lest we should defeat our own ends. For the children might think lightly of the dangers to which the saints were exposed if they find them too often preserved at the last moment from the punishment they were brave enough to undergo. For one or other of these reasons, I should avoid the detailed history of St. Juliana, St. Vincent, St. Quintin, St. Eustace, St. Winifred, St. Theodore, St. James the More, St. Katharine, St. Cuthbert, St. Alphage, St. Peter of Milan, St. Quirine and Juliet, St. Alban and others. The danger of telling children stories connected with sudden conversions is that they are apt to place too much emphasis on the process, rather than the goal to be reached. We should always insist on the splendid deeds performed after a real conversion — not the details of the conversion itself ; as, for instance, the beautiful and poetical work done by St. Christopher when he realised what work he could do most effectively. On the other hand, there are many stories of the saints dealing with actions and motives which would appeal to the imagination and are not only worthy of imitation, but are not wholly outside the life and experience even of the child. 1 1. For selection of suitable stories among legends of the Saints, see Story Lists. 78 ELEMENTS TO SEEK Having protested against the elephantine joke and the too-frequent use of exaggerated fun, I now en- deavour to restore the balance by suggesting the intro- duction into the school curriculum of a few purely grotesque stories which serve as an antidote to senti- mentality or utilitarianism. But they must be presented as nonsense, so that the children may use them for what they are intended, as pure relaxation. Such a story is that of " The Wolf and the Kids." I have had serious objections offered to this story by several educational people, because of the revenge taken by the goat on the wolf, but I am inclined to think that if the story is to be taken as anything but sheer nonsense, it is surely sentimental to extend our sympathy towards a caller who has devoured six of his hostess' children. With regard to the wolf being cut open, there is not the slightest need to accentuate the physical side. Children accept the deed as they accept the cutting off of a giant's head, because they do not associate it with pain, especially if the deed is presented half-humorously. The moment in the story where their sympathy is aroused is the swallowing of the kids, because the children do realise the possibility of being disposed of in the mother's absence. (Needless to say, I never point out the moral of the kids' disobedience to the mother in opening the door.) I have always noticed a moment of breathlessness even in a grown-up audience when the wolf swallows the kids, and that the recovery of them " all safe and sound, all huddled together " is quite as much appre- ciated by the adult audience as by the children, and is worth the tremor caused by the wolf's summary action. I have not always been able to impress upon the teachers that this story must be taken lightly. A very earnest young student came to me once after I had A PLEA FOR NONSENSE 79 told it, and said in an awestruck voice : " Do you Correlate?" Having recovered from the effect of this word, which she carefully explained, 1 said that as a rule I preferred to keep the story apart from the other lessons, just an undivided whole, because it had effects of its own which were best brought about by not being connected with other lessons. 1 She frowned her disapproval and said : "I am sorry, because I thought I would take The Goat for my Nature Study lesson, and then tell your story at the end." I thought of the terrible struggle in the child's mind between his conscientious wish to be accurate and his dramatic enjoyment of the abnormal habits of a goat who went out with scissors, needle and thread ; but I have been most careful since to repudiate any connec- tion with Nature Study in this and a few other stories in my repertoire. One might occasionally introduce one of Edward Lear's "Book of Nonsense." For instance: There was an Old Man of Cape Horn, Who wished he had never been born; So he sat in a chair till he died of despair, That dolorous Man of Cape Horn. Now, except in case of very young children, this could not possibly be taken seriously. The least observant normal boy or girl would recognise the hollowness of the pessimism that prevents a man from at least an attempt to rise from his chair. The following I have chosen as repeated with 1. I believe that I am quite in a minority among Educationists in this matter. Possibly my constantly specialising in the stories may have formed my opinion. 80 ELEMENTS TO SEEK intense appreciation and much dramatic vigour by a little boy just five years old : There was an Old Man who said, " Hush! I perceive a young bird in this bush!" When they said, " Is it small ?" he replied, "Not at all ! It is four times as big as the bush !"'i One of the most desirable of all elements to introduce into our stories is that which encourages kinship with animals. With very young children this is easy, because in those early years when the mind is not clogged with knowledge, the sympathetic imagination enables them to enter into the feelings of animals. Andersen has an illustration of this point in his " Ice Maiden " : " Children who cannot talk yet can understand the language of fowls and ducks quite well, and cats and dogs speak to them quite as plainly as Father and Mother ; but that is only when the children are very small, and then even Grandpapa's stick will become a perfect horse to them that can neigh and, in their eyes, is furnished with legs and a tail. With some children this period ends later than with others, and of such we are accustomed to say that they are very backward, and that they have remained children for a long time. People are in the habit of saying strange things." Felix Adler says : " Perhaps the chief attraction of Fairy Tales is due to their representing the child as living in brotherly friendship with nature and all creatures. Trees, flowers, animals, wild and tame, even the stars are represented as comrades of children. That animals are only human beings in disguise is an axiom in the Fairy Tales. Animals are humanised, that is, 1. These words have been set most effectively to music by Miss Margaret Ruthven Lang. (Boston.) KINSHIP WITH ANIMALS 81 the kinship between animal and human life is still keenly felt; and this reminds us of those early animistic interpretations of nature which subsequently led to doctrines of metempsychosis." x I think that beyond question the finest animal stories are to be found in the Indian Collections, of which I furnish a list in the Appendix. With regard to the development of the love of nature through the telling of the stories, we are confronted with a great difficult in the elementary schools, because so many of the children have never been out of the towns, have never seen a daisy, a blade of grass and scarcely a tree, so that in giving, in form of a story, a beautiful description of scenery, you can make no appeal to the retrospective imagination, and only the rarely gifted child will be able to make pictures whilst listening to a style which is beyond his everyday use. Nevertheless, once in a way, when the children are in a quiet mood, not eager for action but able to give themselves up to the pure joy of sound, then it is possible to give them a beautiful piece of writing in praise of Nature, such as the following, taken from The Divine Adventure, by Fiona Macleod : " Then he remembered the ancient wisdom of the Gael and came out of the Forest Chapel and went into the woods. He put his lip to the earth, and lifted a green leaf to his brow, and held a branch to his ear, and because he was no longer heavy with the sweet clay of mortality, though yet of human clan he heard that which we do not hear, and saw that which we do not see, and knew that which we do not know. All the green life was his. In that new world, he saw the lives 1. From " Moral Instruction of Children," page 66. " The Use of Fairy Tales." 82 ELEMENTS TO SEEK of trees, now pale green, now of woodsmoke blue, now of amethyst ; the gray lives of stone ; breaths of the grass and reed, creatures of the air, delicate and wild as fawns, or swift and fierce and terrible, tigers, of that undiscovered wilderness, with birds almost invisible but for their luminous wings, and opalescent crests." The value of this particular passage is the mystery pervading the whole picture, which forms so beautiful an antidote to the eternal explaining of things. I think it of the highest importance for children to realise that the best and most beautiful things cannot be expressed in everyday language and that they must content themselves with a flash here and there of the beauty which may come later. One does not enhance the beauty of the mountain by pulling to pieces some of the earthy clogs : one does not increase the impres- sion of a vast ocean by analysing the single drops of water. But at a reverent distance one gets a clear impression of the whole, and can afford to leave the details in the shadow. In presenting such passages (and it must be done very sparingly) experience has taught me that we should take the children into our confidence by telling them frankly that nothing exciting is going to happen, so that they will be free to listen to the mere words. A very interesting experiment might occasionally be made by asking the children some weeks afterwards to tell you in their own words what pictures were made on their minds. This is a very different thing from allowing the children to reproduce the passage at once, the danger of which proceeding I speak of later in detail. (See Chapter on Questions.) We now come to the question as to what proportion of Dramatic Excitement we should present in the stories for a normal group of children. Personally, I DRAMATIC EXCITEMENT 83 should like, while the child is very young (I mean in mind, not in years) to exclude the element of dramatic excitement, but though this may be possible for the individual child, it is quite Utopian to hope we can keep the average child free from what is in the atmo- sphere. Children crave for excitement, and unless we give it to them in legitimate form, they will take it in any riotous form it presents itself, and if from our experience we can control their mental digestion by a moderate supply of what they demand, we may save them from devouring too eagerly the raw material they can so easily find for themselves. There is a humorous passage bearing on this question in the story of the small Scotch boy, when he asks leave of his parents to present the pious little book — a gift to himself from his Aunt — to a little sick friend, hoping probably that the friend's chastened condition will make him more lenient towards this mawkish form of literature. The parents expostulate, pointing out to their son how ungrateful he is, and how ungracious it would be to part with his Aunt's gift. Then the boy can contain himself no longer. He bursts out, unconsciously expressing the normal attitude of children at a certain stage of development : " It's a daft book ony way ; there's naebody gets kilt en't. I like stories about folk getting their heids cut off, or stabbit through and through, wi' swords an' spears. An' there's nae wile beasts. I like stories about black men gettin' ate up, an' white men killin' lions and tigers an' bears an' " Then, again, we have the passage from George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss": " Oh, dear ! I wish they would not fight at your school, Tom. Didn't it hurt you ?" " Hurt me? No," said Tom, putting up the hooks 84 ELEMENTS TO SEEK again, taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at medita- tively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added : " I gave Spooner a black eye — that's what he got for wanting to leather me. I wasn't going to go halves because anybody leathered me." " Oh ! how brave you are, Tom. I think you are like Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you'd fight him, wouldn't you, Tom ?" " How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There's no lions only in the shows." " No, but if we were in the lion countries — I mean in Africa where it's very hot, the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book where I read it." " Well, I should get a gun and shoot him." " But if you hadn't got a gun? — we might have gone out, you know, not thinking, just as we go out fishing, and then a great lion might come towards us roaring, and we could not get away from him. What should you do, Tom?" Tom paused, and at last turned away contemp- tuously, saying : " But the lion isn't coming. What's the use of talking?" This passage illustrates also the difference between the highly-developed imagination of the one and the stodgy prosaical temperament of the other. Tom could enter into the elementary question of giving his school- fellow a black eye, but could not possibly enter into the drama of the imaginary arrival of a lion. He was sorely in need of Fairy Stories. It is for this element we have to cater, and we cannot shirk our responsibilities. William James says : " Living things, moving things or things that savour of danger or blood, that WARLIKE EXCITEMENT NOT ESvSENTIAL 85 have a dramatic quality, these are the things natively interesting to childhood, to the exclusion of almost everything- else, and the teacher of young children (until more artificial interests have grown up) will keep in touch with his pupils by constant appeal to such matters as those." x Of course the savour of danger and blood is only one of the things to which we should appeal, but I give the whole passage to make the point clearer. This is one of the most difficult parts of our selection, namely, how to present enough excitement for the child and yet include enough constructive element which will satisfy him when the thirst for " blugginess " is slaked. And here I should like to say that, whilst wishing to encourage in children great admiration and rever- ence for the courage and other fine qualities which have been displayed in times of war, and which have mitigated its horrors, I think we should show that some of the finest moments in these heroes' lives had nothing to do with their profession as soldiers. Thus we have the well-known story of Sir Philip Sidney and the soldier; the wonderful scene where Roland drags the bodies of his dead friends to receive the blessing of the archbishop after the battle of Roncevalles 2 ; and of Napoleon sending the sailor back to England. There is a moment in the story of Gunnar when he pauses in the midst of the slaughter of his enemies, and says, " I wonder if I am less brave than others, because I kill men less willingly than they." And in the " Njal's Burning " from Andrew Lang's " Book of Romance " we have the words of the boy 1. From " Talks to Teachers," page 93. 2. An excellent account of this is to be found in " The Song of Roland," by Arthur Way and Frederic Spender, 86 ELEMENTS TO SEEK Thord when his grandmother, Bergthora, urges him to go out of the burning house. " ' You promised me when I was little, grandmother, that I never should go from you till I wished it of myself. And I would rather die with you than live after you." Here the moral courage is so splendidly shown ; none of these heroes feared to die in battle or in open single fight, but to face a death by fire for higher considerations is a point of view worth presenting to the child. In spite of all the dramatic excitement roused by the conduct of our soldiers and sailors, 1 should we not try to offer also in our stories the romance and excite- ment of saving as w T ell as taking life ? I would have quite a collection dealing with the thrilling adventures of the Life-Boat and the Fire Brigade, of which I hope to present examples in the final Story List. Finally, we ought to include a certain number of ' stories dealing with Death, especially with children who are of an age to realise that it must come to all, and that this is not a calamity but a perfectly natural and simple thing. At present the child in the street invariably connects death with sordid accidents. I think they should have stories of Death coming in heroic form, as when a man or woman dies for a great cause, in which he has opportunity of admiring courage, devotion and unselfishness; or of Death coming as a result of treachery, such as we find in the death of Baldur, of Siegfried, and of others, so that children may learn to abhor such deeds; but also a fair proportion of stories dealing with death that This passage was written before the Great War, STORIES DEALING WITH DEATH 87 comes naturally,, when our work is done and our strength gone, which has no more tragedy than the falling of a leaf from the tree. In this way we can give children the first idea that the individual is so much less than the whole. Quite small children often take Death very naturally. A boy of five met two of his older companions at the school door. They said sadly and solemnly : " We have just seen a dead man !" st Well," said the little philosopher, " that's all right. We've all got to die when our work's done." In one of the Buddha stories which I reproduce at the end of this book, the little Hare (who is, I think, a symbol of nervous Individualism) constantly says : " Suppose the Earth were to fall in, what would become of me?" As an antidote to the ordinary attitude towards death, I commend an episode from a German folk-lore story called "Unlucky John," which is included in the list of stories recommended at the end of this book. The following sums up in poetic form some of the material necessary for the wants of a child : THE CHILD. The little new soul has come to Earth, He has taken his staff for the Pilgrim's way. His sandals are girt on his tender feet, And he carries his scrip for what gifts he may. What will you give to him, Fate Divine? What for his scrip on the winding road? A crown for his head, or a laurel wreath ? A sword to wield, or is gold his load ? 88 ELEMENTS TO SEEK What will you give him for weal or woe? What for the journey through day and night? Give or withhold from him power and fame, But give to him love of the earth's delight. Let him be lover of wind and sun And of falling rain ; and the friend of trees ; With a singing heart for the pride of noon, And a tender heart for what twilight sees. Let him be lover of you and yours — The Child and Mary; but also Pan, And the sylvan gods of the woods and hills, And the god that is hid in his fellow-man. Love and a song and the joy of earth, These be the gifts for his scrip to keep Till, the journey ended, he stands at last In the gathering dark, at the gate of sleep. Ethel Clifford. And so our stories should contain all the essentials for the child's scrip on the road of life, providing the essentials and holding or withholding the non- essentials. But, above all, let us fill the scrip with gifts that the child need never reject, even when he passes through " the gate of sleep." CHAPTER VI. How to Obtain and Maintain the Effect of the Story. We are now coming to the most important part of the question of Story-Telling, to which all the foregoing remarks have been gradually leading, and that is the Effects of these stories upon the child, apart from the dramatic joy he experiences in listening to them, which would in itself be quite enough to justify us in the telling. But, since I have urged upon teachers the extreme importance of giving so much time to the manner of telling and of bestowing so much care on the selection of the material, it is right that they should expect some permanent results, or else those who are not satisfied with the mere enjoy- ment of the children will seek other methods of appeal — and it is to them that I most specially dedicate this chapter. I think we are on the threshold of the re-discovery of an old truth, that the Dramatic Presentation is the quickest and surest, because it is the only one with which memory plays no tricks. If a thing has appeared before us in a vital form, nothing can really destroy it; it is because things are often given in a blurred, faint light that they gradually fade out of our memory. A very keen scientist was deploring to me, on one occasion, the fact that stories were told so much in the schools, to the detriment of science, for which she claimed the same indestructible element that I 89 go EFFECT OF THE STORY recognise in the best-told stories. Being very much interested in her point of view, I asked her to tell me, looking back on her school days, what she could remember as standing out from other less clear information. After thinking some little time over the matter, she said with some embarrassment, but with a candour that did her much honour : " Well, now I come to think of it, it was the story of Cinderella." Now, I am not holding any brief for this story in particular. I think the reason it was remembered was because of the dramatic form in which it was presented to her, which fired her imagination and kept the memory alight. I quite realise that a scientific fact might also have been easily remembered if it was presented in the form of a successful chemical experi- ment : but this also has something of the dramatic appeal and will be remembered on that account. Sully says : " We cannot understand the fascination of a story for children save in remembering that for their young minds, quick to imagine, and unversed in abstract reflection, words are not dead things but winged, as the old Greeks called them." 1 The Red Queen (in " Through the Looking- Glass ") was more psychological than she knew when she made the memorable statement : " When once you've said a thing that fixes it, and you must take the consequences." In Curtin's Introduction to " Myths and Folk Tales of the Russians," he says : " I remember well the feeling roused in my mind at the mention or sight of the name Lucifer during the early years of my life. It stood for me as the name of a being stupendous, dreadful in moral deformity, 1. From " Studies of Childhood/' page 55, INDIAN STORY TELLERS 91 lurid, hideous and mighty. I remember the surprise which which, when I had grown somewhat older and began to study Latin, I came upon the name in Virgil where it means light-bringer — the herald of the Sun." Plato has said : " That the End of Education should be the training by suitable habits of the Instincts of Virtue in the Child." About two thousand years later, Sir Philip Sidney, in his " Defence of Poesy," says : " The final end of learning is to draw and lead us to so high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of." And yet it is neither the Greek philosopher nor the Elizabethan poet that makes the every-day application of these principles ; but we have a hint of this applica- tion from the Pueblo tribe of Indians, of whom Lummis tells us the following : " There is no duty to which a Pueblo child is trained in which he has to be content with a bare command : Do this. For each he learns a fairy-tale designed to explain how children first came to know that it was right to ' do this,' and detailing the sad results that befell those who did otherwise. Some tribes have regular story-tellers, men who have devoted a great deal of time to learning the myths and stories of their people and who possess, in addition to a good memory, a vivid imagination. The mother sends for one of these, and having prepared a feast for him, she and her little brood, who are curled up near her, await the Fairy Stories of the dreamer, who after his feast and smoke entertains the company for hours." In modern times, the nurse, who is now receiving such complete training for her duties with the children, should be ready to imitate the ''dreamer" of the Indian tribe. I rejoice to find that regular instruction 92 EFFECT OF THE STORY in Story-telling is being given in many of the institu- tions where the nurses are trained. Some years ago there appeared a book by Dion Calthrop called " King Peter," which illustrates very fully the effect of story-telling. It is the account of the education of a young prince which is carried on at first by means of stories, and later he is taken out into the arena of Life to be shown what is happening there — the dramatic appeal being always the means used to awaken his imagination. The fact that only one story a year is told him prevents our seeing the effect from day to day, but the time matters little. We only need faith to believe that the growth, though slow, was very sure. There is something of the same idea in the " Adven- tures of Telemachus," written by Fenelon for his royal pupil, the young Duke of Burgundy; but whereas Calthrop trusts to the results of indirect teaching by means of dramatic stories, Fenelon, on the contrary, makes use of the somewhat heavy, didactic method, so that one would think the attention of the young prince must have wandered at times ; and I imagine Telemachus was in the same condition when he was addressed at some length by Mentor, who, being Minerva (though in disguise), should occasionally have displayed that sense of humour which must always temper true wisdom : Take, for instance, the heavy reproof conveyed in the following passage : " Death and shipwreck are less dreadful than the pleasures that attack Virtue. . . . Youth is full of presumption and arrogance, though nothing in the world is so frail : it fears nothing, and vainly relies on its own strength, believing everything with the utmost levity and without any precaution." HUMAN INTEREST 93 And on another occasion, when Calypso hospitably provides clothes for the shipwrecked men, and Tele- machus is handling a tunic of the finest wool and white as snow, with a vest of purple embroidered with gold, and displaying much pleasure in the magnificence of the clothes, Mentor addresses him in a severe voice, saying : " Are these, O Telemachus, the thoughts that ought to occupy the heart of the son of Ulysses ? A young man who loves to dress vainly, as a woman does, is unworthy of wisdom or glory." I remember, as a schoolgirl of thirteen, having to commit to memory several books of these adventures, so as to become familiar with the style. Far from being impressed by the wisdom of Mentor, I was simply bored, and wondered why Telemachus did not escape from him. The only part in the book that really interested me was Calypso's unrequited love for Telemachus, but this was always the point where we ceased to learn by heart, which surprised me greatly, for it was here that the real human interest seemed to begin. Of all the effects which I hope for from the telling of stories in the schools, personally I place first the dramatic joy we bring to the children and to ourselves. But there are many who would consider this result as fantastic, if not frivolous, and not to be classed among the educational values concocted with the introduction of stories, into the school curriculum. I therefore propose to speak of other effects of story-telling which may seem of more practical value. The first, which is of a purely negative character, is that through means of a dramatic story we can counter- act some of the sights and sounds of the streets which appeal to the melodramatic instinct in children. I am sure that ail teachers whose work lies in the crowded 94 EFFECT OF THE STORY cities must have realised the effect produced on children by what they see and hear on their way to and from school. If we merely consider the hoardings, with their realistic representations, quite apart from the actual dramatic happenings in the street, we at once perceive that the ordinary school interests pale before such lurid appeals as these. How can we expect the child who has stood open-mouthed before a poster representing a woman chloroformed by a burglar, whilst that hero escapes in safety with her jewels, to display any interest in the arid monotony of the multiplication-table ? The illegitimate excitement created by the sight of the depraved burglar can only be counteracted by something equally exciting along the realistic but legitimate side ; and this is where the story of the right kind becomes so valuable, and why the teacher who is artistic enough to undertake the task can find the short path to results which theorists seek for so long in vain. It is not even necessary to have an exceedingly exciting story; sometimes one which will bring about pure reaction may be just as suitable. I remember in my personal experience an instance of this kind. I had been reading with some children of about ten years old the story from Cymbeline, of Imogen in the forest scene, when the brothers strew flowers upon her, and sing the funeral dirge, " Fear no more the heat of the sun." Just as we had all taken on this tender, gentle mood, the door opened and one of the prefects announced in a loud voice the news of the relief of Mafeking. The children were on their feet at once, cheering lustily, and for the moment the joy over the relief of the brave garrison was the predominant feeling. Then, before INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT 95 the Jingo spirit had time to assert itself, I took advan- tage of a momentary reaction and said : " Now, children, don't you think we can pay England the tribute of going back to England's greatest poet?" In a few minutes we were back in the heart of the Forest, and I can still hear the delightful intonation of those subdued voices repeating : Golden lads and girls all must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust. It is interesting to note that the same problem that is exercising us to-day was a source of difficulty to people in remote times. The following is taken from an old Chinese document, and has particular interest for us to-day. " The Philosopher Mentius (born 371 B.C.) was left fatherless at a very tender age and brought up by his mother Changsi. The care of this prudent and atten- tive mother has been cited as a model for all virtuous parents. The house she occupied was near that of a butcher : she observed at the first cry of the animals that were being slaughtered, the little Mentius ran to be present at the sight, and that, on his return, he sought to imitate what he had seen. Fearful lest his heart might become hardened, and accustomed to the sights of blood, she removed to another house which was in the neighbourhood of a cemetery. The relations of those who were buried there came often to weep upon their graves, and make their customary libations. The lad soon took pleasure in their ceremonies and amused himself by imitating them. This was a new subject of uneasiness to his mother : she feared her son might come to consider as a jest what is of all things the most serious, and that he might acquire a habit of performing with levity, and as a matter of routine 96 EFFECT OF THE STORY merely, ceremonies which demand the most exact attention and respect. Again therefore she anxiously changed the dwelling, and went to live in the city, opposite to a school, where her son found examples the most worthy of imitation, and began to profit by them. This anecdote has become incorporated by the Chinese into a proverb, which they constantly quote : The Mother of Mentius seeks a neighbourhood." Another influence we have to counteract is that of newspaper headings which catch the eye of children in the streets and appeal so powerfully to their imagination. Shakespeare has said : Tell me where is Fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head ? How begot, how nourished ? Reply, reply. It is engendered in the eyes With gazing fed : and Fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring Fancy's knell. I'll begin it — ding, dong, bell. " Merchant of Venice." If this be true, it is of importance to decide what our children shall look upon as far as we can control the vision, so that we can form some idea of the effect upon their imagination. Having alluded to the dangerous influence of the street, I should hasten to say that this influence is very far from being altogether bad. There are possibilities of romance in street life which may have just the same kind of effect on children as the telling of exciting stories. I am indebted to Mrs. Arnold Glover (Hon. Sec. of the National Organisation of Girls' Clubs), one of the most widely informed people on this subject, for the two following experiences gathered from the ROMANCE IN OUR vSTREETS 97 streets which bear indirectly on the subject of story- telling : Mrs. Glover was visiting a sick woman in a very poor neighbourhood, and found, sitting on the door- step of the house, two children, holding something tightly grasped in their little hands, and gazing with much expectancy towards the top of the street. She longed to know what they were doing, but not being one of those unimaginative and tactless folk who rush headlong into the mysteries of children's doings, she passed them at first in silence. It was only when she found them still in the same silent and expectant posture half-an-hour later that she said tentatively : " I wonder whether you would tell me what you are doing here?" After some hesitation, one of them said, in a shy voice : " We're waitin' for the barren" It then transpired that, once a week, a vegetable- and flower-cart was driven through this particular street, on its way to a more prosperous neighbourhood, and on a few red-letter days, a flower, or a sprig, or even a root sometimes fell out of the back of the cart ; and those two little children were waiting there in hope, with their hands full of soil, ready to plant anything which might by golden chance fall that way, in their secret garden of oyster-shells. This seems to me as charming a fairy-tale as any that our books can supply. Another time Mrs. Glover was collecting the pennies for the Holiday Fund Savings Bank from the children who came weekly to her house. She noticed on three consecutive Mondays that one little lad deliberately helped himself to a new envelope from her table. Not wishing to frighten or startle him, she allowed this to continue for some weeks, and then one day, having dismissed the other children, she asked him quite 98 EFFECT OF THE STORY quietly why he was taking the envelopes. At first he was very sulky, and said : " I need them better than you do." She quite agreed this might be, but reminded him that, after all, they belonged to her. She promised, however, that if he would tell her for what purpose he wanted the envelopes, she would endeavour to help him in the matter. Then came the astonishing announcement : " I am building a navy." After a little more gradual questioning, Mrs. Glover drew from the boy the information that the Borough Water Carts passed through the side street once a week, flushing the gutter; that then the Envelope Ships were made to sail on the water and pass under the covered ways which formed bridges for wayfarers and tunnels for the "navy." Great was the excitement when the ships passed out of sight and were recognised as they arrived safely at the other end. Of course the expenses in raw material were greatly diminished by the illicit acquisition of Mrs. Glover's property, and in this way she had unconsciously provided the neigh- bourhood with a navy and a Commander. Her first instinct, after becoming acquainted with the whole story, was to present the boy with a real boat, but on second thought she collected and gave him a number of old envelopes with names and addresses upon them, which added greatly to the excitement of the sailing, because they could be more easily identified as they came out of the other side of the tunnel, and had their respective reputations as to speed. Here is indeed food for romance, and I give both instances to prove that the advantages of street life are to be taken into consideration as well as the disadvan- tages ; though I think we are bound to admit that the latter outweigh the former. One of the immediate results of dramatic stories is AVOID THE COMMONPLACE 99 the escape from the commonplace, to which I have already alluded in quoting Mr. Goschen's words. The desire for this escape is a healthy one, common to adults and children. When we wish to get away from our own surroundings and interests, we do for our- selves what I maintain we ought to do for children ; we step into the land of fiction. It has always been a source of astonishment to me that, in trying to escape from our own every-day surroundings, we do not step more boldly into the land of pure romance, which would Form a real contrast to our every-day life, but in nine cases out of ten the fiction which is sought after deals with the subjects of our ordinary existence — namely, frenzied finance, sordid poverty, political corruption, fast society, and religious doubts. There is the same danger in the selection of fiction for children : namely, a tendency to choose very utilitarian stories, both in form and substance, so that we do not lift the children out of the commonplace. I remember once seeing the titles of two little books, the contents of which were being read or told to small children of the poorer class : one was called " Tom the Boot-black," the other, "Dan the News-boy." My chief objection to these stories was the fact that neither of the heroes rejoiced in their work for the work's sake. Had Tom even invented a new kind of blacking, or if Dan had started a splendid newspaper, it might have been encouraging for those among the listeners who were thinking of engaging in similar professions. It is true, both gentlemen amassed large fortunes, but surely the school age is not to be limited to such dreams and aspirations as these ! One wearies of the tales of boys who arrive in a town with one cent in their pockets, and leave it as millionaires, with the added importance of a Mayoralty, not to speak of a ioo EFFECT OF THE STORY Knighthood. It is true that the romantic prototype of these boys is Dick Whittington, for whom we uncon* sciously cherish the affection which we often bestow on a far-off personage. Perhaps — who knows ? — it is the picturesque adjunct of the cat — lacking to modern millionaires. 1 I do not think it Utopian to present to children a fair share of stories which deal with the importance of things " untouched by hand." They too can learn at an early age that " the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are spiritual." To those who wish to try the effect of such stories on children, I present for their encouragement the following lines from Whitcomb Riley : THE TREASURE OF THE WISE MAN. 2 Oh, the night was dark and the night was late, When the robbers came to rob him ; And they picked the lock of his palace-gate, The robbers who came to rob him — They picked the lock of the palace-gate, Seized his jewels and gems of State His coffers of gold and his priceless plate,— The robbers that came to rob him. But loud laughed he in the morning red! — For of what had the robbers robbed him ? Ho ! hidden safe, as he slept in bed, When the robbers came to rob him, — 1. I always remember the witty jibe of a chairman at my expense on this subject, who, when proposing a vote of thanks to me, asked whether I seriously approved of the idea of providing "wild-cat schemes " in order to bring romance into the lives of millionaires. 2 # From The Lockerbie Book, by James Whitcomb Riley. Copy- right 1911. Used by special permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. NURSERY RHYMES ioi They robbed him not of a golden shred Of the childish dreams in his wise old head — " And they're welcome to all things else," he said, When the robbers came to rob him. There is a great deal of this romantic spirit, com- bined with a delightful sense of irresponsibility, which I claim above all things for small children, to be found in our old Nursery Rhymes. I quote from the follow- ing article written by the Rev. R. L. Gales for the Nation. After speaking on the subject of Fairy Stories being- eliminated from the school curriculum, the writer adds : " This would be lessening the joy of the world and taking from generations yet unborn the capacity for wonder, the power to take a large unselfish interest in the spectacle of things, and putting them forever at the mercy of small private cares. > A Nursery Rhyme is the most sane, the most unselfish thing in the world. It calls up some delight- ful image, — a little nut-tree with a silver walnut and a golden pear; some romantic adventure only for the child's delight and liberation from the bondage of unseeing dulness : it brings before the mind the quintessence of some good thing : ' " ' The little dog laughed to see such sport ' — there is the soul of good humour, of sanity, of health in the laughter of that innocently wicked little dog. It is the laughter of pure frolic without unkindness. To have laughed with the little dog as a child is the best preservative against mirthless laughter in later years — the horse laughter of brutality, the ugly laughter of spite, the acrid laughter of fanaticism. The world of Nursery Rhymes, the old world of Mrs. 102 EFFECT OF THE STORY Slipper-Slopper, is the world of natural things, of quick, healthy motion, of the joy of living. " In Nursery Rhymes the child is entertained with all the pageant of the world. It walks in Fairy Gardens, and for it the singing birds pass. All the King's horses and all the King's men pass before it in their glorious array. Craftsmen of all sorts, bakers, confectioners, silversmiths, blacksmiths are busy for it with all their arts and mysteries, as at the court of an Eastern King." In insisting on the value of this escape from the commonplace, I cannot prove the importance of it more clearly than by showing what may happen to a child who is deprived of his birthright by having none of the Fairy Tale element presented to him. In " Father and Son," Mr. Edmund Gosse says: " Meanwhile, capable as I was of reading, I found my greatest pleasure in the pages of books. The range of these was limited, for story-books of every description were sternly excluded. No fiction of any kind, religious or secular, was admitted into the house. In this it was to my Mother, not to my Father, that the prohibition was due. She had a remarkable, I confess, to me somewhat unaccountable impression that to 'tell a story,' that is, to compose fictitious narrative of any kind, was a sin Nor would she read the chivalrous tales in the verse of Sir Walter Scott, obstinately alleging that they were not true. She would read nothing but lyrical and subjective poetry As a child, however, she had possessed a passion for making up stories, and so considerable a skill in it, that she was constantly being begged to indulge others with its exercise ' When I was a very little child,' she says, ' I used to amuse myself and my brothers with inventing stories such as I had IMAGINATION AND INSTINCT 103 read. Having, as I suppose, naturally a restless mind and busy imagination, this soon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately, my brothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore (a Calvinistic governess), finding it out, lectured me severely and told me it was wicked. From that time forth I considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin But the longing to invent stories grew with violence. The simplicity of Truth was not enough for me. I must needs embroider imagination upon it, and the folly and wickedness which disgraced my heart are more than I am able to express ' This (the Author, her son, adds) is surely a very painful instance of the repression of an instinct." In contrast to the stifling of the imagination, it is good to recall the story of the great Hermits who, having listened to the discussion of the Monday sitting at the Academie des Sciences (Institut de France) as to the best way to teach the young how to shoot in the direction of mathematical genius, said : " Cultivez V 'imagination, messieurs. Tout est la. Sivous voulez des mathematiciens f donnez a vos enfants a lire — des Contes de Fees" Another important effect of the story is to develop at an early age sympathy for children of other countries where conditions are different from our own. There is a book used in American schools called " Little Citizens of other Lands," dealing with the clothes, the games and occupations of those little citizens. Stories of this kind are particularly necessary to prevent the development of insular notions, and are a check on that robust form of Philistinism, only too prevalent, alas ! among grown-ups, which looks askance at new H 104 EFFECT OF THE STORY suggestions and makes the withering remark : " How un-English! How queer!" — the second comment being, it would seem, a natural corollary to the first. 1 I have so constantly to deal with the question of confusion between Truth and Fiction in the mind of children that it might be useful to offer here an example of the way they make the distinction for themselves. Mrs. Ewing says on this subject : "If there are young intellects so imperfect as to be incapable of distinguishing between Fancy and False- hood, it is most desirable to develop in them the power to do so, but, as a rule, in childhood, we appreciate the distinction with a vivacity which as elders our care-clogged memories fail to recall." Mr. P. A. Barnett, in his book on the " Common- sense of Education," says, alluding to Fairy Tales : '* Children will act them but not act upon them, and they will not accept the incidents as part of their effectual belief. They will imagine, to be sure, grotesque worlds, full of admirable and interesting personages to whom strange things might have happened. So much the better; this largeness of imagination is one of the possessions that distinguish the better nurtured child from others less fortunate." The following passage from Stevenson's essay on Child Play % will furnish an instance of children's aptitude for creating their own dramatic atmosphere : '■■ When my cousin and I took our porridge of a morning, we had a device to enliven the course of a meal. He ate his with sugar, and explained it to be a country continually buried under snow. I took mine 1. See Little Cousin Series in American collection of tales at the end of book. 2. From " Virginibus Puerisque and other Essays." HW H W H iHiBBlimBHh CHILDREN'S PLAY 105 with milk, and explained it to be a country suffering gradual inundation. You can imagine us exchanging bulletins ; how here was an island still unsubmerged, here a valley not yet covered with snow ; what inven- tions were made ; how his population lived in cabins on perches and travelled on stilts, and how mine was always in boats ; how the interest grew furious as the last corner of safe ground was cut off on all sides and grew smaller every moment ; and how, in fine, the food was of altogether secondary importance, and might even have been nauseous, so long as we seasoned it with these dreams. But perhaps the most exciting moments I ever had over a meal, were in the case of calves' feet jelly. It was hardly possible not to believe, and you may be quite sure, so far from trying it, I did all I could to favour the illusion — that some part of it was hollow, and that sooner or later my spoon would lay open the secret tabernacle of that golden rock. There, might some Red-Beard await this hour; there might one find the treasures of the Forty Thieves. And so I quarried on slowly, with bated breath, savouring the interest. Believe me, I had little palate left for the jelly ; and though I preferred the taste when I took cream with it, I used often to go without because the cream dimmed the transparent fractures." In his work on Imagination, Ribot says : " The free initiative of children is always superior to the imitations we pretend to make for them." The passage from Robert Stevenson becomes more clear from a scientific point of view when taken in connection with one from Karl Groos' book on the " Psychology of Animal Play " : " The Child is wholly absorbed in his play, and yet under the ebb and flow of thought and feeling like still water under wind-swept waves, he has the knowledge 106 EFFECT OF THE STORY that it is pretence after all. Behind the sham ' I ' that takes part in the game, stands the unchanged ' I ' which regards the sham ' I ' with quiet superiority." Queyrat speaks of play as one of the distinct phases of a child's imagination; it is "essentially a meta- morphosis of reality, a transformation of places and things." Now to return to the point which Mrs. Ewing makes, namely, that we should develop in normal children the power of distinguishing between Truth and Falsehood. I should suggest including two or three stories which would test that power in children, and if they fail to realise the difference between romancing and telling lies then it is evident that they need special attention and help along this line. I give the titles of two stories of this kind in the collection at the end of the book. 1 So far we have dealt only with the negative results of stories, but there are more important effects, and I am persuaded that if we are careful in our choice of stories, and artistic in our presentation (so that the truth is framed, so to speak, in the memory), we can unconsciously correct evil tendencies in children which they only recognise in themselves when they have already criticised them in the characters of the story. I have sometimes been misunderstood on this point, therefore I should like to make it quite clear. I do not mean that stories should take the place entirely of moral or direct teaching, but that on many occasions they could supplement and strengthen moral teaching, because the dramatic appeal to the imagination is quicker than the moral appeal to the conscience. A child will often resist the latter lest it should make him 1. See Longbow story, " John and the Pig." muaw«BHBMn ENCOURAGE MAGNANIMITY 107 uncomfortable or appeal to his personal sense of responsibility : it is often not in his power to resist the former, because it has taken possession of him before he is aware of it. As a concrete example, I offer three verses from a poem entitled "A Ballad for a Boy," written some twelve years ago by W. Cory, an Eton master. The whole poem is to be found in a book of poems known as " Ionica " (published by George Allen and Co.). The poem describes a fight between two ships, the French ship Temeraire and the English ship Quebec. The English ship was destroyed by fire. Farmer, the captain, was killed, and the officers taken prisoners : " They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead; And as the wounded captives passed, each Breton bowed the head. Then spoke the French lieutenant, ' Twas the fire that won, not we : You never struck your flag to us; you'll go to England free.' 1 " 'Twas the sixth day of October, Seventeen-hundred-seventy- nine, A year when nations ventured against us to combine, Quebec was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not; But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot. " And you, if you've to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind ; Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest, And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest." 1. This is even a higher spirit than that shown in the advice given in the Agamemnon (speaking of the victor's attitude after the taking of Troy) : " Yea, let no craving for forbidden gain Bid conquerors yield before the darts of greed." 108 EFFECT OF THE STORY This poem is specially to be commended because it is another example of the finer qualities which are developed in war. 1 Now, such a ballad as this, which, being pure narrative, could easily be introduced into the story- hour, would do as much to foster