Educating by Story-Telling / Showing the Value of Story-Telling as an Educational Tool for the Use of All Workers with Children

by Mrs. Katherine Dunlap Cather

EDUCATING BY STORY-TELLING

PART ONE
STORY-TELLING AND THE ARTS OF EXPRESSION—ESTABLISHING STANDARDS

CHAPTER ONE
The Purpose and Aim of Story-Telling

Ever since the beginning of things the story-teller has been a personage of power, an individual welcomed by young and old alike. Hailed as a joy bringer and heeded as an oracle, his tales have been the open sesame to admit him to any throng and his departure has always been attended with regret. During the Middle Ages he was a privileged character, free to wander at will into camp or court. The Piso manuscript in the museum at Budapest tells of the solicitous effort made by Ladislaus of Hungary to secure safe-conduct through Bohemia and Austria for a favorite narrator, and many other old chronicles attest to the fact that in France, Germany, Italy, and the British Isles passports were given to minstrels and raconteurs when no one else could obtain them. Long before this period, during the nomadic existence of the race, the mightiest men of the tribe were the chieftain and the story-teller, the one receiving homage because of his ability to vanquish his adversaries in battle, the other because of his skill in entertaining his fellows as they huddled around the fire at night. Each ability was believed to be evidence of divine gifts, and the possessor of each was revered as being a little higher than a mortal, a little lower than a god.

Primitive man, like civilized man, was fond of power, and realizing that his talents made him mighty, the narrator exercised them in such a manner as to promote their development. Every emotional response on the part of his hearers served as a key to unlock doors into the land of his desire, and as he listened to exclamations of approval, condemnation, or delight, he saw ways of arousing these emotions to even greater degrees of intensity and, possessing an elemental love of the spectacular, made the most of his opportunity. Thus he evolved from a crude declaimer into something of an artist. As the race emerged from a barbaric into a pastoral state, he grew to be more than an entertainer; he imparted knowledge to the young by keeping alive the tribal traditions.

On the Asiatic highlands, before the Aryan migration, it was the story-teller who preserved the tales of the fathers, the nature myths that were primitive man’s explanation of the things he did not understand. The journey of the sun across the heavens, the shifting of clouds from one fantastic form to another, the chromatic skies of sunrise and sunset, and the starry firmament of night aroused his curiosity and awakened his awe. He wondered about them just as children today wonder about them, and just as the twentieth-century child questions his mother, so he questioned one whom he deemed wiser than himself. This consulted oracle gave as an explanation something that out of his own wondering and puzzling had grown into a vague belief, and consequently the clouds that presaged showers came to be regarded as heavenly cows from whose exuberant udders came the rains that refreshed the earth; stormy oceans and rugged mountains with ravines beset with perils held giants that avenged and destroyed; while the sun, a beneficent creature that drove away the monster of darkness, and all the saving forces of nature, were metamorphosed in the fancy of these early men into protecting heroes and divinities.

As generation succeeded generation and the young received their allotment of lore from the old, these stories became fixed so firmly in the minds of the people that they were carried with them at the scattering of the tribes, told and retold in the new-found homes, and modified to suit conditions of life in strange lands the wanderers came to inhabit; and they still survive as present-day fairy tales. There are various theories of how these old beliefs came to be disseminated, how it happened that tales supposed to be indigenous to Finland or Madagascar are found in slightly different dress among the tribes of Central Africa and in other sections of the world remote from each other; but no matter how much folklorists disagree as to the process through which the tales evolved to their present form, they do not differ as to their significance, and whether they accept the Aryan theory promulgated by Max Müller or the totemistic theory of Andrew Lang, they unite in a belief that these ancient tales represent the religion of primitive man, a religion growing out of fear of the unknown.

Always it was by the lips of the story-teller that the legends were kept alive. It was his mission to teach children the tales their fathers knew, and as the race evolved toward civilization he gave them something besides nature myths. He recounted and reiterated the achievements of the heroes of his people until youths who heard were fired with desire to emulate. Because he was deemed a man of supernal powers, his words were believed; consequently he created the ideals of the age in which he lived, and just as his own standards were fine or base, so the ideals for which he was responsible came to be high or low. Fortunately for the world, however, these old-time narrators were wiser than their fellows. They were poets and dreamers who saw life through eyes vision clear. They glorified virtue and deprecated vice, taught that right triumphs over wrong and that sinning brings inevitable punishment, and explained in a crude way the workings of the law of compensation. They fired men to achievement just as they fired boys with desire to emulate the heroes of whom they told, and as centuries passed and they grew in skill and power, their tales came to be the inspiration of some of the most thrilling chapters in the annals of man. Alexander the Great declared that the lays of a wandering bard, Homer, made him thirst for conquest. In Germany, in the twelfth century, the influence of a penniless gleeman, Walther von der Vogelweide, was greater than that of the Pope. There was no more puissant man in Ireland when Ireland was in its golden day and Tara in its glory than the low-born minstrel, Brian of Fermanagh; and the Crusades, which recreated Europe by the introduction of Eastern culture and the breaking down of old traditions, might never have been undertaken but for tales of defilement of holy places from the lips of Peter the Hermit. Storytellers every one of them, swaying their fellows and making history, subjects of kings and nobles, yet often mightier than the masters who held their destinies in their hands.

The power of the narrator did not die with chivalry. As recently as during the middle of the last century the clergy of Scotland united in an effort to suppress story-telling in the Highlands because it kept alive beliefs of pagan origin, beliefs so deep-seated that the combined eloquence of prelates could not eradicate them, and the strength of the church was impaired because of the sheltering of these waifs of the past. To this day there are peasants in Germany who doubt not that every year at harvest time Charlemagne walks beside the Rhine under the midnight moon and blesses the vineyard region of Winkel and Ingelheim. In central Switzerland are hundreds of simple folk who believe that on the summit where they met to take the oath that fired the land against Austria, sleep the immortal “Brothers of the Grütli,” and that they will slumber on until the liberty of Helvetia is imperiled; while in the southern portion of that mountain land the country folk are certain that prosperity will be the lot of every husbandman when the swan-drawn luck boat returns to Lake Geneva. Why? Because their fathers in the far-off days believed these tales; because they have come down to them by the lips of the story-teller, and wherever there is no written language, wherever the people are too unlettered to read what is written, or where they live in isolated communities and mingle little with the outside world, they still believe the legends. They love to hear them told and retold, and nothing brings so much pleasure on a winter night or in a summer gloaming as the complete family circle and the father or uncle or stranger from another community sitting in the midst repeating the old, old tales.

As it is with unlettered peasants today, as it was with tribesmen in primitive times and with the great in medieval castle halls, it still is with the child. He lives over the experience of his fathers on the Asiatic highlands and sits entranced listening to the record of it in stories. The element of suspense, the wondering what will happen next, holds him in a viselike grip, and the story hour is to him a period of joy. The here and now disappears as the narrator lifts his invisible wand, and the listener journeys by roads of never ceasing wonders into lands of enchantment. According to the skill of the raconteur, and the vividness with which he himself sees and feels the pictures he strives to portray, he makes his listeners see and feel them, rejoicing in the good fortune and sympathizing in the sorrows of the just and righteous; and they not only follow along the highroad where he leads them, but roam off into pleasant bypaths where the fancy has free play.

There is no age or racial limit to this story love. Representing, as it does, an emotional hunger that is the human heritage, it is universal. Several years ago at Five Points in New York City, a settlement worker discovered that a very effective means of gaining the confidence of immigrant women was to tell fairy tales, and recently some of the most gratifying results obtained in the Telegraph Hill district of San Francisco were made possible by a leader there gaining the good will of a group of Sicilian hoodlums because she knew the plot of Jerusalem Delivered and told the story magnetically and well. It was like a breeze from their native island, where they had heard it from the lips of the village story-teller and seen it pictured on the market carts, and the fact that she knew something that had fascinated them gained their sympathy and coöperation. Those who have even a limited knowledge of child life know that before the babe can read he delights in listening to a nursery tale, and that even after he journeys into bookland he is more interested in the story told him than in the one he reads for himself. Why? Because the voice and personality of the speaker make it alive and vital. Because, as Seumas MacManus says, “The spoken word is the remembered word.”

The tales heard during childhood become fixed and lasting possessions. They stay with the hearer through the years, and because their ideals become his ideals, do much toward shaping his character. The child who hears many good stories and unconsciously learns to distinguish between the tawdry and the real, reads good stories when a boy and becomes a man for whom sensational best sellers have no charm.

There is much talk about the vicious tastes of the youth of this generation, and unfavorable comparisons between them and their elders at a similar age are frequently made. There is some foundation for this belief, but it is not the fault of the children that it is so. Because of the abundance and cheapness of books, many of them of questionable merit, boys and girls are left to browse unguided, and just as the range man is to blame if his hungry herd strays into a loco patch and eats of noxious weeds when he fails to drive it to the place of wholesome herbage, so it is the fault of parents and teachers if their charges acquire a taste for sensational yarns instead of for good literature. The very hunger that impels them toward that which contaminates, if satisfied in a wholesome manner would make them lovers of the best, and the reason why children become devourers of “yellow” stories is because they have failed to stumble upon a more fascinating and less dangerous highway, and no one has led them to it. There is no surer way of keeping a boy from becoming a devotee of the funny page of the Sunday supplement or a follower of “Nick Carter” than that of studying his tastes and giving him tales from good literature that will satisfy them. There is no more powerful means to use in diverting a child from the undesirable to the desirable than that of throwing a searchlight upon the attractions of the latter and presenting them to him through joyful experience. The narrator’s art is in truth a magic luminary, an unfailing means of bringing hidden beauties to sight and causing them to be loved because they give pleasure.

For a number of years it has been conceded that story-telling is of value in the kindergarten and primary school, but little provision has been made for it in the educational scheme for the older child. Gradually, however, educators in America have come to realize what their European colleagues realized long ago, that the narrator’s art can be a powerful element in the mental, moral, and religious development of the boy and girl and can mean as much to the adolescent child as to the tiny tot. Consequently they are now giving it an honored place. The story period has become a part of the program of every well-regulated library. Teachers of elementary and grammar grades are recognizing its value in the classroom, and in some states story-telling is included in the curriculum. Each year brings new texts and collections from the publishers, until it seems that the art so much honored in the past is coming again into its own.

Yet, with all the interest that is manifested throughout the country, story-telling is not doing its greatest, most vital work, because so little thought is given to the selection of material, so little study to the response of children who hear the tales and the effect upon them. Before even half of its possibilities can be realized, those who tell stories must know the story interests of childhood and must choose materials, not only because they are beautiful in theme and language and embody high ideals, but because they are fitted to the psychological period of the child who is to hear them. They must realize that the purpose of story-telling is not merely to entertain, although it does entertain, but that in addition to delighting young listeners there must be a higher aim, of which the narrator never loses sight. Every tale selected must contribute something definite toward the mental, moral, or spiritual growth of the child, just as each pigment chosen by an artist must blend into the picture to help make a beautiful and perfect whole. The golden age of childhood will come and fear that young people’s tastes are being vitiated will die out when parents and teachers realize that much of the noblest culture of the past has been given through the medium of the story, and that it can be given through this medium now and in the future, because there is almost no type of information the child should receive that he will not receive joyously through this means, and with deep, lasting results. Story-telling planned and carried out to fit conditions will help to solve many of the problems that confront educators today. Besides developing the emotional nature and giving moral and religious instruction, it will intensify the interest in history, geography, nature study, manual training, and domestic science, awaken an appreciation of literature, art, and music, enrich the child’s powers of discrimination, and teach him to distinguish between the cheap and ephemeral and the great and lasting. It will help to eliminate much of what he considers the drudgery of school life and give him information that will fit him for broad, sympathetic, useful living.

This does not mean that the teacher is to do all the work, thereby fixing children in habits of idleness, nor does it mean the addition of an extra subject to an already overcrowded curriculum. It simply means leading the child to do things for himself because of the incentive that interest gives. It means illuminating the formal subjects and sending pupils to them with greater eagerness.

In order to accomplish these ends, story-telling must be unmarred by creaking machinery, and it must be sympathetic. The narrator must rise above the level of a mere lesson giver and approach the plane of the artist, which he can do only by giving an artist’s preparation to his work. The old-time raconteur swayed the destiny of nations because he was an artist, because he himself believed in the message he brought. He put heart and labor into his work, which gave his words a sincerity that never failed to convince. So too must the present-day narrator believe in the power of the story and in the dignity of his work, and he must choose material with thought and judgment instead of snatching it up indifferently, thinking that any story will do if only it holds the interest. The racial tales should be given freely in the psychological period to which they belong, but not the racial tales only. There is much modern material close to present-day life and conditions, without which the child’s education is not complete, and it must be classified and graded. This entails reference work for which the non-professional has neither time nor opportunity, and to this fact is due much of the valueless story-telling of today. Experience with hundreds of parents, teachers, and workers with children has brought conviction that a belief in the value of story-telling as an educational tool is sincere and general, but that sources of classified material are not available to the average child leader. It is partly to meet this need that the present work is planned.

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CHAPTER TWO
The Story Interests of Childhood

A. RHYTHMIC PERIOD

If the work of the narrator is to be of real value, he must have a knowledge of the story interests of childhood, for otherwise the talent of a Scheherazade, careful preparation, and an extensive repertoire will fail to produce the desired results, because a narrative that deals with mythical heroes cannot make a lasting impression upon a child who craves animal and primitive wonder tales, even though it be written in language and style suited to his understanding. The heart or framework of the story must be made up of events that are fraught with interest in his particular period of mental development, and must introduce personages with whom he would like to companion, and whose movements he will follow with approval, pity, condemnation, or rejoicing. Under such conditions the boys or girls or dogs who contribute to the action of the tale are not strangers out of a book, but mean as much to him as the people and animals he knows, and because they do mean much he lives the tale. It becomes part of him and he of the story. His emotional nature is stirred, his power of evaluating is strengthened, and some of the foundation blocks of character are laid.

Naturally the question arises, “How is one to know which tales to choose, when there is such a wealth of stories and such a diversity of interests? Is there any rule or guide to keep the conscientious but untrained worker from the pitfalls and show him the right road from the wrong?” Such a guide there is—the psychological axiom that the child between birth and maturity passes through several periods or stages of mental growth which determines his interests.

The little child, the one from the age of about three to six, is interested in familiar things. He has not yet reached the period of fancy during which he wanders into a world of make-believe and revels with fairies and nixies, but dwells in a realm of realism. His attention is centered on the things and the personages he knows,—the mother, the father, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cows, chickens, and children of his own age,—and consequently he enjoys stories and jingles about these creatures. He chuckles over the accounts of their merry experiences and sympathizes with them in their misfortunes, because they lie close to his interests. This is why Mother Goose has been and is beloved of little children. The rhymes do not introduce griffins and ogres and monsters that must be seen through eyes of fancy to be seen at all, but abound in accounts of creatures he has beheld from his windows and associated with in his home. Mother Hubbard and her unfortunate dog, the crooked man and his grotesque cat, the pigs that went to market, and the old woman in the shoe lie close to his world because he knows dogs and cats and pigs and kind old women, and therefore the rhymes and jingles that portray them are dear to his heart.

Especially fascinating in this period of early childhood are stories that contain much repetition. “The Old Woman and Her Pig,” “Little Red Hen,” “Chicken Little,” “The Gingerbread Man,” and “The Three Billy Goats” delight little people, and although they have heard them again and again they always watch eagerly for the “Fire, fire, burn stick,” “I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a piece of it fell on my tail,” and are disappointed if the well-known expressions are omitted. The repetition strengthens the dramatic element and helps to make the pictures vivid, and the child loves to experience again the thrill he felt upon first listening to the tale.

Stories introducing the cries and calls of animals are much loved at this period. The squealing of the pig, the barking of the dog, the clucking of the hen, and the quacking of the duck give charm to a narrative because the child has heard those sounds in his own garden, in his own dooryard, and along the road, and knowing them, is interested in them. This is the secret of the success of many kindergarten tales that fall far below the requirements of a good story. Often almost devoid of plot and lacking in suspense element, still they hold the attention because of the animal cries and calls they contain. The little hearer chuckles as the baby pig squeals, the mother pig grunts, or the dog barks, and listens delightedly to what, without these cries and calls, would not interest him.

This too is why the racial tales fascinate today just as they fascinated five hundred years ago. They have a clearly defined plot that of itself would hold the interest, they introduce familiar characters, contain much repetition, and abound in animal cries and calls.

Broadly speaking, then, for the period of early childhood, the time of realism which extends from the age of about three to five or six, the narrator should choose stories of animal and child life, those which introduce sounds peculiar to the characters and which abound in repetition.

But he should not make the mistake of following this rule too literally or his efforts will result in failure, because children live under widely different conditions. The boy of the city slums, whose horizon extends only from his own row of tenements to the next row up the street, will not be held by tales of cows and sheep, because he does not know cows and sheep. His knowledge of four-footed creatures is confined to dogs and cats and an occasional horse that goes by hitched to the wagon of a fruit or vegetable vender, and the tales that mean something to him are those of animals of his world, and of children. Many a settlement and social worker has learned the truth of this through sad experience. A most gifted story-teller in a New York settlement house gave to her group “The Ugly Duckling,” and gave it exquisitely too, but it meant nothing to the children because they never had been in the country. A barnyard was as remote from their interest as a treatise on philology is from that of a Finnish peasant. They did not know ducks and geese and chickens, and consequently punched their neighbors and grew pestiferous during the recital of a tale that would have entranced country children.

The same mistake was made by a professional story-teller who gave a coyote tale to a group of Italian children. They never had met this “outcast in gray,” never had shivered as he howled in the night, and the story brought no pictures before their eyes. They were inattentive and disorderly throughout its rendition, and the narrator declared them an impossible group. Yet that same afternoon a college girl with no special training in story-telling told them of a lost nanny goat, and they sat fascinated. In the first instance the trouble was not with the children but with the narrator. She knew much of technique but little of psychology and could not hold the children’s attention, while the other girl, possessed of far less native ability, entertained them because she understood the story interests of childhood. The narrator must have, not only an understanding of the psychological periods and interests of childhood, but a knowledge of the environment of the children with whom she works.

There is a wealth of sources from which to draw for this early period. Often it is necessary to adapt material, because many a tale whose framework is suited to little people is told in language beyond their understanding. “David and Jonathan,” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, is a good example. Written for adults, yet it is so universal in its appeal that the lad of six listens to it with as much sympathy as his father or mother. The account of the affection of dog and master for each other, the pathos of the separation and the joy of the reunion, touch him as much as they touch his parents, and to receive it from the lips of one who feels and loves the tale will make him kinder to dumb animals and gentler to the aged.

This is true of many another story that is the creation of an artist. I mention particularly Ouida’s “Dog of Flanders,” John Muir’s “Stickeen,” and Ernest Thompson Seton’s “Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac,” each of which I have used with children of all ages. The characters in them are living, breathing creatures, the kind that if met in real life would arouse affection and awaken both laughter and tears, and whether these stories are told in monosyllabic language or colored by fine rhetorical effects, they strike the tender places and appeal to the best. When the child meets Nello before the altar of the cathedral in Antwerp, kneeling in front of a painting by Rubens and fondling his dog, he instinctively feels that this boy is not a stranger living in a far-away land and speaking a foreign language, but that he represents all the orphaned children in the world, and that his affection for his dog is the same tie that binds every other child to the pet he loves. So too with Monarch, the majestic captive of Golden Gate Park. He is not just a bear, a creature larger and more ferocious than many other animals. He typifies wild life caged, and the boy who has pitied him in listening to the account of his tramp, tramp, tramp about the pit, never quite forgets that proud but eternal unrest, the ever present longing for the white peaks and the pines.

One need not fear that putting these stories into simple language may be deemed a sacrilegious act, or that telling the plot of a masterpiece will kill delight in that masterpiece itself. Goethe’s mother, sitting in the firelight in their home, gave her boy tales from the old poets, creating in him a desire to read that helped to make him a profound student and master thinker. And the twentieth-century child will doubly enjoy reading a beautiful piece of literature at some future day, because in the magical long ago it touched his heart. Workers with little children should be ever on the alert, seeking stories that deserve the name of literature, with plot and characters that will appeal to their small charges, because such stories mold a child’s taste and give a key that will unlock doors into the great treasure house of art. Whenever the mother or teacher or librarian reads a story that is a literary gem, let her analyze it and determine whether or not, if told in simple language, it would delight a child. The old-time narrators who molded national taste and ideals did this constantly, and the great story-tellers are doing it today.

Sicilian peasants, for instance, have a knowledge of the classics that amazes the average American. The stories are pictured on the market carts, those gaudy conveyances that brighten the island highways from Catania to Palermo, and the conversation of these simple folk is colored with allusions that would do credit to a professor of literature. Most of them cannot read, but they know the plots of Jerusalem Delivered, “Sindbad the Sailor,” “The Merchant of Bagdad,” and many more of the world’s great stories. They heard the tales in childhood, and their fathers before them heard them from the lips of men who loved to tell them, and so they have become a national heritage. Let us do as much for the children of our land, that the men and women of the future may have a noble culture and more splendid possessions than their parents have, and let us do it in the world-old way, by story-telling.

Sources of Story Material for the Rhythmic Period

Adams, William: Fables and Rhymes—Æsop and Mother Goose.

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin: Firelight Stories.

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin, and Lewis, Clara: For the Children’s Hour.

Bryce, Catherine T.: That’s Why Stories.

Burnham, Maud: Descriptive Stories for All the Year.

Cooke, Flora J.: Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children.

Davis, Mary H., and Chow-Leung: Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.

Dillingham, Elizabeth, and Emerson, Adelle: “Tell It Again” Stories.

Harrison, Elizabeth: In Story-land.

Holbrook, Florence: ’Round the Year in Myth and Song.

Hoxie, Jane: A Kindergarten Story Book.

Jordan, David Starr: The Book of Knight and Barbara.

Lindsay, Maud: Mother Stories; More Mother Stories.

Miller, Olive Thorne: True Bird Stories.

Milton Bradley Company: Half a Hundred Stories.

Moulton, Louise Chandler: Bed-time Stories.

Pierson, Clara D.: Among the Farmyard People.

Poulsson, Emilie: Child Stories and Rhymes.

Richards, Laura E.: The Golden Windows; Five-Minute Stories; The Pig Brother.

Skinner, Ada M.: Stories of Wakeland and Dreamland.

Verhoeff, Carolyn: All about Johnnie Jones.

Wiggin, Kate Douglas, and Smith, Nora A.: The Children’s Hour.

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CHAPTER THREE
The Story Interests of Childhood (Continued)

B. IMAGINATIVE PERIOD

When the child leaves the rhythmic, realistic period he enters a world of make-believe and no longer desires tales and jingles that are nothing more than a recounting of facts he already knows. He delights in playing he is some one other than himself, in pretending he is doing things beyond the range of his possibilities, and because he craves a larger experience he craves also fanciful, imaginative tales in which he may have those experiences. He knows that bees sting, that the dog has a cold, wet nose, that the cat lands on its feet, and the squirrel holds its tail up. He wonders about these things, but he is still too limited in experience and in mental capacity to give them real theoretical meaning. Consequently he enjoys the wonder tale, or, as some authorities term it, the “primitive-why story.” Early racial tales are those of forest and plain, varying according to the locality in which they originated, from the lion and tiger stories of India and Central Africa to the kangaroo fables of the Australian aborigine.

Primitive man through fear and fancy personified the forces of nature and gave them human attributes, and because they were less tangible than the creatures of jungle and plain that figured in his earliest fables, his mind visioned them as fantastic beings, sometimes lovely and sometimes grotesque, fairies and goblins, destructive monsters and demons, and avenging giants who preserved him from that which he feared. Thus originated the fairy story that was the expression of his religion. The child enjoys these tales.

The narrator can gather this material with comparative ease, because the science of ethnology has brought to light many of these tales from primitive literature, and not a few of them have been put into collections available to child workers.

The fairy tale that grew out of the life of the race is also rich in material for children of this period. By “fairy tale” is meant that type of story usually associated with the names of Grimm, Perrault, and Bechstein. Little people delight in it, and will listen to it again and again. Yet because of lack of understanding on the part of parents and teachers, the fairy story often proves to be the rock upon which the child craft meets disaster. Because these tales have had a mighty place in the history of the race and still have their work in the education of the child, it does not follow that they should be fed to young listeners as so much unassorted grain is fed to chickens. There are many that should not be used at all. Those that are used should be carefully graded, because a child will enjoy a narrative in which children are heroes, long before he enjoys one in which adults hold the center of the stage. The father and mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, and aunts mean much to him because they are part of his experience. But he does not know officers of the state and nation. He does not know lawmakers and magistrates and judges, and tales in which they have a part are less interesting to him than those whose characters are familiar personages. For instance, he is charmed by “Little Red Hen” or “The Three Bears” at an age when “Beauty and the Beast” or “Sleeping Beauty” mean little to him, and a good rule to guide the story-teller in the grading of fairy tales is the well-known pedagogical one, “Proceed from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex.” Give first those stories whose heroes are familiar personages, then introduce those with characters not so well known.

The mention of fairy tales in education often raises the question, “Is there not danger of making liars of children by feeding them on these stories?” It seems to me the best answer is given by Georg Ebers, the Egyptologist and novelist, in his fascinating autobiography, The Story of My Life. Out of his own experience, he handles the subject of fairy tales sincerely and convincingly, and his words are worthy of consideration by every child worker.

“When the time for rising came,” he says, “I climbed joyfully into my mother’s warm bed, and never did I listen to more beautiful fairy tales than at those hours. They became instinct with life to me and have always remained so. How real became the distress of persecuted innocence, the terrors and charm of the forest, the joys and splendors of the fairy realm! If the flowers in the garden had raised their voices in song, if the birds on the boughs had called and spoken to me, nay, if a tree had changed into a beautiful fairy or the toad in the damp path of our shaded avenue into a witch, it would have been only natural.

“It is a singular thing that actual events which happened in those early days have largely vanished from my memory, but the fairy tales I heard and secretly experienced became firmly impressed on my mind. Education and life provided for my familiarity with reality in all its harshness and angles, its strains and hurts, but who, in those later years, could have flung wide the gates of the kingdom where everything is beautiful and good, and where ugliness is as surely doomed to destruction as evil to punishment? Therefore I plead with voice and pen in behalf of fairy tales. Therefore I give them to my children and grandchildren and have even written a volume of them myself.

“All sensible mothers will doubtless, like ours, take care that the children do not believe the stories which they tell them to be true. I do not remember any time when, if my mind had been called upon to decide, I should have thought anything I invented myself really happened; but I know that we were often unable to distinguish whether the plausible tale invented by some one else belonged to the realm of fact or fiction. On such occasions we appealed to my mother, and her answer instantly set all doubts at rest, for we thought she could never be mistaken and knew that she always told the truth.

“As to the stories I invented myself, I fared like other imaginative children. I could imagine the most marvelous things about every member of the household, and while telling them, but only during that time, I often fancied they were true. Yet the moment I was asked whether these things had actually occurred, it seemed that I woke from a dream. I at once separated what I imagined from what I actually experienced, and it never would have occurred to me to persist against my better knowledge. So the vividly awakened power of imagination led neither me, my brothers and sisters, nor my children and grandchildren into falsehood.”

Dr. Ebers’ words are based on sound psychology. The child’s imaginative nature should be developed, but there should never be any doubt in his mind as to what is make-believe and what is real. Let him wander at will through every realm of fancy, along its sun-kissed highways, among its shadowy glens and wild cascades, but let him realize it is a world of make-believe, not of fact, which he inhabits during that period. His imagination will be as much aroused, his emotional nature will be stirred as deeply, and there will be no discovery later that his mother or teacher deceived him, no temptation to present as fact what he knows to be purely fancy, which is a certain step toward the field of falsehood. If he questions whether a fairy story is true or not, tell him, “No, but once upon a time people thought it was true,” and picture how the early tribesmen sat around the fire at night listening to tales told by some of their wise men, just as Indians and Eskimos do to this day. It will make him sympathetic toward the struggles of his remote forefathers, and he will not think the narrator tried to dupe him, nor will he regard the narrative itself as a silly yarn. It will be a dignified tale to him because it was believed in the long ago.

Since we can give only according to the measure in which we possess, whoever tells fairy stories to children ought to know something of their history and meaning. He should have some understanding of how they have come from the depths of the past to their present form, some idea of the work of notable collectors, and some insight into the fundamental principles of the science of folklore.

There are several theories about the origin of these tales, the first and oldest being that they are sun myths and can be traced back to the Vedas, and the exponents of this belief offer many arguments to prove the truth of their contention. The similarity of tales found among people of widely separated regions, they claim, is evidence that they must have come from a common source. “Little Half-Chick,” a Spanish folk tale, is found in slightly different dress among the Kabyles of Africa; “Cinderella,” in some form or other, is common to every country of Europe and to several oriental lands; while the Teutonic tale of “Brier Rose” and the French of “Sleeping Beauty” are modifications of the same conte. Therefore, the orientalists contend, they must have come from a common source and have been modified to suit conditions of life in lands to which they were carried.

Another theory is that all European fairy tales are remnants of the old mythology of the north, the nucleus of the stories having been carried abroad by the Vikings, while still another theory, the most notable advocate of which was the late Andrew Lang, traces fairy tales to the practices and customs of early man and a totemistic belief in man’s descent from animals.

Then there are those also who contend that fairy tales are primitive man’s philosophy of nature, his explanation of the working of forces he did not understand. The adherents of this theory admit the similarity of tales found among different tribes, but claim that the incidents, which are few, and the characters, who are types, might occur anywhere. In the French story of “Blue Beard” and the Greek tale of “Psyche” curiosity leads to destruction—in the one case of life, in the other of happiness. In the French “Diamonds and Toads,” the Teutonic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and the Bohemian “The Twelve Months,” selfishness brings punishment and kindness reward, while the cruel stepmother, the good prince, and the fairy godmother are common to tales of every nation.

But however authorities disagree as to the origin of these stories, they unite in declaring them to be one of the oldest forms of literature. The first collection of fairy tales of which we have any record was published in Venice in 1550 by Straparola, and was a translation of stories from oriental sources. From Italian the book was done into French and, for those early days when books were rare and costly, had a wide circulation. For almost a century this was the only collection of fairy tales in existence. Then, in 1637, a book was published in Naples, Il Pentamerone, which Keightley declares is the best collection of fairy tales ever written. The stories were told in the Neapolitan dialect and were drawn from Sicily, Candia, and Italy proper, where Giambattista Basile had gathered them from the people during years of wandering.

About sixty years later, in a magazine published at The Hague, appeared a story, “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” by Charles Perrault, which was none other than the tale we know as “Sleeping Beauty.” It did not originate with Perrault, but had been told him in childhood by his nurse, who was a peasant from Picardy. A year later seven other stories appeared, “Red Riding Hood,” “Blue Beard,” “Puss in Boots,” “The Fairy,” “Cinderella,” “Riquet o’ the Tuft,” and “Hop o’ My Thumb.” They were published under the title, Contes du Temps Passé avec Moralités, and signed, “P. Darmancour.” Darmancour was a stepson of Perrault, and wrote them at the older man’s request from the nurse’s tales; so they live in literature as Perrault’s work. After this French collector came the German scholars, the Grimms, who gathered and preserved the folklore of the Thuringian peasants; Goethe, the Sage of Weimar; Madame Villeneuve; Ruskin; Andrew Lang; and several others. Each of these added to the work begun by Straparola and Basile, until now we have tales from almost every nation, tales proving that a belief in the supernatural is common to primitive people in every clime.

Another aspect wonderfully interesting in the study of fairy tales is the distinctive features of those of different regions, which are so marked that they can be classified according to the locality and topography of the region in which they originated. The largest number of these supernatural beliefs is found among nations whose scenery is wild and rugged, where there are mountains, morasses, dangerous cataracts, and tempestuous oceans, while in flat, cultivated countries away from the sea the fairy superstition is not so strong and the tales are less fantastic. This fact argues powerfully in favor of the Aryan theory that they are primitive man’s philosophy of nature, the expression of his religion, and some educators claim that as they were religious stories to the race, they still are religious to the child.

Whether this theory is accepted or refuted, there can be no doubt in the mind of a thinking person that if fairy tales are given to children they should be given intelligently and with discrimination. The narrator should exercise care in their selection, and have some fixed principles to govern that selection, because of the quantity and doubtful literary and ethical quality of much juvenile material.

Many modern fairy stories are not fit to give to children. In selecting fanciful tales for this period of childhood, choose first of all the old ones, those that originated in the childhood of the race, the stories of Grimm, Perrault, and Bechstein. They have stood the test of the ages. They are expressed in beautiful language, they create ideals and arouse inspiration, they feed and satisfy.

There are some fairy tales of later origin that are the works of great writers and deserve the name of literature. First on this list come those of Hans Christian Andersen. “The Three Bears” of Robert Southey is another good example, and sometimes we find floating through magazines and in books of recent issue, fairy tales that are excellent ones to give to children, because they have all the elements of the racial tales. Notable among these is “The Wonder Box” by Will Bradley. But, if there be any doubt in the mind of the narrator about the merit of modern stories, he had better eliminate them from his list and use only those that have stood the test of the ages.

However, even among racial tales the narrator will come upon pitfalls unless judgment mark his selection. The conditions governing his struggle for existence gave primitive man a harsh standard, and consequently his literature is often tinged with a vindictive spirit wholly out of keeping with the ideals of today. Stories in which cruelty, revenge, and bloodshed have a large part should never be told to the young child, no matter what their age or origin. “Blue Beard” is a good example. Although itself a classic, and a recital of the deeds of a French ruler whose name is a synonym of infamy, this tale and all similar tales should be tabooed from the world of little people.

Charles Dickens was the first man in England whose voice carried weight to plead for fairy tales as a part of the school curriculum, and within a few years Dickens found it necessary to oppose the usage of stories that were corrupting the children of the British Isles. Because they were urged to tell fairy tales, unthinking teachers told any that they found, even those in which all the savagery of early man was portrayed. Accounts of beheadings and man-eatings became part of the daily program, and many acts of cruelty among children were traceable to these stories. Instead of teaching forbearance, courtesy, consideration of the poor and aged, and abhorrence of brute force, which the wisely chosen fairy tale will do, story-telling was turning the children into young savages. If the dominant element in a story is cruelty, strike that tale from the list; for even though the deed be punished in the end, the fact that the attention of an unkind child is focused upon cruel acts often leads him to experiment and see what will happen. And I plead also for the elimination from the story-teller’s list of every tale in which an unkind or drunken parent plays a part, even though the tale itself be a literary gem. The father or mother is the child’s ideal, and it is not the mission of the narrator to shatter that ideal. Even if little folk have discovered that there are delinquent parents in the world, it is a mental shock to have that fact emphasized, and the story that shocks in any way had better be left untold.

Sometimes the elimination or modification of a cruel feature of a tale makes it suitable for telling to children, as in “Hansel and Gretel.” The ending Humperdinck uses in his opera, wherein the old witch turns to gingerbread instead of being baked in the oven by the orphans, is far better ethically than the original one, yet the elemental part of the story is left unspoiled. Narrators cannot be too careful in this respect; for the function of story-telling is to refine rather than to brutalize, to give pleasure and not to shock, and there is no excuse for using tales that corrupt or injure in any way when there are enough lovely ones to satisfy every normal desire of the child. Let the test of selection be the question, Does this story contain an element or picture that will shock a sensitive child or whet the cruel tendencies of a rough, revengeful one? If it does, do not use it even though the list of fairy tales may be reduced to a very limited one, but choose the other material for this period from the lore of science that will feed the fancy and not warp the soul or distort the character. (See [Part II, Chapter XVI], “Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in Nature Study.”)

Bibliography of Fairy Tales

Andersen, Hans Christian: Wonder Stories Told to Children.

Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen: Fairy Tales from the Far North.

Ballard, Susan: Fairy Tales from Far Japan.

Blumenthal, Verra X. K. de: Folk Tales from the Russian.

Bunce, John Thackeray: Fairy Tales: Their Origin and Meaning.

Chodzko, Alexander E. B.: Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen.

Croker, Thomas Crofton: Legends and Fairy Tales of Ireland.

Curtin, Jeremiah: Myths and Folk Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars.

Dumas, Alexandre: Black Diamonds; The Golden Fairy Book.

Edwards, Charles Lincoln: Bahama Songs and Stories.

Fortier, Alcée: Louisiana Folk Tales.

Graves, Alfred Perceval: The Irish Fairy Book.

Grimm, Jacob: German Household Tales.

Haight, Rachel Webb: Index of Fairy Tales.

Hartland, E. Sidney: The Science of Fairy Tales.

Jacobs, Joseph: Europa’s Fairy Book; English Fairy Tales; Celtic Fairy Tales.

Keightley, Thomas: Fairy Mythology.

Kennedy, Howard Angus: The New World Fairy Book.

Laboulaye, Edouard René: The Fairy Book; Last Fairy Tales.

Lang, Andrew: The Blue Fairy Book; The Orange Fairy Book; The Lilac Fairy Book; The Green Fairy Book; The Yellow Fairy Book; The Red Fairy Book.

Macdonnell, Anne: The Italian Fairy Book.

MacManus, Seumas: Donegal Fairy Stories.

Mitford, Freeman: Tales of Old Japan.

Ozaki, Yei Theodora: Japanese Fairy Tales.

Perrault, Charles: Tales for Children from Many Lands.

Pyle, Howard: The Wonder Clock.

Ramaswami Raju: Indian Fables.

Scudder, Horace E.: The Children’s Book.

Sharman, Lyon: Bamboo: Tales of the Orient-born.

Skeat, Walter W.: Fables and Folk Tales from an Eastern Forest.

Stanley, Henry M.: My Dark Companions and Their Strange Stories.

Steele, Flora A.: Tales from the Punjab.

Tappan, Eva March: The Golden Goose.

Williston, Teresa: Japanese Fairy Tales.

Wratislaw, A. H.: Slavonian Fairy Tales.

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CHAPTER FOUR
The Story Interests of Childhood (Continued)

C. HEROIC PERIOD

When the child leaves the imaginative period, he enters another realm of realism. The fairy world is no longer a place of enchantment to him. He is now in a condition corresponding to that of primitive man when he was not satisfied to sit by the tribal fire and listen to stories about creatures who personified the elements, but fared forth on the path of adventure, eager to know what lay beyond the lodge place of his people, feverish with desire to conquer and remove whatever obstructed his way. The barbaric, fighting instinct manifests itself, and in many children a destructive curiosity is apparent. They long to repeat the experiences of their ancestors in this same period. They want to live through nights of danger and days of daring, and since the juvenile court and probation officers hover Argus-eyed about them, ready to swoop down upon every lad who would go pirating or pathfinding, the nearest approach to the experience consists in listening to and in reading tales of adventure. This age is usually from about eight to twelve, although there are no tightly drawn lines of demarcation. Individual cases differ, and some children of ten are still delighted by fairy tales, while other lads of seven are well into the heroic period. Broadly speaking, however, this period begins about the age of eight.

There is no time in the child life during which the story-teller has a finer opportunity of sowing seeds that shall come into splendid fruition by and by than in the heroic period, and because parents and teachers do not realize this fact clearly enough, boys read stories whose tendency is to brutalize and lead them into trouble. It does not follow, because they are drawn as steel to steel to such literature, that the boys are depraved. They crave action, danger, daring. It is a cry of nature that cannot be silenced, and because the hunger is not satisfied in a wholesome way, they go where they can find the food they must have, for numerous doors are open to them.

Dozens of writers are doing pernicious work for the youth of the country by pouring forth a flood of adventure stories, perhaps not with malicious intent, but with the little knowledge that often brings dire results. Knowing the demand for the heroic, they write yarns whose only claim to recognition is a clever, spectacular plot. These books embody no ideals, and the aspirations they arouse had better be left to slumber. Sometimes, as a result of such reading, boys run away from home to fight Indians or turn pirate, and many a lad has begun a career of lawlessness ending in crime, who with a little direction might have been an individual of value to the world. Such cases are so common that they have come under the notice of almost every child worker, and the pity of it is that literature is rich in tales that satisfy the adventure craving, yet arouse high ideals and inspire to worth-while deeds. Instead of originating in the brain of some modern craftsman who is actuated by a desire for money-making, they grew out of the life of the race and perpetuate the noblest traditions of the race.

Human nature is much the same in all climes and in all ages. Until man reaches a very high state of enlightenment he is more thrilled by manifestations of physical bravery than by mental and moral courage, and he who possesses muscular strength is the hero in his eyes. A Hercules or Samson is mightier to him than a Savonarola facing persecution with sublime tenacity of purpose and dying steadfast to his ideal, because he can understand the brute strength of the one, while the spiritual fortitude of the other is beyond his comprehension. He is thrilled by action, physical action, and he craves and will have literature every page of which is colored by feats of prowess.

It is useless to try to substitute something else for children in this period. When we hunger for bread and meat, after-dinner mints will not satisfy, even though they be very delectable confections. This ravenous appetite of boys and girls must be satisfied, and if they are to grow into well-balanced men and women we must feed it with wholesome food instead of allowing them to roam unguided and eat of that which poisons.

There is no finer adventure tale in any literature than that of Robin Hood, none more satisfying to children in the early heroic period. This statement often brings a cry of remonstrance, and the objection is made that there is danger in portraying an outlaw as a hero, or in picturing the allurement of a brigandish career. But Robin Hood an outlaw? He lived in an age of injustice when might made right. The man of the people was but the chattel of a king, with no rights his lord was bound to respect. Bold Robin, in the depths of Sherwood Forest, devoted his life to redressing wrongs. He took from the oppressor and gave to the oppressed. He strove to stamp out injustice and tyranny, and his spirit is the foundation of the democracy that underlies every just government today. He was an outlaw, not because he was a criminal, but because he rebelled against the monstrous injustice of his age and strove to ameliorate the condition of the poor and downtrodden. In the time of Henry the Second he was hunted like a deer, but in the twentieth century he would be honored as a great reformer.

Robin’s sense of justice appeals to boys and girls, and his fearlessness and kindliness awaken their admiration. They respond sympathetically to the story from the opening chapter, when he enters the forest and Little John joins his band, through the closing one where the hero of the greenwood goes to his final rest. If the tale is told with emphasis upon the true spirit of Robin Hood instead of with a half apology, it will prove wholesome food for the children and will help to make them juster, kinder, and more democratic men and women.

The national epics are splendid sources of story material for children in the heroic period, especially those originating in Teutonic lands and those formalized among nations not yet in a high state of civilization. Their characters are elemental, and their incidents appeal to boys and girls. Some of the stories of King Arthur and his knights, of Beowulf, of Sigurd the Volsung, of Frithjof, of Pwyll, hero of the Welsh Mabinogion, as well as many from the Nibelungenlied, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, can also be used with excellent results. Naturally the tales of an elemental type should be chosen first rather than those that are more highly refined and poetic. It has been my experience that the Mabinogion is enjoyed before the Arthuriad. Boys, especially, delight in hearing of Pwyll, lord of the Seven Countries of Dyved, and the adventures that befell him as he hunted in the forests of his dominions. These stories are of very ancient origin and are simple, strong, and dramatic. They were sung by harpers (mabinogs) in the castle halls of Wales, and finally were gathered into the Mabinogion, which was done into English by Lady Charlotte Gest. The story-teller will find The Boy’s Mabinogion, by Sidney Lanier, an excellent handbook for this period, as it embodies the most desirable of this ancient Gaelic material, and is put into modern form by an artist.

Follow the Mabinogion with the less poetic of the King Arthur stories. The account of how Arthur won his sword and became king, of Percival and the Red Knight, and of Arthur fighting the giant mean more to the ten-year-old than does Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail. The Greek myths too should be drawn from during this period—not the highly poetic, finished tales of the Hellenes, but the elemental ones whose heroes are rugged characters that awaken child admiration. Hercules, Perseus, Achilles, and several other demigods vie for honors with King Arthur and Beowulf in the mind of the fourth-grade boy, and the story-teller should not fail to draw from the rich field of southern literature as well as from that of the north. But let her exercise care in selection and keep to the realm of heroism instead of entering that of romance. Such stories as “Cupid and Psyche,” “Pygmalion and Galatea,” and “Apollo and Daphne” mean little to boys and girls of ten, yet teachers and librarians often use them and wonder why their audiences respond with so little enthusiasm. There are those who contend that all the epical stories should be given in simplified form during this period, but why spoil the romantic, poetic ones which are so much more enjoyed a little later and so much better understood, when there are hundreds that can be given without pruning them to the heart? Certain investigations and statistics show that the telling of the highly refined Greek myths to boys and girls in the early heroic period gives an erroneous idea of Greek standards, and dulls an interest in mythology later on. The story-teller should bear this fact in mind, and remember that literature rich in symbolism and formulated among people refined to a degree of æstheticism is not the literature to give to adventure-craving children, no matter to what simple language it may be reduced.

Splendidly dramatic is the tale of Roland and Oliver, which every boy loves, of Ogier the Dane, and of some of the other heroes of the time of Charlemagne. Children listen spellbound to the account of the first meeting and disagreement of the two lads whose friendship makes such a sweet and colorful story, and of Charles the Great in council with his peers and knights, and delight in the swinging lines of the old ballad:

The emperor sits in an orchard wide,

Roland and Oliver by his side:

With them many a gallant lance,

Full fifteen thousand of gentle France.

Upon a throne of beaten gold

The lord of ample France behold:

White his hair and beard were seen,

Fair of body and proud of mien.

The story of Bayard is an admirable one for this period, as well as that of the Spanish hero, the Cid; and “St. George and the Dragon” is always a favorite.

I plead, too, that more of the narrator’s time be devoted to the telling of our own American epic of Hiawatha. The answer comes, “That is read in school.” To be sure it is, and one reason why it is read so badly and appreciated so little is that it was not given in story form first. The German child uses the Nibelungenlied as a classroom text, but before he studies the epic he knows its tales. Gunther, Hagen, Siegfried, and Dankwart are familiar characters to him, and consequently he enjoys the poem.

The same principle applies to Hiawatha. If boys and girls are acquainted with Hiawatha himself, if they know Nokomis and Chibiabos and Kwasind and Iagoo before they are given the poem to study, it means something to them that it cannot mean otherwise. Perhaps one reason why Longfellow’s masterpiece has been so little used by story-tellers is that the work of putting it into story form is a task with which the non-professional is unable to cope. Now, however, an excellent retold work is on the market—Winston’s Story of Hiawatha—which makes it possible for every narrator to have her children know the American epic as well as German young people know the Nibelungenlied.

In considering stories for the heroic period of childhood, let us not forget the biographical and historical narratives that fulfill every requirement of hero tales. Boys and girls love the epical stories because they are true in spirit, but they love also those that are true in fact. It is a mistake to think that biography is dull and uninteresting to them, because stories of the boyhood of great men, great rulers, great discoverers and path-finders, great lawgivers, painters, musicians, and writers, are hero tales of the highest type. Many of them have been told admirably for young people, and the narrator does no more valuable work than when he uses them freely. Sir Walter Raleigh, De Soto, Coronado, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Solyman the Magnificent, Robert the Bruce, Kosciusko, William Wallace, William Tell, and dozens of others are as fascinating as Beowulf or Hercules and have an influence even more powerful, because children know that these heroes have actually lived. Never mind what some authorities say about the man of Switzerland being a mythical personage. Let American young people know him as those of the Alpine land know him, as the defender of his ancient rights and native mountains, the embodiment of the spirit of Helvetia. They will be finer men and women because of it, and that, more than anything else, concerns the story-teller.

Then, too, there are history tales, hundreds of them, from every age and every land. There are brave deeds done by children that every child should know. The little girl on the St. Lawrence, holding the blockhouse of Vercheres against the Iroquois, the boy whose courage and presence of mind saved Lucerne, the event through which William of Orange came to be known as William the Silent, and many other similar narratives are intensely interesting to boys and girls. Some of the Old Testament tales belong in this period; for a detailed account of them see [Chapter Twelve], on “Bible Stories.”

At this age, when the adventure spirit runs high, when pathfinding and Indian fighting are desired above all other things, how are we to keep boys and girls from running away to lead such lives themselves? One way is by letting them live the lives of the heroes who thrill them—in other words, by dramatizing. It is the hunger for experience that causes boys to turn vagabond, and juvenile-court records show that many of the ten- and twelve-year-olds who are lured by the call of adventure come from homes that offer nothing to feed the adventure craving, whereas those who have some of the desired experiences at home are less likely to start out seeking them. It is a wise mother who encourages her boys to make pirate caves in their own back yards, to be youthful Crusoes, Kit Carsons, Daniel Boones, and Robin Hoods for a Saturday morning, and the school or public playground that provides for much out-of-door acting is doing something that will prevent many evils. In some children this desire is so strong that it is almost a fever, and if not satisfied in a wholesome manner is likely to lead to lamentable ends. I remember how much it meant to me in my own childhood, when I burned to lead the lives of some of the heroes of whom I had read or heard, to be permitted to participate in the Indian warfare of the neighborhood boys and be the maiden who was carried away into captivity. It was such a blissful experience that I joyfully contributed my small allowance to buy red ink for war paint and to help costume the braves, and when a Sioux band came to town, I ecstatically trudged after the wagon and lived for a day in a realm far removed from my accustomed one. The boys had feeling to even a greater degree, and who knows but that without this Indian play some of them might have gone forth in search of adventure and become criminals, whereas every one is now a law-abiding, useful citizen.

Sources of Story Material for the Heroic Period

Anderson, Rasmus Björn: The Younger Edda.

Baldwin, James: The Story of Roland; American Book of Golden Deeds.

Bolton, Sarah K.: Poor Boys Who Became Famous.

Bradish, Sarah P.: Old Norse Stories.

Brooks, Elbridge S.: Historic Girls.

Church, Alfred J.: Stories from the Iliad; Stories from the Odyssey.

Coe, Fannie E.: Heroes of Everyday Life.

Farmer, Florence V.: Boy and Girl Heroes.

Foa, Madame Eugénie: Boy Life of Napoleon.

Grierson, E. W.: Tales from Scottish Ballads.

Kingsley, Charles: Greek Heroes.

Lang, Jeanie: The Story of Robert the Bruce; The Story of General Gordon.

Lanier, Sidney: The Boy’s Mabinogion.

Lansing, M. F.: Page, Esquire, and Knight.

Mabie, H. W.: Norse Stories from the Eddas.

Marshall, H. E.: The Story of William Tell; The Story of Roland.

Matthews, Agnes R.: Seven Champions of Christendom (St. George and the Dragon).

Morris, William: Sigurd the Volsung.

Nepos, C.: Tales of Great Generals.

Niebuhr, B. G.: Greek Heroes.

Pyle, Howard: Some Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; Stories of King Arthur and His Knights.

Ragozin, Z. A.: Siegfried and Beowulf.

Tappan, Eva M.: In the Days of Alfred the Great; In the Days of William the Conqueror.

Warren, Maude Radford: Robin Hood and His Merry Men.

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CHAPTER FIVE
The Story Interests of Childhood (Continued)

D. ROMANTIC PERIOD

At about the age of twelve or thirteen the child’s rougher instincts begin to soften. Romance and sentiment develop. He becomes particular about his appearance. It is less of a task than formerly to get the boy to wash his face and hands, and he has not the antipathy toward civilized attire that he had in the days when Robinson Crusoe was the hero. Instead, he manifests a liking for being dressed according to prevailing modes, sometimes changing so suddenly from a dirty cave dweller into a dandy that it is like the metamorphosis from grub to butterfly. He craves socks and ties of bright colors and clothes that attract attention. If fashion prescribes peg-topped or straight, spare trousers, he wants them extremely wide or extremely narrow, and is willing to have his chin sawed unmercifully if high collars are the vogue, not because of a fit of hysteria, but because he has entered the period when sex awakens. He is becoming interested in the girls and wishes to be dressed in a manner that will cause them to be interested in him; and very often his taste for literature changes as completely as his personal habits. He desires stories of a higher type of heroism than those he craved in an earlier period, stories of romance and chivalry, and now is the time to give him the epic in its entirety, because of the deep racial emotions therein expressed.

He has had many of the adventure tales from the epics during the earlier period. Now he is ready for those tinged with romance, those pervaded by a spirit of fiery idealism in which knights risk limb and life in loyalty to principle, for fealty to king, or in defense of some fair lady. Percival seeking the Grail is a finer hero to him than Percival battling with the Red Knight, and the vow of the men of the Round Table means something because he can understand it. In a vague, indefinite way romance is touching his own life, and his noblest emotions are awakened by the noble words:

To reverence the king, as if he were

Their conscience, and their conscience as their king,

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,

To honor his own word as if his God’s,

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,

To love one maiden only, cleave to her,

And worship her by years of noble deeds.

Boys and girls in the heroic period enjoyed only the Arthurian stories that glorify physical bravery, those of jousting and conflict into which women do not enter. But now they delight in such tales as those of Geraint and Enid, of Launcelot and Elaine, and some of the adventures of Tristram.

Here a word of caution is necessary. Like the Old Testament stories, these romantic tales will arouse the noblest emotions and highest ideals if given with wisdom, but if told thoughtlessly may create an almost morbid desire for the vulgar. Therefore the non-professional narrator should use for his work some retold version of the King Arthur tales instead of adapting from Le Morte d’Arthur, because there is much in the original that should be eliminated in presenting it to those in the adolescent period. The Pyle or Radford editions are excellent, likewise The Boy’s King Arthur, by Sidney Lanier, each of which keeps the spirit of the poem, but omits everything objectionable.

The story of King Arthur, embracing as it does the Grail legend, should be followed by the German tale of “Parsifal,”—not the Wagner opera version, but the original medieval legend, “The Knightly Song of Songs” of Wolfram von Eschenbach. This has been retold beautifully by Anna Alice Chapin in The Story of Parsifal, a book with which every child in the romantic period should be familiar. Miss Guerber, in her Legends of the Middle Ages, relates the tale of Titurel and the Holy Grail, which will be helpful to the narrator because of the light it throws on the origin of the legend. But for a telling version there is none equal to that of Miss Chapin, none in which the lofty chivalric spirit of the medieval poem is portrayed so faithfully.

The romantic portion of all the national epics, as well as that of Le Morte d’Arthur, is excellent material for the story-teller in the early adolescent period. The Nibelungenlied, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and parts of Jerusalem Delivered feed boys and girls in the early teens as pure adventure stories fed them a year or two before. And if the narrator would have his young listeners enjoy the epical tales to the uttermost, let him quote freely from the epic itself as he tells them. During this age, when romance and sentiment run high and life is beheld through a rainbow-hued glamour, poetry is a serious and beautiful thing. The frequent interpolation of it into a story heightens the pleasure in that story, and young people listen with the gleaming eyes of intense feeling to words like these of Siegfried:

“Ever,” said he, “your brethren I’ll serve as best I may,

Nor once while I have being, will head on pillow lay,

Till I have done to please them whate’er they bid me do;

And this, my Lady Kriemhild, is all for love of you.”

Moreover, young people should understand that the epics were first given to the race in poetic form, and in leading them to that knowledge we can lead them also to an appreciation of the majestic, sweeping measures of the Iliad or Odyssey or Nibelungenlied, which is in itself worth thought and labor on the part of the story-teller.

The Langobardian myths, Dietrich von Bern, the story of Gudrun, of Charlemagne and Frastrada and Huon of Bordeaux, are intensely interesting in this period. Joan of Arc never fails to charm, while tales of the minnesingers, the troubadours, and the Crusaders open gates into lands of enchantment.

Oh, the romance in the lives of these medieval wanderers! Walther von der Vogelweide, too poor to buy him a coat, yet swaying the thought of the German lands; Bernard of Ventadour, among the flaming roses of Provence, making music at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine; Richard Cœur de Lion, riding with a singing heart toward Palestine; De Coucy, Frederick Barbarossa, and scores of others who lived and achieved in that distant, colorful time! Their lives are gleaming pages in the history of their age, and their stories are glorious ones to give to boys and girls who crave the romantic.

Wonderful, too, is the account of the Children’s Crusade, of Stephen, a happy shepherd on the hills of Cloyes, and that other lad of Cologne, who, fired with desire to restore to the Christian world places the Moslem had defiled, sailed away with their followers to shipwreck and slavery. In connection with this tale the children should hear, if possible, some of the music from Gabriel Pierne’s great cantata, The Children’s Crusade. It will give them a clearer, more vivid idea of the preaching of the boy apostle, of the gathering of the company, of the pilgrimage along the Rhine and Seine, of their rejoicing upon reaching the port of Marseilles, and of the light of noble purpose that glorified their eyes as they went singing to the ships. Perhaps historians have proved the account of this crusade to be just a myth. Tell it anyway, for whether it be fact or fiction the tale is too lovely for young folk to miss.

There is another type of biographical story, that of the man and woman of moral courage whose life was not so chromatically picturesque as that of him who fought the Saracens or sang in old Provence, but nevertheless thrills, fascinates, and influences. Florence Nightingale is a good example. Beautiful, the daughter of rich and distinguished parents, she might have reigned a social queen in England; yet she spent her young womanhood studying how to alleviate human suffering, toiling under the burning sun of the East, battling with disease at the risk of health and life, and well deserving the title given her by those she comforted, “The Angel of the Crimea.” I have seen girls of sixteen listen with tears in their eyes to the story of this noble Englishwoman, and have watched the throats of boys throb and pulsate upon hearing the account of the British Army and Navy banquet at which the question was asked, “Who, of all the workers in the Crimea, will be remembered longest?” and every voice replied in refrain, “Florence Nightingale!” Several years ago a questionnaire, distributed at a convention of nurses, revealed the fact that ten per cent of those there had been influenced toward their life career by the story of this great English nurse. Yet there are dubious souls who wonder if story-telling pays! If the narrator can have only a few books from which to draw material for the romantic period, Laura E. Richards’ Life of Florence Nightingale ought to be one of the number. It is sympathetically and beautifully told, an artist’s tribute to an immortal woman.

Workers with youths in the adolescent period are brought face to face with one of the gravest problems educators have to solve. What is to be done about lovesick boys and girls, those in whom the elemental passions have awakened yet who have not the judgment and self-control that age and experience bring? How are we to keep them, in their first emotional upheaval, from losing all sense of proportion and from pursuing a course that may lead to disaster? The freedom given in these days of coeducation, and the unrestricted circulation of novels and stories dealing with the relations of the sexes, which may be worthy creations from the standpoint of art, but which distort the ideas of unformed youth, make possible a condition that often appalls parents and high-school teachers and sets them to wondering how to meet it.

Ellen Key suggests a remedy. In this period when the world-old emotions are first aroused, she advocates the use of love stories that are pure in tone and high in ideal. We cannot change human nature and keep the boy of sixteen from being drawn as if by a magnet to the maid who is lovely in his eyes, but we can give him an ideal that will make his feeling an elevating thing instead of a debasing one. We can put into the heart of the girl a poetry and idealism that will keep her worthy of the prince, and we can do it through literature. Instead of leaving her free to roam unguided and read whatever falls into her hand, or of sitting like a board of censors beside her and goading her toward the forbidden, which always allures, we can lead her to delightful, wholesome stories, of which there are a goodly number. This does not mean confining her to writers of several generations ago. Present-day youths know that almost every one reads current books, and they intend to have them, too. Therefore let the story-teller use the best of the new, even as he uses the best of the old. Let him refer frequently to it and tell enough of it to awaken such an interest that it will be read. A good plan is for the teacher of English to devote a few minutes each week to the discussion of some recent book or books, and to give lists of those that boys and girls will enjoy. In public libraries slips should be posted, upon which are named the most desirable of recent publications, and problem novels should be excluded from shelves to which the public has access. Thus our adolescent children may be led to glean from the best of the new. But meanwhile let us not neglect the old.

One of the lovely works with which to familiarize high-school pupils is Ekkehard, by Joseph Victor von Scheffel, which, aside from its value as a historical novel, is one of the noblest love stories ever written. It is a charming picture of life in the tenth century, when the Hunnic hordes swept like a devastating flame into the peaceful Bodensee region. Hadwig, proud duchess of Suabia, Ekkehard, the dreaming, handsome monk who goes from the monastery of St. Gall to become Latin instructor at Castle Hohentwiel and learns far more than he teaches, Praxedis, the winsome Greek maid, Hadumoth the goose girl, and the goat boy Audifax, all are fascinating, appealing characters. From beginning to end the book is intensely interesting, and as Nathan Haskell Dole says, “full of undying beauty.”

Another charming work of a German writer is Moni the Goat Boy, by Johanna Spyri. The novels of Eugénie Marlitt are wholesome and well written, and give vivid pictures of life in the smaller courts of Europe. Those of Louisa Mühlbach portray in a remarkable manner the lives of some of the notable figures of history, and the intimate glimpses they give of such characters as Frederick the Great, Schiller, Goethe, Marie Antoinette, and Maria Theresa, with their reflection of the color and ceremony of a bygone day, cause them to mean in this period what adventure tales mean to boys and girls of ten.

In drawing from Germany, let us not forget Georg Ebers, who lifts the cloud of mystery that veils old Egypt and permits us to share the romance, the loves, the joys and sorrows of men and women of the Pharaohs’ time. His works are not dull inscriptions gathered from sepulchers and mummies, but moving pictures of living, breathing men and women, filmed by the genius of a master; and the triumphs of the Princess Bent-Anat, the sufferings of the captive Uarda, and the spectacular victory of the royal charioteer are so real that they seem to be in the here and now instead of in the early morning of the world.

From France we may glean without limit. Georges Ohnet, Jacques Vincent, Ludovic Halévy, and dozens of other writers have produced works that are not only a part of the education of every one who aspires to become a cultured man or woman, but are as fascinating as fairy tales to a child. Then there is the great treasure house of English and American literature, as rich in priceless things of pen and brain as the gallery of the Vatican is rich in paintings and sculpture. Boys and girls will not draw from this wealth unguided, because they do not know where it is stored. But if we give them frequent glimpses of its brightness, if we half open the door of the repository and let them peep inside, they will follow, seeking it, as the miner follows the half-revealed ore vein, or as Ortnit of old pursued the Fata Morgana. They need not drift into pools that breed disease, when by enough story-telling to awaken their interest in the beautiful and fine they may sail into open streams where the water is clear, and where there are no submerged reefs to wreck their fragile crafts.

Sources of Story Material for the Romantic Period

Antin, Mary: The Promised Land.

Bolton, Sarah K.: Famous Leaders among Men.

Boutet de Monvel, L. M.: The Story of Joan of Arc.

Brooks, Elbridge Streeter: Historic Girls.

Buell, Augustus C.: John Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy.

Buxton, Ethel M. Wilmot: A Book of Noble Women; Stories of Persian Heroes.

Chapin, Anna Alice: The Story of Parsival.

Church, Alfred James: Stories from the Iliad; Stories from the Odyssey.

Creighton, Louise von Glehn: Some Famous Women.

Gilbert, Ariadne: More than Conquerors.

Gilchrist, Beth Bradford: Life of Mary Lyon.

Guerber, Helène A.: Legends of the Middle Ages.

Lanier, Sidney: The Boy’s King Arthur.

Lockhart, John Gibson: Ancient Spanish Ballads.

Lowell, Francis Cabot: Joan of Arc.

Nicholson, J. S.: Tales from Ariosto.

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas: The Roll Call of Honor.

Richards, Laura E.: Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea.

Snedeker, Caroline D.: The Coward of Thermopylæ.

Southey, Robert: The Life of Nelson.

Sterling, Mary Blackwell: The Story of Parzival; The Story of Sir Galahad.

Strickland, Agnes: The Queens of England; The Queens of Scotland.

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CHAPTER SIX
Building the Story

Story-telling is a creative art, and therefore a knowledge of underlying principles is as indispensable to the narrator as to the sculptor or painter. Without this knowledge he cannot hope to adapt material to his needs, but must be limited in his choice to what is already in form to give to children; with it he can avail himself of many opportunities to bring to his charges treasures of which they could know nothing but for his ability to dig them from the profound tomes in which they are hidden, polish and clarify them, and put them in a setting within the understanding of the child. For this reason a course in story-writing is a part of the training of the professional story-teller, and while the mother or teacher cannot make such extensive preparation, she may to advantage master and apply a few cardinal principles of construction.

The beginning of the oral story should never be an introduction, because from the first word the child expects something to happen, and if nothing does happen his attention scatters and interest is lost. Therefore the narrator must bring his actors on the stage and get them to work at once; he must not let them stand around waiting while he gives a detailed description of their hair and eyes and of the clothes they wear, but must have them do something. It is often necessary to make some explanatory remarks in the beginning, but it should be done in such a way that the hearer has no time to wonder when the story is going to begin. For instance, if your tale is about a boy in Holland, do not delay bringing the boy in while you tell about the country. Let him enter at the beginning, and then, by a sentence here and a clause or phrase there, give the setting with the action. The story must bristle with human interest; for while the child knows nothing about the meaning of that term, he nevertheless demands that something happen, and if nothing does happen you lose his attention. The written story may depend for its charm upon character drawing and local color, but the oral story demands plot, and if this plot is badly hung together the story fails in its aim, for it does not make a deep impression.

The narrative style is better adapted to beginning the oral story than dialogue, because it is more easily handled by the novice. Of course the professional story-teller is not restricted to one field, and genius is privileged to range at large and ignore rules with no dire results. But it is safe for the amateur to keep to the narrative style. In the depths of dialogue, his little craft may founder, but the much-loved words “Once upon a time” or “Long, long ago” arrest the attention immediately, even though the teller be not an artist; and having made a good beginning, he is reasonably sure of holding his hearers to the end. On the other hand, if he does not get them at the start, his story-telling time is apt to end in failure.

There are no set phrases or clauses with which one must begin a story, and it would be a mistake to say that dialogue can never be used safely in opening the oral story, for the professional often uses it with fine effect; but it is easier and safer for the amateur to use the narrative beginning, and introduce dialogue as the plot develops.

Dr. Berg Esenwein, whose excellent work, Writing the Short Story, will be of value to the story-teller as well as to the story-writer, lays down these rules:

“Do not strike one note in the beginning and another in the body of the story.

“Do not touch anything that is not a live wire leading direct to the heart of the story.

“Do not describe where you can suggest.”

An examination of some of the perfect stories of the world shows that these rules hold good in every case. The tales of Grimm, Andersen, Perrault, and Bechstein are flawless in construction, and each plunges directly into the thread of the story. Take, for instance, “The Three Tasks” of Grimm:

There once lived a poor maiden who was young and fair, but she had lost her own mother, and her stepmother did all she could to make her miserable.

“The Pea Blossom,” of Hans Christian Andersen:

There were once five peas in a pod. They were green and the pod was green, and they thought all the world was green.

“Red Riding Hood,” as written by Perrault, begins thus:

Once upon a time there lived in a small village in the country a little girl, the prettiest, sweetest creature that ever was seen. Her mother loved her fondly, and her grandmother doted on her still more.

“The Twin Brothers” by Grimm:

There were once two brothers, one of whom was rich and the other poor. The rich brother was a goldsmith and had a wicked heart. The poor brother supported himself by making brooms, and was good and honest.

It is the same in Ruskin’s “King of the Golden River,” in Robert Southey’s “Three Bears,” in all the tales of De Maupassant that are suitable for telling, and in those of Alphonse Daudet. Note the beginning of Daudet’s “Last Lesson”:

Little Franz did not want to go to school that morning. He would much rather have played. The air was so warm and still. You could hear the blackbirds singing at the edge of the wood, and the sound of the Prussians drilling down by the old sawmill.

Every one of these stories begins with narrative, and every one is a perfect tale for telling.

Next in consideration comes the body of the story, which our rhetoric teachers taught us is a succession of events moving toward the climax. Until the climax is reached the oral story must be full of suspense. In other words, the hearer must be kept guessing about what is going to happen. The child does not care about a story in which he sees the end. He does enjoy hearing the same story told over and over again if it thrilled him at the first telling, because he likes to re-experience that thrill. But if a new tale holds no suspense, it falls flat. Stevenson says: “The one rule is to be infinitely various—to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, yet still to gratify. To be ever changing, as it were, the stitch, yet still to give the effect of an ingenious neatness.” In other words, the succession of events must follow one another in a regular sequence, and each must contribute something to the one following it.

As a rather homely illustration of the meaning of this, we may say that plot centers around a hole, and in a well-constructed story the steps by which the hero gets into the hole are traced, and then those by which he gets out. The getting out is the climax or, as Dr. Barrett says, “the apex of interest and emotion.” In other words, it is the top of a ladder, and the story must move in an unbroken line toward that topmost rung. If it does not do this, if the thread of the tale is broken to interpolate something that should have been told in the beginning, the narrator loses his audience.

The climax must be a surprise to the child. This holds good in all the great oral stories. Take as an example “The Ugly Duckling”:

And he flew toward the beautiful swans. As soon as they saw him they ran to meet him with outstretched wings.

“Kill me,” he said.

But as he bent his head he saw reflected in the water, not a dark, gray bird ugly to see, but a beautiful swan.

In Hawthorne’s “Great Stone Face” the climax lies in the discovery that Ernest is the likeness of the Great Stone Face, a delightful surprise to the child.

It is the same in “Red Riding Hood,” in “Tarpeia,” in “Why the Sea Is Salt.” It is the same in Daudet’s “Last Lesson.” Note the splendid climax of that masterpiece, the surprise that comes to Franz as he sits awaiting punishment, when the teacher, in all kindness, makes this announcement:

“My children, this is the last time I shall ever teach you. The order has come from Berlin that henceforth nothing but German shall be taught in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. This is your last lesson in French.”

With very young children the surprise element should be simple. Repetition used in a sequence, or jingle, accomplishes it well, as in the “Fee, fi, faugh, fum” in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” or “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” in “The Three Bears,” or “The better to see you, hear you, eat you” in “Red Riding Hood.” Each time the child hears the expression his interest is roused to a higher pitch, and his imagination is fired to such a point that he expects almost anything to happen.

After the climax is reached, the oral story should descend rapidly to a close. Many of the best oral stories end in the climax, and those that do not, add but a sentence or two or a paragraph at most to round out to completion. But they do not moralize and point out a lesson to the child. They leave him to see the moral for himself, and he sees it more clearly and is the more deeply impressed by it if he is allowed a few moments of silence after the completion of the story, instead of being drawn into conversation concerning it. Marie Shedlock, the English story-teller who has done so much to put the narrator’s art upon the plane where it deserves to be, advocates five minutes of silence after each story period, and in my own experience I have found that it is of value to the child. Conditions under which one works will, of course, govern this; but above all, do not end a story that delights a boy or girl and then kill the whole effect by saying, “Now, Peter, what does that story teach you?” Give the child credit for being an intelligent human being, and do not spoil a tale for him by turning it into a sermon while he is still tingling with the wonder and joy of it.

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CHAPTER SEVEN
Telling the Story

Since story-telling, like music, is an art, it is no more possible for every mother, teacher, or librarian to become a Scheherazade than it is possible for every child who takes music lessons to blossom into a Mozart or a Mendelssohn. The inspiration, the creative fire that beguiles the wrath of a sultan or gives birth to a symphony, emanates from within, from the fairy germs planted somewhere in the soul and nurtured into fruition through unceasing effort. Yet it is possible for every worker with children, provided he be willing to devote some time and labor to the study of technique, to learn to tell stories convincingly and entertainingly, although not with the artistry of the professional.

First of all, whenever possible, he should choose stories that appeal to him, those he will enjoy giving his listeners because they fit his own moods, for he cannot hope to tell every variety of tale with consummate excellence any more than an actor can be supreme in all types of rôles. The genius of Sothern displays itself to best advantage in the tragedies of Shakespeare, while that of Henry Miller, Forbes-Robertson, or David Warfield is suited to dramas of another kind. Each of these artists tried various rôles until he found his forte. Then he kept to the field in which he could excel, concentrating all his effort upon it. So it should be with the story-teller. He should experiment with every kind of narrative, then make a specialty of the one in which he can be at his best, and use it to accomplish his most far-reaching results. Of course the mother or teacher cannot confine herself to one variety of story. Her interests being varied and many, she cannot hope to reach the height of specialization attained by the artist who has but one purpose, one aim, and never swerves from it. She must endeavor to acquire a fair degree of proficiency in the rendition of every type of story, that she may not be found wanting by her youthful auditors; but she should specialize with the kind of tale that is nearest an expression of her own moods, because in this way she can obtain the most gratifying results.

Perhaps she is particularly skilled in presenting humorous material. Then let her use that ability as a magnet to draw her hearers to the story period and to hold them through it to the end. A good plan is to begin the program with a merry tale to put the group into a happy, receptive mood, follow it with a serious one containing the message or information the children should receive, and then give another humorous one. The serious narrative may be difficult for her to handle, and may not be given with the skill and charm that mark her rendition of another type of conte, but the children, understanding that one of her delightful “funny” stories is to follow, will listen through the less desired number and unconsciously receive its lesson, because of their eagerness to hear the succeeding one. Thus, by knowing her field of excellence and making the most of it, she can carry children into other fields because of their delight in meeting her in the one in which she is most at home.

After the story is selected, the atmosphere and setting should be studied. The teller should have a clear idea of the topography of the country in which the events occur, of the customs of the people who move through it, of their homes, their modes of life, and their manner of dress, because the more into the spirit of the tale he can put himself, the more effectively will he give it. If it be a narrative of Scotland in the days of Bruce, he should try to hear the bagpipes, see the lochs and glens of the Highlands, and walk side by side with the heroes of that time. This means gleaning many fields for materials and giving something of an artist’s labor to preparation, in which, of course, he will be limited by the time at his disposal. But according to the preparation will be the result, and to believe previous thought and study unnecessary because one has natural facility for story-telling is to be gravely mistaken. Artists of the stage discovered long ago that no matter how gifted they may be, nothing can take the place of preparation. Adrienne Lecouvreur demonstrated the truth of this statement several centuries ago when she revolutionized acting, and theatrical folk are still demonstrating it, for in just this respect lies the difference between the third- and fourth-rate player and the great dramatic star. The leading man or woman who is satisfied to learn lines and do nothing more, does not get beyond stock. But one ambitious to climb to the top rung of the histrionic ladder will travel every bypath that may possibly yield him a fuller and richer comprehension of the part he has to play. Geraldine Farrar read everything obtainable about Japan and Japanese life before attempting to create the rôle of “Madame Butterfly,” and Maude Adams spent months studying the life of the Maid of Orleans, following every step of her career from the hills of Domrémy to the pyre at Rouen, before being satisfied to present “Jeanne d’Arc” at the Harvard Stadium. So it must be with the story-teller. Only the professional can devote weeks, or even days, to the preparation of one program, but every one who attempts to tell stories must know more than the plot of the tale and must have felt its events in all their possibilities, if his hearers in their turn are to feel them.

The amount of preparation necessary varies with the individual. Those possessing natural facility and those who heard much story-telling in childhood need less than those whom Nature has not gifted, or who were not so fortunate in early environment. But every one needs some preparation, and there is much slovenly, valueless story-telling because this fact is not generally recognized. Many teachers do not regard story-telling seriously enough, and devote far less thought to it than to other branches of their work, because the idea is prevalent that any one can spin a yarn or two. Consequently they accomplish little through the medium of the story. But there is another group of workers who believe that story-telling means as much today as it meant centuries ago, and its members are sending children into the libraries. As nearly as time and the conditions of their work will permit them, they are following in the footsteps of the medieval narrator. Like him, they are giving an artist’s labor to their work because they realize that great results come only through great effort. But the number of these story-tellers, compared with the workers with children, is very small, and consequently results are not yet gratifying. They can become gratifying only when child leaders cease to think that the story period is the one period of the day for which no preparation need be made, and realize that every minute devoted to previous thought and study will make the language come more spontaneously and fluently and will bring before the eyes of the listeners pictures that are clear because they first have been clear before the eyes of the teller.

Every scene in a story should be visualized until it is as vivid as a painting on a canvas. It must be studied and imagined until it shifts smoothly and rapidly into the succeeding one. Then there will be no danger of the teller having to pause and think what comes next, or of having to interpolate something that should have been introduced at an earlier stage of the tale. This is not equally easy for every one. Those who are imaginative by nature will find it no task, while for others it will be difficult at first. But no one need be discouraged. Each succeeding attempt will bring clearer pictures and smoother shifting of scenes, and gratifying results will follow labor and perseverance. It is a good plan for the beginner to jot down in outline form the successive events of the story and study them until he can carry the sequence in his mind.

When the pictures are clear and the order of events is fixed, the story should be practiced. This does not mean that it should be learned verbatim. Untrained narrators often make the mistake of memorizing paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence, and then giving the tale like a recitation, which is not story-telling at all. Story-telling is a constructive, creative art, and the tale that grips and convinces and inspires must be told in a manner that makes it seem like the teller’s own. Practicing the story means facing an imaginary audience and describing so vividly and clearly what is seen that others may see the pictures that pass before the mind’s eye.

Shall gesture and facial gymnastics be used? This depends entirely upon the temperament and personality of the narrator. If it is natural for him to gesticulate as he speaks, gesture will come spontaneously and will heighten the effect of the tale. But if movements of hand and head and body are not spontaneous, they will mar the rendition and scatter the interest of the listeners by dividing it between the teller and the tale. Story-telling then becomes touched with affectation and loses its artistry. It degrades the story-teller into a sort of acrobatic performer and makes him a personage upon whom the attention is centered, which is not as it should be. He is simply the medium through which the picture is made clear to the audience. He is not an actor, and should not occupy the center of the stage. As Dr. Partridge says: “The story-teller should pleasingly suggest the mood and scene of the story, then step into the background, turn down the lights on the present, and carry his hearers to a distant region, which he must make, for the time being, more real than the here and now.” This is why the story-teller is at his best away from the glare of electricity, among the shadows of a summer gloaming, or by the open hearth when the firelight is dim, because then his hearers do not see him or think of him, but only of the pictures and scenes painted by his voice and words.

Therefore let the guiding rule of the narrator be, “I must describe pictures so that others will see them, and think, not of me, but of the scenes to which I lead them.” And he must do it in his individual way. If gesture comes naturally, it belongs in the tale. If it is studied and artificial, it destroys the effect and value. Some of the greatest story-tellers of the past used no gesture, while others used body, head, and hands with wonderful effect. They were persons of strong individuality and did things in an individual way. Let the present-day story-teller profit by their example.

Change of voice in dialogue adds to clearness of pictures. Nothing is more colorless than a reading by one whose intonation is not in keeping with the part he interprets, and the story told in a monotone is boresome and valueless to the child. He associates tone and action and wants them to be true to each other. He is dissatisfied if the old witch speaks like a loving mother, while the heavy tones of the wicked giant, the gentle ones of the good fairy, and the mirthful, rippling notes of the joyous, beautiful maiden delight him and make him responsive to the tale. They transform the personages of the story into living, breathing creatures who walk in his presence and smile or frown in his face.

Pauses are wonderfully effective in heightening the interest in a story. Children fairly quiver with expectation if frequent pauses are used when the moments of suspense grow big. They creep nearer in their eagerness to hear about what happens next, fearing that they will miss a bit of the attractive thread. One small boy, asked why he took such delight in listening to a certain story-teller, said: “I don’t know if it’s the way she looks or the way she says it. She’ll be going along, telling about what happens, and all at once she’ll say, ‘And then——’ and stop a little bit until you think all kinds of things are going to happen.” This feeling is general with children, although they may not voice it, and behind the naïve words is a psychological truth. The pause heightens the dramatic effect and focuses the interest on the coming sentences.

Above all things, there should be no stopping in the midst of a tale to correct a child. If one shows evidence of lagging interest, mention his name as if the story were being told for him. “And, John, when little Red Riding Hood reached her grandmother’s house she knocked on the door.” This makes him feel that although many children are listening to the story, it is being given solely for his benefit. It touches his pride and grips his attention long enough to enable the narrator to muster all his forces and heighten the interest in the tale so that it will abound in suspense from that point. If it fails to do that, something is wrong, either with the selection or the presentation. Perhaps the pictures are not being made clear because they were not first clear in the mind of the teller. Perhaps the story is not an interesting one to that particular group of children. It is the narrator’s business to find the reason, just as artists in Europe must learn what is at fault when their hearers hiss. Audiences on the Continent are not so polite as those in America, and there is no mistaking their feeling about a performance. When sounds of disapproval sweep over the house, the performer must rise to heights that will compel admiration or face a ruined career. Likewise, when a small boy becomes troublesome, the story-teller should not pause to correct him, but should make the tale so thrillingly fascinating that the lad forgets to be naughty. Mothers seldom meet with this problem, but settlement workers are having to solve it constantly, and they do it successfully only by knowing what lies close to the child’s interests and telling stories that touch those interests.

There are those who denounce story-telling in the schoolroom because they happen to have known of poor story-telling and the disorderly conduct that often ensues when the children’s interest is not held. Not long ago I came across this statement in the report of a lecture delivered at a teachers’ institute:

“It is to be hoped that story-telling will soon be eliminated from the primary grades, and that the spectacle of a teacher pausing in the midst of a tale to grasp a child by the arm and exclaim, ‘Here, Johnny, straighten up and listen,’ will become past history.”

It certainly is to be hoped that such story-telling will be eliminated, but it is no more fair to condemn story-telling as an art or to deprecate its value as an educational or ethical factor because there is poor story-telling, than it is to decry painting and sculpture because there are bunglers with brushes and chisels. The remedy does not lie in abolishing it, but in elevating the standard of the workers to a higher plane and in demonstrating that story-telling syncopated by scoldings and admonitions is not story-telling at all.

When shall we tell stories? Whenever, in the opinion of the teacher, a story will do more effective work than something else. Do not depend wholly on regular periods. These have a place on every school, library, or settlement program, but the story period should not be the only time for telling stories, because often a tale told at the psychological moment will make a deeper and more lasting impression than those given during a dozen regular periods. When the children are tired, tell a story for rest and relaxation. If there has been a fight or swearing, follow up the incident as soon as possible with an apt narrative. It will do more good than moralizing. If the geography class is struggling over the map of Turkey and can see nothing but a series of dots and marks on a piece of paper, put aside the formal recitation for that day and tell them of the building of the Mosque of Ahmed the First on the Golden Horn, of the merry craftsmen who raised the dome of St. Sophia, and give them some idea of how this glorious waif of the Orient came to stand on European soil. Make story-telling fit occasions and conditions instead of trying to make conditions fit story-telling.

And above all, never moralize! As one authority says, “It is bad pedagogy and worse art.” Remember what Dr. van Dyke says: “If a story is worth telling, moralizing is not necessary.” It is not only unnecessary, but harmful. The child sees for himself that virtue is rewarded and evil-doing is punished. He resents not being given credit for having sufficient intelligence to understand it, and a personal application antagonizes him.

Tell the tale in a direct, unassuming manner—not as if you are talking down to a group of children, but as if you are one of the number, talking with them. Boys and girls dislike the patronizing story-teller as much as adults dislike the patronizing person, and are quick to detect affectation and insincerity. They will not receive the message a posing raconteur has to give, because his manner of delivering it irritates and estranges them. The successful story-teller must be like the poet, a joy bringer, and he can be that only when his work is marked by sincerity and genuineness as clear as brook water.

Books on Story-Telling

Allison, S. B., and Perdue, H. A.: The Story in Primary Education.

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin: For the Story-Teller.

Bryant, Sara Cone: How to Tell Stories to Children.

Coe, Fanny E.: First Book of Stories for the Story-Teller; Second Book of Stories for the Story-Teller.

Cowles, Julia D.: The Art of Story-Telling.

Dye, Charity: The Story-Teller’s Art.

Forbush, William B.: Story-Telling in the Home.

Keyes, Angela M.: Stories and Story-Telling.

Lindsay, Maud: The Story-Teller for Little Children.

Lyman, Edna: Story-Telling: What to Tell and How to Tell It.

McMurry, Charles A.: Special Method in Primary Reading and Oral Work, with Stories.

Partridge, Emelyn N. and George E.: Story-Telling in the Home and School.

St. John, Porter: The Story in Moral and Religious Education.

Shedlock, Marie L.: The Art of the Story-Teller.

Wiltse, Sara E.: The Place of the Story in Early Education.

Wyche, Richard Thomas: Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them.

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CHAPTER EIGHT
Story-Telling to Lead to an Appreciation of Literature

One of the specific aims of education is to endow children with an appreciation of literature, and to this end much of a teacher’s energy is directed. From the elementary school through the university the curriculum includes a course in English, and even in kindergarten and primary grades a point is made of introducing children to those authors whose work is conceded to have a strong appeal for them. The first, second, or third grade boy is required to read and memorize selections from Stevenson, Riley, and Eugene Field; not infrequently he is detained after school because of failure to have his lesson prepared at recitation time, and responds to the requirement in a mood that brings discouragement to his teacher.

On the other hand, there are schools in which the literature or reading hour is a period of joy, where the learning of songs of the singers of childhood is accomplished without coercion. These schools are the ones in which the teachers have learned that the acquisition of knowledge, to be of real value, must be attended with enjoyment.

It is a mistake to believe that although the function of the school is to equip the man, the aim of education is only to give enjoyment in the future. It is also the aim of education to give enjoyment now, because in this way capacity for enjoyment in the future is made possible. The boy or girl whose early association with poetry or beautiful prose is attended with displeasure and discomfort is no more likely to be drawn to the finer types of literature later than the man or woman is apt to be fond of a person, the first meeting with whom was a disagreeable experience. If we would have the man love good literature, we must first lead the child to love good literature, and we can do this only through having him enjoy good literature.

Because story-telling brings pleasure to the child, it is a most effective means of leading him to an appreciation of literature. Through the medium of the story we not only can heighten his capacity for enjoyment and elevate the standard of his taste, but we can equip him with knowledge he will never acquire if the literature period is associated with force and punishment. If a tale brings pleasing pictures before his eyes and is beautiful in theme and language, he unconsciously forms a taste for beautiful language, for he is not only getting the succession of events that make the plot, but is also absorbing words and expressions. Certain sentences stick in his memory, and teachers who have children reproduce stories know that frequently they use the exact phrases and sentences that have been used by the teller. They do not remember these for a day or an hour and then forget them; they remember them as years go by, and associate certain words with certain narratives.

William McKinley once said that the mention of willows by a river made him think of the story of Moses in the bulrushes, and brought to mind this sentence: “And she hid the basket among the rushes in a spot where willows hung over the river.” The story had been told him in childhood and brought him enjoyment, and some of the narrator’s expressions left a lasting imprint on his mind. “I believe that story, more than anything else,” he once said, “gave me a fondness for elegant English.”

James A. Garfield voiced almost the same thought, declaring that his taste for literature was shaped by stories from great authors told him by his mother during his early years, and many other men of achievement have attested to the same truth. They have proved conclusively out of their own experience that even with little children it is possible to lay a foundation upon which a noble and enduring structure can be built. We can give them an appreciation of stories and poems that are among the gems of literature.

We can also interest children in the life of an author so that they will want to know something of his work. This statement often brings the question, “How, since little children want stories that are full of action, and not biographies of men and women they never have seen?” Is it not true that the childhood of all great men contained interesting experiences, that if told as stories will lead little people to want to know about what these boys and girls did when they grew up?

Robert Louis Stevenson is a good example. Every child will listen sympathetically to the tale of the poor little rich boy who was often so ill that he could not run and play, but who made the best of things and amused himself with toys on his bed. He built cities out of blocks. He watched the lamplighter go on his evening rounds along the street, and sometimes in the summer, the dewy, Scotch summer that can be pictured so attractively to children, when he went with his nurse to the country or the shore, he put leaves and chips in the river and pretended that they were boats. He dug holes in the sand with his wooden spade and laughed to see the vagrant waves come up and fill them. The child who hears about his various experiences will become intensely interested in little Robert, and will grow to love “The Land of Counterpane,” “The River,” “At the Seashore,” and other selections from A Child’s Garden of Verses. Every time he reads or hears them he will see a picture of the wee Scotch lad whose story touched his heart.

This is no untried theory. Through story-telling, the author of Treasure Island has become a living personage and A Child’s Garden of Verses a source of delight in more than one first grade. A teacher who had charge of forty little Italians devoted fifteen minutes each morning to stories of writers and their works, and by the end of the term the children had a knowledge of Stevenson and Field that amazed the superintendent. More valuable than the knowledge acquired was the capacity for real enjoyment of some of the works of these men, enjoyment so intense that during the half hour of song and games that was a feature of every Friday, it was not unusual for a small Tony or Gulielmo to flutter a brown hand and ask to be permitted to recite:

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings,

And nests among the trees.

Another teacher was rewarded for her work by hearing the mother of one of her pupils tell at a parent-teachers’ meeting of how a certain little lad amused himself while recuperating from measles by entertaining the household with songs from Stevenson and stories about little Robert, who became the big Robert that wrote the book.

In doing this sort of work, however, it is necessary to keep in mind the story interests of childhood, to remember that children are interested in children, and not begin, “When Robert Louis Stevenson was a little boy,” but rather, “Once there was a little boy who lived far away from here, and his name was Robert.” Let the approach be from the child to the man instead of from the man to the child. Focus the interest of children upon one like themselves, then lead in a natural way to the man and his achievements.

Sometimes children can be interested in a piece of literature through a story about it or suggested by it, because often one tale helps to illuminate and clarify and add interest to another.

Suppose a primary teacher or a mother wishes to take up Tennyson’s “Sweet and Low,” a piece of literature that is either a succession of vivid, delightful pictures or a vague group of words, according to the manner in which it is presented. Tell of the baby who lived with the father and mother in a fishing village on the Isle of Wight. Each day the father had to go far out to sea in a boat to catch fish to sell for money with which to buy food for his dear ones, and each night the baby laughed and crowed when he came home. Once he stayed later than usual, and baby did not want to go to bed without seeing him; but the mother sang a pretty song, saying that father would soon be home, and crooned and rocked her little one until he fell asleep. It was a pleasant evening, with a big, silver moon, and a man was out walking—a rich man who lived in a house on a hill high above the fishers’ huts. As he went by the cottage where the baby lived, he heard the mother singing, and the song was so sweet that he hurried home and wrote what it made him think about. Then follow with the poem, and the children will receive it gladly.

This same plan can be used with older children, but let the material be given in story form instead of as a series of disconnected incidents.

An excellent method is to give the story of a great writer’s work. This is effective with children of all ages, and often leads to the reading of books that otherwise would never be opened. Sometimes the objection is made that it is wrong to substitute the story of a work for the work itself, a statement no thinking person will gainsay. But this does not mean substitution. It means whetting the appetite until the child hungers for the thing you want him to have. Instead of telling him what he should read, arouse his curiosity to the point where he wants to read it, and the desired result will follow. Fifty years ago it was safe to give a boy or a girl a beautiful piece of literature and tell him he ought to read it, but it is not safe now, not because there is anything wrong with the children of our time, but because conditions are different. Books were rare and costly then, and young people read whatever came to hand. Today books are cheap and plentiful, and present-day literature plunges directly into the complications of the story. People are in a hurry to know what it is all about, because of the spirit of the age. There is less leisure now than there was half a century ago, as there is more competition, and results must be realized more rapidly than our forefathers realized them. Consequently we travel faster, get rich faster, and move more speedily in every way. Present-day literature reflects present-day spirit, and the story must begin with the opening sentence. Boys and girls simply will not go through pages of introductions and descriptions before striking the plot of the tale, no matter how beautiful those introductions and descriptions may be. They want books that get somewhere from the beginning. So the problem confronts all who are interested in the education of children: “How can we make them as eager to read Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray as they are to read Jack London and Phillips Oppenheim? How can they be made to go as gladly to Bulwer Lytton as they go to the Henty books?” By means of story-telling. Give them an idea of the plots of the masters of literature, enough to whet the desire to know more about them.

It is not sufficient just to tell the story, because it was not the plots of these writers that made them great artists. It was their manner of handling their plots, their delineation of character, the philosophy and human wisdom they put into the mouths of their heroes, and the boy or girl who does not become acquainted with these great creators during school days is likely never to know them, because he forms a taste for reading of a more ephemeral nature, and he may go through life a devourer of books, yet be only half educated.

Why is it that so many young people never look at the English classics after they leave high school, and would rather spend a morning at hard labor than in reading As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Because too much attention was given to the dissecting process when they studied these plays. Instead of being taught to see the beautiful and finished creation of some master, they were made to see the skeleton and to pull it to pieces. Some teachers assign a certain number of pages or paragraphs or stanzas for a lesson, and the pupils look up the words in the dictionary, point out the figures of speech, and scan the lines. Sometimes the teacher reads the assignment when it is made. Sometimes children dramatize it after they have torn it into shreds, or write a paraphrase. But the heart and soul of the masterpiece, the sheer beauty of it, are considered least of all, and students end by heartily hating something that they might have enjoyed and loved. Yet people wonder why the average American has so little appreciation of good literature, and think something is wrong with young folk who, after a high-school course in English, will read nothing but popular novels. There is nothing whatsoever the matter with the boys and girls. They simply follow the bent of all human beings and steer from the unpleasant toward the pleasant. They go to the books of the day that they can understand, because much of our great literature, presented as it is, means nothing to them. Less fortunate than youths of fifty years ago, they are not forced to read good books if they read at all. There are verdant, if less beautiful, meadows on every side where they may browse, and into them they go.

It is infinitely better that a child’s school life provide him with a capacity for the enjoyment of literature than that he have a technical knowledge of a few pieces of literature, because the latter endows him with a narrow, academic viewpoint, while the former makes possible a future growth, without a capacity for which life must be narrow and one-sided. A boy or girl may know that Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night or Macbeth, that Milton created “The Hymn to the Nativity” or Shelley “The Skylark,” be able to paraphrase each and analyze the sentences that comprise them, and not be a bit better fitted for life than he would be without that knowledge. But he is better equipped for life if he has acquired a capacity for the enjoyment of literature, so that to read a great book gives him pleasure or causes him to respond with sympathy, and the English teacher who does not develop this capacity in children has failed in his function.

The approach to the great field of literature must be through specific examples, just as the approach to an understanding of art or architecture must be through the canvases of Raphael, Cimabue, or Giotto, or the temples that were the triumphs of Egyptian, Babylonian, or Hellenic builders. But if they are to be enjoyed, acquaintance with these specific examples must be made in a pleasurable manner. They first must be beheld in a perspective that gives glimpses of them as complete and beautiful wholes, and not through the detailed workmanship of architrave or abacus or by focusing the attention on the massing of figures according to square or triangular outline. And just as the understanding and enjoyment of one great structure or painting give added interest to every other one, so, in the realm of literature, each masterpiece enjoyed gives capacity for the enjoyment of every other masterpiece met with in the future. Therefore the story, because it is a means of flashing the entire structure on the screen and making it possible for children to see the completed whole in all its beauty, is the English teacher’s most valuable tool.

Take Evangeline as an example. Most children leave school knowing that Longfellow wrote that poem, and that Evangeline lost her lover on the wedding day and spent the remainder of her life seeking him. But you cannot coax them to read the poem again because of the memory of the time when they studied it. And the pity of it is that there is no work of American literature so appealing to boys and girls in the adolescent period as Evangeline, if it is presented wisely.

Before they are asked to study it, if the story of the Acadian girl is told sympathetically and feelingly they are touched by its pathos and fired by the idealism of its characters, and they feel the charm of life in the quaint old village of Grand Pré. If, before they are told to read it, they have gone with the heroine through the magic of the narrator’s picturing, in her wanderings over mountain and lowland, into Indian camp and sequestered mission, living among strange peoples and sleeping by strange fires, they will read it with enthusiasm. It will become a joy instead of a burden, because they will have felt something of what was in the heart of the poet who wrote it, and not merely what appeared on the printed page.

Besides the main thread of the story, there are many sub-stories that, if told in connection with the poem, will add to the child’s enjoyment and understanding of it. Sometimes a name is rich in story material, yet often it is passed over with nothing more than a definition found in the pronouncing gazetteer, and a golden opportunity is lost.

Take, for instance, the line, “Now in the Tents of Grace of the gentle Moravian missions.” There is a footnote in most editions stating, “This refers to the Moravian mission of Gnädenhütten.” But what does that signify to children, since there were many missions in those early days? But if they are told of how the Moravians came from the distant German mountains to plant the tree of their faith in the Western wilds, they grow interested. They are fascinated as the tale goes on, picturing how these simple folk founded a mission in the woods of Ohio, which they named “Gnädenhütten” or “Tents of Grace,” and telling how a massacre occurred there in 1790, not savages killing off whites, but a band of marauding British troops slaughtering Christianized Indians as they toiled peacefully in their cornfields. Then, as Evangeline roams over the Southwest, into the bayou country of Louisiana, if pictures of the early life there are painted vividly by the story-teller, if she gives some of the events of old Creole days, the children will look forward to the Evangeline period.

This same method will add enjoyment to the study of other pieces of literature. The Courtship of Miles Standish, aside from the main plot, is rich in stories from the Bible. The children should look up these allusions, but the teacher should put life into them by giving the story. In fact, there is no piece of literature studied below the high school, or even during the early part of the high-school course, that cannot be presented with splendid results through the story-telling method. The concrete precedes the abstract in the order in which selections are considered, those through which a story thread runs being given in advance of the essay or treatise. By making the most of this story thread, literature study will become pleasurable and bring splendid response from the children. It requires effort and preparation, but it pays. It is worth much to the teacher who loves good literature, to look back over the years and think of the children she has led to appreciate and enjoy it. It is a tremendous satisfaction to have boys come back long after leaving her schoolroom and seek her out, because through her they learned to know something of the comfort that is to be found in good old books. One teacher, speaking of her experience, said: “It made all the effort seem richly worth while, when a broad-shouldered, sun-burned man went three hundred miles out of his way to see me on a home visit to America, and thank me for having led him to enjoy poetry.” As a boy he became intensely interested in The Lady of the Lake because his teacher gave the stories of Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu and of the clan life of the Highlands, and a pocket edition of Scott was a source of comfort to him during a surveying expedition in the wilds of West Australia, and took away the loneliness of nights spent by a camp fire with no companions save the native woodmen. He had learned to know Scott during his boyhood, and the capacity for enjoyment acquired through that association was a priceless possession to the man. If more teachers realized that story-telling is a direct road to the understanding of literature, and that it has its place in grammar and high-school grades as much as in the kindergarten, there would be less drudgery for them and more satisfying results.

Some Authors and Selections That Can Be Presented through the Story-Telling Method

Browning: Hervé Riel (Give picture of life of sailors on the Breton coast. Hervé Riel was so accustomed to taking fishing boats through the passage that the piloting of the ship did not seem any feat to him); How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix; An Incident of the French Camp; The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Tell how the poet came to write this work—to entertain a child who was visiting him).

Bryant: The White-footed Deer; The Woodman and the Sandal Tree; The Donkey and the Mocking Bird, and other poems from the Spanish.

Dickens: Little Nell (Old Curiosity Shop); Tiny Tim (Christmas Carol); Nicholas Nickleby; David Copperfield, and other child characters of Dickens.

George Eliot: Maggie Tulliver Cutting her Hair, Maggie Running Away to Live with the Gypsies, Tom and the Ferrets (The Mill on the Floss); Silas Marner and Little Eppie (Silas Marner).

Irving: Legend of Sleepy Hollow (The Sketch Book); The Governor and the Notary (Other stories from Tales from the Alhambra); The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Many chapters in this contain fascinating stories, which if told to the children will lead them to read the work); Rip Van Winkle (The Sketch Book) (Tell also the German story of Peter Claus, from which Irving drew his inspiration to write this tale; also the Chinese story, “The Feast of Lanterns,” the hero of which is an oriental Rip Van Winkle).

Kingsley: How They Took the Gold Train (Westward Ho!); Water Babies; Hypatia.

Longfellow: Evangeline; Courtship of Miles Standish; Hiawatha; King Robert of Sicily; St. Francis’ Sermon to the Birds (Tell story of St. Francis of Assisi); Paul Revere’s Ride; The Emperor’s Bird’s Nest; Walther von der Vogelweide (In this connection tell story of Walther and the Minnesingers. Story can be found in Pan and His Pipes, and Other Stories, Victor Talking Machine Company).

Southey: Inchcape Rock; Bishop Hatto and the Mouse Tower; The Well of St. Keyne.

Stevenson: Treasure Island; Kidnapped; Island Nights’ Entertainment.

Tennyson: The Holy Grail (This poem is beyond the understanding of boys and girls of grammar grades, or even early high-school years, but they may be familiarized with portions of it, and the Grail story is a wonderful one to give them. It should include also the tale of “Parsifal” and “Lohengrin,” as related by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Wagner).

This list is in no way comprehensive, but the wide-awake teacher will find it suggestive of a much longer one, which is as much as the author of a single text-book may hope for.

Sources of Material to Lead to an Appreciation of Literature

Lamb, Charles and Mary: Tales from Shakespeare.

Lang, Jeanie: Stories from Shakespeare Told to the Children.

Sweetser, Kate D.: Boys and Girls from George Eliot; Boys and Girls from Thackeray; Ten Boys from Dickens.

Swinton, William, and Cathcart, George R.: Book of Tales from Fine Authors.

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CHAPTER NINE
Story-Telling to Awaken an Appreciation of Music

The public school aims not only to give boys and girls a training that shall equip them with ability to gain a livelihood and provide for their material wants, but to give them resources within themselves from which to draw pleasure, broaden and deepen the emotional powers, enrich the soul by endowing it with capacity to respond to the beautiful and fine, and make them more sympathetic toward the joys and sorrows of their fellows. That is why the curriculum includes a course in music, drawing, and subjects that are branches of a great art. We do not expect to make professional musicians or painters of all the children who receive instruction, but aim to give the average child, the one who will grow to be an average, ordinary man, an appreciation of the things that give color and beauty to life and make him richer in mind and happier.

Taste is formed by what is heard in youth, and the child whose early years are associated with ragtime grows to be a devotee of ragtime, while he who hears the music of the masters becomes a man who loves great music. This is why the average European has a knowledge and love of melody that amazes Americans. He has heard good music from infancy. It is sung in the public meeting places of his town and whistled in the streets. The gamin of Naples, Rome, and Venice knows the arias from the operas as well as American children know their national anthem, and Verdi, Donizetti, and Rossini are more than names to him. He has heard their melodies from infancy, and his father or uncle or some street story-teller has familiarized him with the plots of their librettos. He knows something of the artists who sing the rôles, also, because the tailor and the barber and the baker not infrequently go to hear them, and they are a topic of conversation in the home. Here in America we have not had such opportunities. With us the opera and the symphony orchestra are exotics which only a minority has been trained to enjoy, and consequently we cannot be regarded as a musical people.

It is natural that this should be so, because, as compared with Continental lands, we are very young, and youth cannot hope to compete with maturity. But artistic standards in the United States are being raised steadily. Most of our great cities now have symphony orchestras and a season of opera, while the municipal band concert is part of the life of comparatively small towns, and the programs are of a higher order than formerly. We are on the upward move, and meanwhile every leader of children should do his part in the great work of helping to elevate the national musical standard.

The schools are doing something, but not enough, because much of the instruction they give is of a technical nature, and although pupils can read in several keys and beat time correctly, it does not follow that they are acquiring a capacity for the enjoyment of good music. Until one has sufficient mental development to understand something of the price that must be paid for artistic success, much attention to the technical vitiates interest in music, just as the dissecting method of study kills interest in literature. Many teachers make more of an effort to have children learn to read music than they do to have them enjoy it, and this close attention to the mechanics of the art makes the music period burdensome instead of enjoyable. Before the child can see any incentive in learning do—re—mi, he must hear and enjoy music and must understand that do—re—mi is a key that will unlock gates into larger fields of enjoyment. Because the hour is replete with drudgery rather than joy, the discipline of the music class is often a good deal of a problem, and although it is not an ideal condition, it exists more frequently than most people realize. A teacher whose class distinguished itself in sight singing at an institute, was asked how she made its members so proficient.

“Simply by keeping a strap on my desk and using it about every seven minutes,” she replied; “and those who did not have actual contact with it kept straight because they knew it was there.”

This is perhaps an extreme case, but the school-rooms in which the music lesson is a period of nervous strain for both teacher and pupils are numerous, and it is not strange that sometimes trustees question whether it might not be well to eliminate music from the list of public-school subjects.

An adage of the old Italian school of vocalists, whose methods have given so many glorious songsters to the world, was, “To sing, you must be happy,” and one of the most celebrated prima donnas of today attributes a large measure of her success to the fact that during childhood her mother had the wisdom never to make music burdensome by forcing her to it, but played for her and sang to her without stint, giving her countless opportunities of hearing music and leading her to love it. Then when she began formal study at twelve, her teacher did not harass her with exercises, but gave simple songs that she liked to sing, songs chosen to give her voice the exercise it needed and to appeal to the natural love of melody.

We might well apply this plan to our public-school music, and arrange courses so that children will hear much good music, even if the amount of technical work has to be greatly lessened. It is here that the story may do its far-reaching work in helping to make the music period pleasurable to the children and causing them to respond with keener pleasure to a higher standard of music.

Many narrators exclaim, “It is not possible for me to lead children to appreciate the great music when I do not know the great music myself.”

But it is possible. Of course it is easier for one who is familiar with the masterpieces of melody to lead children to them than for one who is not; but even though the mother or teacher was not in her own childhood familiar with Mozart or Mendelssohn, she can bring children to appreciate these artists because the talking machine has made it possible. She need not try to acquaint them with the technical terms, and mechanics of music, but she can arouse an interest that is the twin sister of inspiration, and she can do it in such a way that every minute devoted to the work is filled with delight. She can tell the life story of some great composer and familiarize the child with selections from his work that will guide him away from the cheap and tawdry. She can give him incidents connected with the composition of musical gems, and a glimpse into the great treasure house of musical literature that will cause him to want to know more of the achievements of the immortal melody makers. It is not necessary that one be a musician in order to do this. Most schools and many homes are now supplied with talking machines, and the records manufactured by the different companies bring masterpieces within the reach of all. Even the catalogs are rich in suggestion, and following the cues supplied by them, a little thought and labor will bring most gratifying results. Almost all the great composers had eventful childhoods, and the early days of Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, and many others are rich in incidents that children enjoy hearing. These biographies, sources for which are listed in the appended bibliography ([page 94]), if told in story form and followed by selections from the artist’s works, will make an impression and arouse an interest as nothing else can do. Do not, however, make the mistake of beginning with the man and leading down to his childhood. Begin with his early years and lead up to his achievements. The child will become interested in the man only through his childhood, because children are near his own interests, while adults are not. Many inexperienced story-tellers do not understand this, and are disappointed in their failure to hold their little hearers. This was demonstrated not long ago in a university course in story-telling. An incident in the childhood of Mozart was to be given in story form to introduce some of that composer’s works to a group of children. Eighty per cent of the five hundred preparing the paper began thus: “When the great Mozart was a little boy.” That introduction meant nothing to the children, because they did not know “the great Mozart,” and were not interested in strange men. But they were intensely interested in hearing about a child who long, long ago was sailing down the Danube with his father and sister Marianne and was very much distressed because the father would have to pay duty on the harp they carried and therefore, when they reached Vienna, Marianne could not have a new dress that she sadly needed. Little eyes sparkled and little hands clapped when the children heard how, as they reached the customhouse of the Austrian capital, young Wolfgang asked his father if he might play something on the harp, and his rendition so delighted and amazed the officials that the duty was waived and Marianne was shabbily clad no longer.

There are many musical stories besides those of lives of the composers that should be given to children: tales of the violin makers of Cremona, the minnesingers, the troubadours, the meistersingers, Pan and his pipes, Apollo and the lyre, David and the harp, King Alfred and the harp, the harp at Tara, the Crusaders bringing some stringed instruments into Europe, the development of the orchestra, the evolution of the harp from the bended bow of the early tribesmen, and the making of the piano. Stories of some of the operas, especially those based on the legends of the Grail and the Rhinegold, are delightful tales to give to children.

A good way to introduce children to a composer is by combining the story of his life with selections from his work, as in the following story about Schubert. This method may be applied to the study of any composer. Libraries are rich in materials, and the talking-machine companies bring the music within the reach of all; so there is no reason why the story-teller should not do his part in making our nation a music-loving land, as well as give pleasure to the children under his guidance.

“Whoever puts a beautiful thought or melody into the world,” writes an Indian poet, “gives more than a diamond of Golconda.” Whoever helps a child to understand and enjoy beautiful thoughts and melodies, gives in almost as great a measure as their creator. He too is a builder, leaving behind him something fit to stand, and labor of that kind does not go unrequited.

A BOY OF OLD VIENNA

Little Franz could hardly wait for the sun to rise. He had lain awake all night thinking of what morning would bring, and it seemed as if the long, dark hours would never end. But now it was dawn, and he knew that very soon the sun would gild the hilltops, and then the thing of which he had dreamed for days would come to pass.

“Are you up, Franz?” his mother called from below.

“Yes,” he answered cheerily, “up and dressing.”

The mother smiled at him as he ran down into the kitchen, for she knew how eagerly he had looked forward to this day. Josef, the kindly neighbor, had promised to take him that very morning to a warehouse where many fine pianos were kept, and he would spend hours among the beautiful instruments there. No wonder he was glad! The one his father provided for him was cheap and harsh, for Herr Schubert was just a poor schoolmaster and had few coins to spend for anything besides food and clothing. But that did not keep Franz from doing wonders with his music. He learned all he could from his brothers, and worked away at the poor piano because he could not help it. Now that he was soon to touch the keyboard of a really splendid instrument, he felt like a prince in a fairy tale.

They went out of the house and along the dingy street in which the Schuberts lived. Across the Danube they passed by the old stone bridge that led to the Ringstrasse, then northward into that part of the city where the warehouses stood. Groups of citizens in holiday attire hurried by, and now and then some great lord or lady in a fine carriage passed them on the way to worship at St. Stephen’s. But Franz thought only of reaching the warehouse, and he walked so fast that Josef, who was short and fat, began to grow red in the face and pant, and he was quite as glad as the boy when they reached the building.

Franz lost no time in getting to a piano. Sunday comes just once a week, and another would not come for seven long days. He sat down at one of the lovely instruments, playing and singing as if nothing in the world mattered so much as music. He was only eleven years old, and boys of that age usually want to be out with others, engaged in the sports and games boys love. But not so with Franz Schubert. He was happiest at his music. He played and played and was so busy that he did not see a stranger come into the warehouse or hear his voice in earnest conversation with Josef.

“You say he has had no music masters?” the man asked wonderingly.

Josef shook his head. “None but his brothers, Ignace and Ferdinand, and once, for a very short time, his father sent him to a singing tutor. But he said he could teach him nothing, for when he thought to give him something new he found he had learned it already.”

“Surely he is a wonder child,” the stranger remarked. “Be sure to tell his father to bring him tomorrow and we will try him.”

Then he passed out, but Franz did not see him. Nor did he know a word that had been spoken until on the way home, when Josef told him that the emperor’s choirmaster had passed by and was so pleased with his singing and playing that he wanted him in the royal choir.

So little Franz Schubert became a choir boy, and the master wondered more and more that one so young could know so much of music.

Then he went to a boys’ school. His clothes were not very fine, for he was poor. But he wore the best he had, a light gray suit that was far from handsome. Some of the richer boys thought it funny and nicknamed him “the miller.” But when Franz passed the severe singing examination so well that he was given one of the gold-braided honor uniforms, they did not tease him again. No one else did as well in the orchestra as the little Schubert lad. No one else sang as understandingly as he, and his master and fellow students, like the royal choirmaster, called him a wonder child. Every boy in the school liked him, and Franz liked them all too, but especially a young man named Spaun. And Spaun’s name is remembered to this day just because once upon a time he was kind to little Franz Schubert. He was almost twenty when Franz was but eleven, but they were jolly companions and the best of friends.

One day Franz said, “If I had some paper I know I could write a song.”

But paper he had not, because his father could not afford to buy it. Spaun always had a little money to spend, however, so Franz got the paper and wrote the song, and after that his friend supplied him with writing material. He enjoyed doing it because he liked the lad, but he did not realize that it would mean much to the world. It did mean a great deal, however, for some of the songs Franz wrote during his school days are still sung as among the sweetest in the world, and perhaps but for Spaun’s paper they might not have been written.

Well, Franz grew up just as other boys grow, and still he went on loving music and working at it, playing and writing songs. Almost everything he read or saw made him think of a melody, and every melody that formed in his brain was beautiful.

One evening he went into a restaurant in Vienna for his dinner. He had a small copy of Shakespeare in his pocket, and as he waited to be served he took it out and read. His eye fell upon the lines:

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,

And Phœbus ’gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chaliced flowers that lies.

They made him think of a song, and he looked about for paper upon which to write it. He asked the waiter to get him a piece, but the waiter could find nothing but a bill of fare. Schubert took that and wrote his melody, and when Shakespeare’s words were sung to it, the song sounded like this:

[At this point in the story run a record of “Hark, hark the lark.”]

Another time he was passing through a poor quarter of Vienna and heard a peasant serenading a girl. Schubert did not think the song a very pretty one, and he went home and wrote one that he liked better. This is how it sounds:

[Record of “The Serenade.”]

When Franz Schubert was a little child, he heard his father tell an old German story. It was called “The Erl King” and was about a witchlike creature who was supposed to take children from their parents. Franz always remembered it, and after he grew to manhood and read Goethe’s poem, “The Erl King,” a friend told him how the master came to write it. One wild winter night the poet was visiting in the home of a physician and a man came riding through the storm, seeking help for the child he had with him. The little fellow was delirious with fever and kept clinging to his father, crying and begging him not to let the Erl King take him away. The incident affected Goethe so deeply that he wrote the poem, and Schubert, hearing the story, was so touched by it that he composed wonderful music to go with the master’s words.

[Record of “The Erl King.”]

Another poem of Goethe’s that he read told of a wild rose growing on a heath. A boy saw the rose and said, “I will pluck you.” The rose said, “No, no. If you do I will prick you.” The foolish boy laughed and picked the rose, and it kept its word. This is the song Schubert made of the poem:

[Record of “Hedge Roses.”]

So you see that almost everything made Franz Schubert think of music. He wrote many, many songs and much other music, and although it is almost a hundred years since he died, his name and his works will live as long as men love melody. The greatest singers in the world use his songs over and over because rich and poor alike love them, and whenever singers want to be very sure of pleasing they sing some of the songs of him who was once a boy in old Vienna, Franz Schubert.

Sources of Material to Awaken an Appreciation of Music

Barber: Wagner Opera Stories.

Bender: Some Great Opera Stories (General Operas).

Cather, Katherine Dunlap: Pan and His Pipes and Other Stories; Boyhood Stories of Famous Men.

Chapin, Anna Alice: The Heart of Music; Makers of Song; Stories of the Wagner Operas; The Story of the Rhinegold.

Crowest, Frederick James: The Life of Verdi.

Dole, Nathan Haskell: A Score of Famous Composers.

Dutton Company: The Master Musician Series.

Fryberger, Agnes: Listening Lessons in Music.

Guerber, Helène A.: Stories of the Wagner Operas.

Hensel, Sebastian: The History of the Mendelssohn Family.

Liszt, Franz: Life of Chopin.

Pictures to Use in Telling Musical Stories

Beyschlag: Orpheus and Eurydice.

Borckman: Mozart and His Sisters before Maria Theresa; Beethoven and the Rusmnowsky Quartette.

Carlo Dolci: St. Cecilia at the Organ.

Duncan: Story of Minstrelsy.

Giulio Romano: Apollo and the Muses.

Hamman: Mozart at Vienna; Preludes of Bach; Haydn Crossing the English Channel; Handel and George I of England.

Harpfer: Mozart at the Organ.

Leydendecker: Beethoven at Bonn.

Merle: Beethoven at the House of Mozart.

Rosenthal: Morning Prayers in the Family of Bach.

Schloesser: Beethoven in His Study.

Schneider: Mozart and His Sister.

Shields: Mozart Singing His Requiem.

Portraits of all the great musicians.[1]

[1] Brown, Perry, or Cosmos Pictures, or they may be obtained from Victor Talking Machine Company, especially the living artists.

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CHAPTER TEN
Story-Telling to Awaken an Appreciation of Art

The child who is surrounded by good pictures from his earliest years grows to love good pictures, and gaudily colored, cheap ones have no charm for him. His taste has been formed for the fine and true, and nothing else will satisfy him. To behold a beautiful painting gives him pleasure, while to see a glaring chromo produces an unpleasant sensation. This is not because he is different by nature from one to whom masterpieces have no meaning, but because he has learned to know them.

Here again we have one of the striking differences between the average American and the average European. The Italian, French, Austrian, or German laborer sees masterpieces from infancy. His earliest recollection of religious worship is associated with them. Every continental town has its art gallery or picture exhibit, and on certain days there is no admission fee. The laborer avails himself of this opportunity. On Sunday, when he is free from toil, he makes a festival of the occasion and takes his family to some park or place of amusement, and very frequently the jaunt includes a trip to the picture gallery. Consequently, even the children of those lands have a knowledge of the masterpieces of art far surpassing that of the average adult American.

In most respects the Italian street gamin does not differ from the guttersnipe of our own land, but in one he is vastly his superior. He knows the free days at the galleries as well as he knows the alleys of his native town, and is a liberal patron of such places on those occasions. I once made the acquaintance of a little chap in Rome who was an excellent guide. He piloted me among the treasures of the Vatican with the ease and security that bespeaks thorough knowledge, for he had been there so often that he knew in just which rooms or alcoves to find his favorites. He knew much of the artists, too, of their lives and times, their discouragements and successes. Yet this Roman street boy was no exception to his class. Along the Piazza di Spagna, in fact, on any of the highways, are dozens like him, rich in knowledge of the statues and fountains that glorify the streets and parks of the Holy City. The names of Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, Giotto, and those other men who built or carved or painted with marvelous power, are fraught with meaning to them, and it is not strange that it should be so. Children in Italy have grown up among beautiful things. For centuries beauty has been almost a religion to this joy-loving, sun-loving race, and the country of the Apennines, as Francis Hopkinson Smith says, is the one place in the world where a song or a sunset is worth more than a soldo. Consequently, the Italians are a nation of art lovers. Each individual regards the masterpieces as his property, and the reason the Italian people hate the memory of Napoleon is not only that he conquered parts of their land, but that he robbed Italy of some of her art treasures. These were things they and their fathers had seen and loved, and they could not forgive the vandal who carried them away, even after the wound left by the victor had ceased to rankle.

Here in America we have not had the opportunity of the average European, but already we have made a beginning, and we now possess a number of art galleries that deserve the name. At the present time these are found only in the large cities, but they are helping to form national standards. Meanwhile every worker with children ought to try to lead those intrusted to his care to a knowledge and appreciation of great pictures.

It is not enough to place reproductions of masterpieces in schools and homes and say nothing about them. If children are to have an appreciation of them, they must be led to see their beauty, to understand what they mean, to have some idea of the infinite patience and labor that made their creation possible. The child of an artistic bent will observe and study them without aid or guidance and unconsciously grow into loving them, because beauty in any form attracts him as a magnet draws a bar of steel. But teachers and parents do not work solely with budding genius, and in the great scheme of human advancement it may mean as much for many average children to appreciate and love art, as for one who is gifted to reach immortal heights of achievement. The average child must be led and directed. His interest must be aroused before we can hope to mold his taste as we would have it molded. He must be taught to see that a Gainsborough is more beautiful than an advertising chromo, that a face by Raphael is the expression of an inspiration that is almost divine. Only through an association that gives pleasure will he come to see and appreciate, and here again story-telling can work wonders, because through it we can intensify a child’s delight in a picture.

In the field of art the biographical tale is of immeasurable value, for the story of an artist’s life, illustrated by reproductions of his works, can be made the pathway to appreciation.

In establishing standards of art appreciation, as well as those of music, we must not lose sight of the story interests of childhood, because many a picture that is a great artistic achievement is not suitable to present to little children. The “Venus and Cupid” of Velasquez is a glorious masterpiece, but we cannot expect little folk to admire it any more than we can expect those in the rhythmic period to listen to a King Arthur story and ask to hear it again. As the little child does not know Venus and Cupid, a portrayal of them means nothing to him. But he does know horses and dogs and cats. He knows other children and babies and mothers, and therefore he enjoys pictures of animal and child life and will be interested in hearing about their portrayers.

Sir Joshua Reynolds is an excellent artist to begin with, because his best work is built around themes dear to the heart of childhood. His “Age of Innocence,” “Infant Samuel,” “Robinetta,” “Heads of Angels,” “Simplicity,” and “The Strawberry Girl” are ideal works to present to the small child, and this painter’s early years make a charming story.

Sir Edwin Landseer is another artist with whom we can acquaint little children, through the following works: “Uncle Tom and His Wife for Sale,” “Low Life and High Life,” “Dignity and Impudence,” “A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society,” “The Sick Monkey,” “King Charles Spaniels,” and many other paintings, all of which will be loved by children because they love the subjects.

Rosa Bonheur and her paintings should be used in this period. Children are especially fond of “The Horse Fair,” “Coming from the Fair,” “Brittany Sheep,” “Highland Cattle,” and “A Norman Sire.” In fact, everything this painter created, like all the work of Landseer, is fraught with interest to the child, because she was solely a portrayer of animal life.

An artist of whom little folk have been taught almost nothing is Gainsborough. Usually we think of him only as a portrait painter, because in America his likenesses of women are better known than his other pictures. But it is a mistake to associate him only with “the dashing, smashing hats worn by the Duchess of Devonshire.” Until recently only Americans who had traveled in England had an opportunity of seeing or knowing the greater part of this artist’s other work, because the British copyright law protected much of it in such a way that cheap prints could not be made. Now, however, it is possible to get good reproductions of these long-protected Gainsboroughs at a very reasonable price. Most valuable of the works of this artist to use with little children are the following: “The Market Cart,” “The Watering Place,” “Two Dogs,” “Rustic Children,” and “Study of an Old Horse.”

Murillo is an ideal painter to introduce to the little child, because his childhood story is as fascinating as his creations are glorious. Children never tire of hearing about this joyous little Spanish boy, and of the time when he transformed the family picture, turning the halo of the Christ-child into a gorgeous sombrero, and making a dog of the sheep. As they laugh or sympathize with the wonder child of Seville and feel something of the charm of life in that old city, its street children, immortalized on canvas by its most illustrious son, become comrades because little Bartolome sometimes played with them and big Bartolome painted them. There is a long list of this master’s works from which to choose, but the following are particularly enjoyed: “Mother and Child,” “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” “St. John and the Lamb,” “The Melon Eaters,” “The Dice Players,” “Beggar Boys,” “The Good Shepherd,” “The Marriage of St. Catherine,” and “The Immaculate Conception.” No attempt should be made to interpret the two last-named pictures. Familiarize little people with them and lead them to see their beauty, but waive all idea of religious symbolism until years bring maturity of thought and the child makes his own interpretation.

All Madonna pictures are interesting to little children, so by all means acquaint them with Raphael, the king. Let them drink in the beauty of “The Sistine Madonna,” “The Madonna of the Chair,” “The Madonna of the Goldfinch,” and as many others as can be obtained. The story of Raphael belongs more properly in the intermediate period than in the very early one, because so little is known of this painter’s life before he began his career. Just tell the children of the little boy who lived in far-away Urbino long, long ago. His mother died when he was a wee little fellow, and he lived alone with his father, who was very kind to him. Instead of playing much, as the other children did, he loved to sit and listen to stories about saints and good people who lived before his time. He loved to draw pictures, too, and when he grew to be a man he became a wonderful painter.

Closely following Raphael may come Correggio, through his “Holy Night,” “Repose in Egypt,” and “Cherubs.”

Van Dyck, too, may be made familiar to little children. From his works choose “Children of Charles I” and several details from this picture—“Baby Stuart,” “Charles II,” and “Henrietta.” But present first the complete picture, so that when “Baby Stuart” is seen the children will know that it is only part of a painting. Many a grown person does not realize that it is a detail from another work, and this fact should be understood by every child who sees the royal baby. Other works by this artist suitable to introduce to tiny people are “The Repose in Egypt,” “Madonna and Child,” and “The Donators.”

There are many painters whose pictures will be enjoyed by children of from five to eight, and the teacher or parent who knows art and art literature can choose for himself, keeping always in mind the story interests. To those who have little or no knowledge of art, yet who want to lead children along this path, the following list will be helpful:

Artists and Paintings That Can Be Presented to Young Children through the Story-Telling Method

Adam: Kittens; Wide Awake; The Hungry Quartette; In the Boudoir.

Botticelli: Adoration of the Magi; The Holy Family.

Bouguereau: Virgin and Angels; Virgin, Infant Jesus, and St. John; Going Home from School; The Flight into Egypt.

Delaroche: The Finding of Moses; Children of Edward IV.

Greuze: The Broken Pitcher; Innocence; Head of Girl with Apple.

Herring: Pharaoh’s Horses; Three Members of the Temperance Society; The Village Blacksmith; Farmyard.

Vigée Lebrun: Marie Antoinette and Children; Girl with Muff; Mother and Daughter.

Millet: Feeding the Hens; Feeding Her Birds; The First Step; Feeding the Nestlings.

Luca della Robbia: Singing Boys; Trumpeters and Dancing Boys; Dancing Boys with Cymbals; Children Dancing to Fife and Tambor; Madonna, Child, and Saints.

Rubens: Portrait of his Wife and Children; The Holy Family; Infant Christ, St. John, and Angels; The Virgin under an Apple Tree; The Adoration of the Magi.

Children of the intermediate period enjoy the works of the great landscape painters, Claude Lorrain, Corot, Breton, and others who portrayed the woods and fields, especially when they know something of the childhood of these men. In this period, too, they should become better acquainted with some of the artists they have already met. Add to the interest previously created in Raphael by taking up such works as “Madonna of the Fish,” “Madonna of the Well,” and “Madonna of the Diadem.” In telling the story of his life use Ouida’s beautiful tale, “The Child of Urbino,” which is so exquisitely told that there is nothing lovelier in literature. Show the children his portrait of himself, his “St. Catherine,” “St. Cecilia,” “St. John in the Desert,” “Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate,” and “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes.”

Add to the interest already created in Rubens by taking up his “Portrait of Himself,” “The Flight of Lot,” and the paintings illustrating the life of Maria de’ Medici.

Pictures representing the Crucifixion, the Descent from the Cross, and the Entombment, no matter how glorious they may be as works of art, should not be presented to children. They are too highly religious for children’s understanding, and the tragedy portrayed in them should not enter into childhood. The Madonnas and Holy Families may be used freely, because they portray dear and familiar characters and are saturated with an atmosphere of happiness that gladdens the child.

The following list will aid those who are not connoisseurs:

Artists and Paintings for Children of the Intermediate Period

Jules Breton: Song of the Lark; The Gleaners; The Reapers; The Weeders; The Recall of the Gleaners; Blessing the Wheat; The Vintagers; The End of Labor.

Jacques: The Sheepfold; Pasturage in the Forest; Shepherd and Sheep.

Millet: The Sower; The Gleaners; The Angelus; The Grafter; Sheep Shearing; Potato Planting; Bundling Wheat; Returning to the Farm; Shepherdess Knitting; Woman Churning; Labor.

There is a twofold reason for introducing children to such painters as Millet, Breton, and Jacques. Besides giving them a knowledge of the works of the artists in question and adding to their appreciation of the beautiful, it will dignify labor in their eyes to learn that it inspired these great creators. If leaders of the “back to the land” movement would make free use of the art of the world among children, if during the years when impressions made are deep and lasting they would tell stories and show pictures that have been inspired by toilers in the fields, a sentiment would be created that would tell in results, because of boys and girls having learned to respect those who till the soil and work with their hands.

Artists and Paintings That Lead to Appreciation of the Beautiful and to Respect for Labor

Corot: Dance of the Children; Dance of Nymphs; Landscape with Willows; Paysage; Pond of Ville d’Avray; The Lake.

Rembrandt: Portrait of Himself; Portrait of His Mother; The Mill; The Burgomasters.

Troyon: Return to the Farm; Going to Work; Landscape with Sheep.

Van Dyck (Add to interest already aroused): Henrietta Maria, Wife of Charles I; William of Orange and Mary Stuart; Equestrian Portrait of Charles I; Portrait of Charles I with Groom and Horse.

Velazquez: Portrait of Himself; The Tapestry Weavers; Prince Balthazar; The Lancers; Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV; Infanta Maria Theresa.

When children reach the period during which they crave the heroic, when they are eager for the great epic stories, give them the great paintings that portray epic and mythological subjects. The following list contains names of artists and works that children in this stage will enjoy:

Artists and Paintings for the Heroic and Epic Periods

Alma-Tadema: Sappho; Reading from Homer.

Burne-Jones: The Golden Stair; The First Day of Creation; Second Day of Creation; Third Day of Creation; Fourth Day of Creation; Fifth Day of Creation; Sixth Day of Creation; Hope; Circe; Enchantment of Merlin; King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid; The Furies.

Leighton: Helen of Troy; Captive Andromache; Greek Girls Playing Ball.

Michelangelo: David; Moses; Saul; The Three Fates; Jeremiah; Ezekiel; Zachariah; Isaiah; Daniel; Jonas; The Delphic Sibyl; The Cumæan Sibyl; The Libyan Sibyl.

Raphael: St. George and the Dragon.

Guido Reni: Jesus and John; St. Michael and the Dragon; Aurora; Beatrice Cenci; St. Sebastian; The Annunciation; L’Adorata.

Rossetti: The Sea Spell; The Blessed Damozel; Ancilla Domini.

Andrea del Sarto: John the Baptist; Virgin in Glory; St. Agnes; Charity.

Tintoretto: The Forge of Vulcan; Marriage at Cana; Paradise; Paolo Veronese; Feast at House of Simon; Feast at House of Levi; Europa and Jupiter.

Titian: John the Baptist; Tribute Money; Titian’s Daughter Lavinia; Flora; Head of Venus.

Turner (Mythological): Apollo and the Python; Jason in Search of the Golden Fleece; The Goddess of Discord; Dido Building Carthage; Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus. (Historical): Prince of Orange; The Death of Nelson; Boat’s Crew Recovering an Anchor; Hannibal and Army Crossing the Alps; The Field of Waterloo; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus; The Fighting Téméraire.

Watts: Sir Galahad; Orpheus and Eurydice; Endymion.

General Bibliography of Art Story Material

Bacon, Mary S. H.: Pictures That Every Child Should Know.

Cather, Katherine Dunlap: Boyhood Stories of Famous Men.

Collmann, Sophie Marie: Art Talks with Young Folks.

De la Ramée, Louise: Child of Urbino (“Bimbi” Stories).

Ennis, Luna May: Music in Art.

Hartmann, Sadakichi: Japanese Art.

Horne, Olive B., and Scobey, Kathrine L.: Stories of Great Artists.

Hourticq, Louis: Art in France.

Hurll, Estelle M.: The Madonna in Art.

Menefee, Maud: Child Stories from the Masters.

Sweetser, M. F.: Artist Biographies: Raphael and Leonardo, Angelo and Titian, Claude Lorrain and Reynolds, Turner and Landseer, Dürer and Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Angelico, Murillo and Allston.

Vasari, Giorgio: Lives of the Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Waters, Clara Erskine: Saints in Art; Stories of Art and Artists.

Sources for Moderate-Priced Reproductions of Masterpieces

The Brown Pictures, Milton Bradley Company, Springfield, Mass.; Emery School Art Company, Boston, Mass.; Maison Braun et Cie., New York, N.Y.; Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, N.Y. (has American rights to many pictures); The Perry Pictures, Malden, Mass.; The Prang Company, New York, N.Y.; The University Prints, Boston, Mass.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dramatization

Contemporaneous with what may be termed a renaissance in story-telling is a strong sentiment in favor of dramatization. Child leaders have observed that children dramatize spontaneously, and that after they have heard a tale they often play it without suggestion from an older person. They impersonate the characters, crudely perhaps, but they represent the action and portray the story as they understand it.

This they do because the dramatic instinct is a universal instinct. We are all born imitators, and we like to experience the feelings and experiences of others. That is why the little girl impersonates her mother and takes delight in dressing in grown-up attire and playing lady. It is what actuates the boy to play Indian or soldier or fireman. He wants to live through the experiences of Indians and soldiers and firemen; so he goes into the world of make-believe and acts the part. During that time he is a larger and a different personality. He is not a little boy who must go to bed before he wants to, and must stay inside the yard when he longs to be out on the highway; he is a grown man in a uniform dashing along on an engine; he is a mighty chief in feathers and war paint, leading his tribe against the enemy or speaking words of wisdom around the council fire.

There was a time when this sort of play was believed to be of no value beyond that of a romp that helped to stretch the muscles, but today there is a very different attitude toward it. Close observation of children and a more general knowledge of psychology have brought educators to realize that imitative play is a big factor in mental development. As the boy impersonates a fireman or Indian he must choose movements in keeping with the part and reject those not in keeping with it. He must select and evaluate, and in doing this he is acquiring a power of discrimination that will be of great value to him later.

The childhood of many famous men of the past was distinguished by an unusual amount of imitative play, a free expression of the dramatic instinct. Goethe, in his memories, speaks lovingly of his early years thus:

From my father I have my stature,

My earnest aim in living;

From little mother, my joyous nature,

My love of story weaving.

Continuing, he tells of the tales he heard, and what they meant to him as he played them:

Sometimes I was a prince and sometimes a peasant. Now I was rewarded for being a bountiful and considerate king, then punished according to the deserts of a wicked and revengeful giant; and always as I played these parts I was learning the unchangeable laws of life.

What Goethe learned through acting tales his mother told him, the child of today is learning as he dramatizes stories, although not always in as great a measure as was learned by the author of Faust and Werther. But he is learning according to his ability and within his limitations. When he has played the part, the laws involved in it become fixed principles with him, and a big step is taken in the direction of his moral training. Because of a growing recognition of this truth the present strong interest in dramatization in schools is becoming general throughout the country. Teachers are beginning to realize that they can give no more eloquent sermon on truthtelling than to tell the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” and then let the children dramatize it. There is no more effective means of giving a lesson in contentment than presenting the tale of the pig who thought his life hard and leading the boys and girls to play it.

Therefore it follows that dramatization should be encouraged, and to be most far-reaching in its results, it should be done by means of story-telling, because by proceeding from the story to the action the child creates the play and makes it his own.

There are many books of plays for children, carefully written and adapted to their interests in word, style, and theme. But such plays do not mean as much to the child as those he makes for himself. They are not as much his own, and consequently they contribute less toward his growth and development.

The natural way is for the child to hear the story and then act it. Therefore every story-teller should have in his possession a number of tales with dramatic possibilities. He should tell one of these vividly and dramatically, using much dialogue, and then, while it is still fresh in the minds of the children, encourage them to play it. It is well to use the published plays also, because there are many excellent ones, but the narrator should read them over, get the plot, and tell the story, before putting them into the hands of the children.

Shall dialogue be dictated by the story-teller and the children drilled in their parts? No. Conversation used in telling the tale will suggest to the children what to say, and they will make up their own parts. They must be led and directed, but help from the teacher or leader should be given in such a way that the children feel they are making the play themselves. Help them by questions that will lead them to think and act instead of telling them what to do and say.

Suppose “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” is to be dramatized. After the story has been told, say to the children, “Do you want to play it?” Of course they will want to. Then, by questioning, lead them to constructive effort.

How many people shall we need? Immediately the answers will come, and as the different characters are named make a list, thus getting the cast. Who can be the mayor, members of the council, the piper, rats, mothers and fathers, lame boy, etc.?

There will be two divisions, those who are forward, eager to take a prominent part, and the shy, retiring ones who will not offer. This latter group must not be ignored, and to draw its members into the work requires much tact. Sometimes when it is impossible to get a child to take a speaking part, he can be encouraged to be one of a group of “supers,” as they are called on the professional stage, because although he lacks the confidence necessary to make him lift his voice, his diffidence vanishes in doing pantomime with a number of other children. He will be a rat or a citizen when he cannot be coaxed or driven into being the piper, and after many pantomime performances he gains the confidence in himself that enables him to take a speaking part.

One of the difficulties incident to dramatization in the schoolroom is that the same children always clamor to take the star parts, and sometimes sulk if not permitted to do so, or sneer at the efforts of others. This situation must be met as any other problem in discipline is met, by skill on the part of the teacher and by inculcating a sense of fairness and courtesy that holds selfishness in check. Lead the child to see that what gives him pleasure gives some one else pleasure also, and that it is the right of each member of the class to experience that pleasure. Once the boy or girl realizes that well-bred people are considerate and do not deride the efforts of others, no matter how imperfect their achievement may be, the dramatization period loses its greatest bugbear and shy children do not hesitate to take part because of fear that they will be laughed at. This result cannot be brought about instantly, but persistence and tact will finally accomplish it.

Do not be discouraged because it seems that some of the shy or less capable children will never take a speaking part. Sometimes even after they perform in pantomime they still hang back and will speak only in chorus. But this last is at least a step in the desired direction. Keep working them in groups, and gradually from group speaking they will advance to individual speaking. Sometimes this process is slow and discouraging, but the teacher should remember that mental development is never a mushroom growth, and that great achievement is not wrought in a day. The marble block yields so slowly to the shaping of the sculptor’s chisel that sometimes it seems it never will take the form he visions for it, but ceaseless effort always brings results. So it is with the teacher in molding human material. Results are sure to come if persistence and patience are unflagging and faith is deep and strong. It is worth much for a shy, self-conscious child to grow to the point where he can lose himself in the rôle of a play, and no matter how crudely he does it, he should be encouraged and given frequent opportunities to express himself, because as a means of self-development his crude performance is of as much value as the artistic one of the talented child, although it may be less enjoyable to spectators.

With little children especially, it is desirable to use some play whose cast will include every member of the class. It gives the eager child a chance to be “in it,” as children say, and makes it easier to draw the diffident child to participate, because he wants to do what all the others are doing. “The Pied Piper” is ideal for this, because of the flexibility of groups. There can be enough rats, parents, children, or council members to include twenty or forty children, and the larger the groups the more intense the interest.

After the cast is decided upon, plan the scenes, again by questioning the children. What is the first thing to be done and where is it done? Thus, by question and suggestion, work up the lines. In other words, have the children create the parts themselves and they will play them spontaneously. The production may not be highly artistic, but it will have greater educational value than one worked out by an adult and merely acted by the children. After it has been created in this way it may be put into finished permanent form. Little children may practice it until they memorize the lines, while those in the grammar grades may write parts, thus making a play that can be used many times. This sort of work is very valuable, and may form a composition or language exercise that will be enjoyed by the class.

Another method is to have the various members suggest lines to be spoken by the different characters and choose the best for the play. Sometimes a child who does little in the usual composition work and never gets a high mark, will suggest an excellent line or sentence, and to have it go into the play is a tremendous joy to him, especially if he doubts his own ability. Another plan that makes the class interest keen, is for each member to plan or write a scene, and without the members knowing the authorship of the various papers, have them read, and select the best by vote, whereupon the name of the writer is revealed. This method can be used in writing parts for one character or for all the characters, and in several other ways that will be of much value to the children.

Of course the teacher or leader must be the guiding spirit, because a well-built, correctly proportioned plot is necessary. But her suggestion should be chiefly by way of question, leaving the children to feel that they, and not the instructor, are doing the work, although in reality the teacher’s judgment is the foundation upon which the structure stands, and she must use it in building the play just as she uses it in telling the story.

For little people there are many stories with dramatic possibilities, some of which may be acted wholly in pantomime, some with combined pantomime and spoken parts, and others entirely of spoken parts. In working with foreign children it is well to begin with pantomime plays, as the child who knows he cannot express himself easily in English will always balk at taking a speaking part. Some of Æsop’s fables lend themselves particularly well to pantomime, especially “The Lion and the Mouse,” “The Fox and the Grapes,” “The Dog and His Shadow,” and “The Hare and the Tortoise.” The Dramatic Festival, by Craig, and Festivals and Plays, by Chubb, give valuable suggestions for pantomime work, as well as a list of plays adapted to it, and the worker with older children will also find these books to be excellent guides.

There is an equally large amount of material for dramatic work with older children. Hiawatha never fails to delight fourth and fifth grade boys and girls. Robin Hood in dramatic form is loved even more than in story, as are some of the exploits of King Arthur and his knights and of Pwyll, the hero of the Mabinogion. Any of these tales may be carried out simply or may be worked into elaborate performances with costumes and stage settings. If the latter be the choice, much pleasure and useful experience will come to the children through making the properties. Any boy who can whittle can fashion spears and swords, and gold and silver paper is wonderfully effective in supplying glitter. Does a knight need colored hose to be in keeping with his doublet? Let him borrow a pair of his mother’s or sister’s white ones and coat them with blackboard crayon of the desired hue. One laundering will make them spotless again, and there is no outlay of money for something that must be discarded at the end of the performance. Helmets, shields, and pilgrim hats can be made by the manual-training boys, and girls in the domestic-science class will enjoy sewing the costumes.

The teacher in the ungraded school is particularly fortunate in opportunities for this kind of work, because she can correlate it with other subjects in ways that workers in schools using the departmental system cannot do. One country teacher had her eighth-grade history class give a pageant portraying the French exploration in the Mississippi Valley. The class devoted a term to the preparation; the subject was made the nucleus of their reading, language, history, and manual work, and the results were most gratifying. Boys who never had written a readable paper did some astonishingly good work in composition because of their interest in the play and their desire to contribute to it, and the standard of class scholarship was raised, to say nothing of the joy the children derived from it.

Many other historical subjects are equally rich in possibilities. The Spanish exploration in Florida, the Dutch in New York, the Spanish settlement of California, the framing and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, John Smith and Pocahontas, Ponce de Leon seeking the fountain of youth, the story of Columbus, and many similar themes afford good opportunities for class play-making and correlation of school subjects.

Sometimes a picture will suggest an entire scene in a dramatization, or even an entire play; the following are especially good for this purpose:

Bacon: The Burial of Miles Standish.

Balaca: Departure of Columbus from Palos.

Boughton: Pilgrims Going to Church; Pilgrim Exiles; The Return of the Mayflower; Priscilla.

Kaulbach: The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Piloty: Columbus on the Deck of the Santa Maria.

Van der Lyn: The Landing of Columbus.

Those wishing to make a specialty of dramatization will find the following books helpful:

Chubb: Festivals and Plays.

Craig: The Dramatic Festival.

Curtis: The Dramatic Instinct in Education.

The following are excellent stories for dramatic work with little children, and are included in so many books that they are available to every teacher:

Three Billy Goats Gruff; The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids; Chicken Little; The Old Woman and Her Pig; The Pig Brother; The Gingerbread Boy; The Boy Who Cried Wolf; The Town Musicians; Mother Goose Rhymes; The Three Bears; The Pancake; The Discontented Pig.

Many others will be found in the list of story collections for children in the rhythmic period, and in the bibliography on the following page.

Bibliography of Material for Dramatization

For Primary Grade Children

Bell, Florence E.: Fairy Tale Plays and How to Act Them.

Chadwick, M. L. Pratt-, and Freeman, E. Gray: Chain Stories and Playlets.

Nixon-Roulet, M. F.: Fairy Tales a Child Can Read and Act.

Noyes, M. I., and Ray, B. H.: Little Plays for Little People.

Perry, S. G. S.: When Mother Lets Us Act.

Stevenson, Augusta: Children’s Classics in Dramatic Form, Books 1-3.

Wells, Carolyn: Jolly Plays for Holidays.

For Intermediate Grade Children

Harris, F. J.: Plays for Young People.

Sidgwick, Ethel: Four Plays for Children.

Spofford, Harriet Prescott: The Fairy Changeling.

Stevenson, Augusta: Children’s Classics in Dramatic Form, Books 4-6.

St. Nicholas Book of Operettas and Plays.

For Grammar Grade Children

Frank: Short Plays about Famous Authors.

Lansing, M. F.: Quaint Old Stories to Read and Act.

Lütkenhaus, A. M., and Knox, Margaret: Plays for School Children.

Rucker and Ryan: Historical Plays of Colonial Days.

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CHAPTER TWELVE
Bible Stories

One of the glaring defects of our modern educational system is that almost no provision is made for the study of the Bible as a great classic, and as a result boys and girls complete grammar and high-school courses without sufficient knowledge of the epic of the Hebrews to enable them to understand the world’s best literature. The myths of Greece and Rome are studied because of their cultural value, yet from universities throughout the country comes the complaint that many of the works of famous authors are beyond the enjoyment of students because the Biblical allusions have no meaning for them. What should be as familiar as “Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella” is known in name only, and the immortal book is regarded as a repository of golden texts and maxims instead of as a glorious artistic creation.

The masses of children know almost nothing of the story of Israel, because outside of the Sunday school and the exceptional home, it is rarely told. Yet educators emphasize its need in the intellectual as well as in the spiritual development of the child, and declare that the Old Testament tales should be as much a part of the school curriculum as are the myths of Greece and Rome and the northland. Rein, the great German educator, advocates using them in the third and fourth grades to the exclusion of all others, which is done in the state schools of Baden, while in America Dr. G. Stanley Hall pleads eloquently in behalf of Bible stories.

“To eliminate the Bible from education,” says this famous psychologist, “is as preposterous pedagogically as it would have been in the days of Plato to taboo Homer from the education of Greek youth. It is not only a model of English, but it is impossible to understand the culture history of Europe without it, as it has influenced the literature, history, and life of Western nations as no other book has begun to do.”

The secular narrator, as well as the teacher of religion, should use the Bible tales freely, that men and women of the future may have a broader knowledge of literature, history, and life than they can have without them. This is no impossible task, even for the amateur, because the Biblical narratives are perfect ones for telling. Nowhere else in literature do we find such thrilling tales of adventure, such exquisite idylls, such sublime ballads, such annals of high purpose and noble achievement, as in the epic of Israel. Nowhere else are there more spectacular, perfectly constructed plots. Ruskin said, “It would be pre-eminently the child’s book even though it had no religious value above other books”; and Dr. Fuchs of Vienna declares that we might, if we lacked material, give children nothing but Bible stories and yet satisfy every craving of their natures, because the Bible contains every type of tale that appeals to the child. From Genesis to Revelation it is an incomparable record of human desire, human endeavor, human failure, and human success. In the Old Testament we find myth, fairy tale, fable, romance, legend, and history, told in simple, elemental beauty by the Hebrew story-tellers, tinged with that varied color and imagery so characteristic of oriental literature and so fascinating to children,—stories that, as Mrs. Houghton says, “are the product of a child nation, and therefore very close to the heart of the child.”

The Old Testament, rather than the New, is the child’s storybook, because it is the expression of a primitive people, and its tales picture primitive, rugged heroes that boys and girls can understand, whereas the second division of the Bible, except that portion centering around the childhood and boyhood of Christ, is adult in character. But it is a mistake to think that all Old Testament tales can be presented with gratifying results. To tell the story of Ruth and Boaz to tiny tots would be as absurd as to give them the Decameron of Boccaccio or Goethe’s Faust, because the characters and incidents are remote from their interest. In using material from the Bible, as from any other source, it is necessary to keep in mind the story interests of childhood, and to remember that the skeletons of tales, not the style and vocabulary in which they are written, must be the test for selection. If the framework is suited to the period of mental development, the language can be adapted, while otherwise no amount of simplifying can bring it within the understanding and powers of enjoyment.

The Old Testament is particularly rich in stories for children, because it was formulated in a period when the Hebrew nation was a child nation. The men and women of Israel were grown to adult stature, but they had the hearts of children. They thought concretely, as the child thinks, and consequently their literary expression is concrete and illustrative. This, added to the facts that they, like all other orientals, loved the story and brought it to a high artistic point, and that the Old Testament heroes are not refined to the point of æstheticism, but are strong, rugged, elemental men, thoroughly human and far removed from goody-goodies, makes it an ideal book for the child. Gideon and Joshua possess virtues, but they possess faults also. They are punished and they are rewarded, and because they have much in common with children, the lessons learned through their victories and defeats are more valuable than a thousand admonitions.

In advocating the use of Bible stories a word of caution seems necessary, lest the narrator, actuated by the laudable desire to enrich the intellectual and spiritual life of the child, may harm instead of benefit. The Hebrew people were in a state of advanced barbarism when their tribal achievements grew into an epic, and the deeds of their heroes are often so bloodthirsty and revengeful that they cannot be reconciled with modern views. Boys and girls are quick to realize this, and consequently many of the Old Testament tales must be softened by the elimination of objectionable features, just as many fairy and epical tales must be softened.

Nor are gore and revenge the only elements we must cut away from these old tales. Those who give the narrative of Israel to boys and girls of twelve and fourteen should be careful to eliminate from it everything that may be suggestive of the vulgar, for which, at this age, many children are on the lookout. It is better to omit than to veil and modify questionable portions of a tale, because young people are very discerning, and to see through gossamer is to arouse curiosity. Dr. Bodley cites instances of youths in the romantic period reading the Bible because of lewd thoughts. This danger leads some persons to decry the use of Bible stories by the average narrator, in whose hands they believe them to be dangerous. However, if he uses judgment, if he makes it a rule to omit whatever awakens a doubt in his mind, even the amateur may tell Bible stories with beneficial results. It is possible to eliminate from many an Old Testament narrative without breaking the thread of the story, just as it is possible to give boys and girls a clear idea of the man Chopin without introducing the George Sand episode. So much of the Old Testament is pure adventure tale that the story-teller may use the portion that feeds the elemental hero love without touching upon what might arouse morbid curiosity or desire, or that which sanctions gore and revenge.

Those who have not had training in gathering and adapting story material from the Bible will be aided greatly in their work by Frances Jenkins Olcott’s book, Bible Stories to Read and Tell. Miss Olcott gives the stories as they are given in the King James Version, preserving all the beauty of language of the Hebrew story-tellers, but she has excluded everything that might prove objectionable; and with this book as a guide there is little danger of making a mistake in telling the Hebrew hero tales to children.

Bible stories should be graded as carefully as fairy stories are graded. In choosing for little children, select those whose heroes are children, and give to the boy who craves the heroic the incomparable tales of the Hebrew wanderers, those men whose lives were a varied succession of adventures. For the child of each period there is a wealth of material. The stories of the baby Moses, little Samuel, the boy Joseph, the boy Timothy, the boy David, and the baby Isaac are very appealing to six- and seven-year-olds. They love also to hear of the mother and the baby Samson, of Ishmael and Hagar, and those other mothers and babies of long ago, and especially dear to them is the story of the Babe of Bethlehem. This lovely narrative is a part of the birthright of every child, and is exquisite enough to merit careful preparation on the part of the story-teller. The Bible itself should be the storehouse to which the narrator goes for material, but those not especially gifted in visualizing and imagination will derive much help from the work of modern literary artists who have told again the story of the Christ Child. The eleventh and twelfth chapters of the first book of Ben Hur, the creation of a man whose reverence was as great as his talent, should be re-read by every one who attempts to tell of the song and the star in Judea, and the works of Henry van Dyke, Selma Lagerlöf, and John of Hildesheim will aid greatly in giving color and atmosphere. This means time and labor, but no amount of preparation is too great to put upon the world’s noblest stories. The narrator should approach them, not arrogantly, and satisfied of his ability to tell them because he has known them from childhood, but as the artist approaches the masterpiece he aspires to copy, willing to labor that he may be worthy of the task, willing to read them over and over again and count each reading a return to the fount of inspiration. This should be the attitude toward all great stories, but especially toward the immortal ones of the Bible.

For the child in the heroic period the Old Testament is a gold mine, and it is a pity that its superb adventure tales are so little used by story-tellers, since they are so fascinating to boys and girls. Even when told as separate stories they arouse interest and hold the attention, but they are most valuable when given in a sequence, because then the child regards the Old Testament as a great human drama, the epic of a people.

A good plan is to begin with the call of Abraham, as related in the twelfth chapter of Genesis. Picture the patriarch, with Lot and Sarah, going into exile out of the land of Haran, through Canaan to the plain of Moreh, building there the altar under the soothsayer’s oak, and journeying southward over the desert to Egypt. Tell of the banishment by Pharaoh and the return to Bethel, of the strife between the herdsmen and the survey of the land, of the captivity and rescue of Lot. Paint vividly the highway along which they traveled, now over the desert, now across the fertile plain skirting the sea, often footsore and weary, often suffering from heat and thirst as wanderers in the East suffered, and the story will cause children to turn from the cheap adventure tale of today as music lovers turn from ragtime to a Chopin prelude.

Then there are tales of those other Old Testament wanderers, Isaac, “the Ulysses of the Hebrews,” and Jacob, whose life was so eventful. Take the boys over the routes these men traveled. Let them share their exploits and adventures, resting in fertile places where the wanderers rested, now by the well outside Nahor, the servants praying beside the kneeling camels as Bethuel’s lovely daughter came down the hillside with the pitcher on her shoulder, now moving as the caravan moved, over roads the Hebrew armies traveled on their way to war, along which tradesfolk journeyed in times of peace. There is marvelous color and romance in these Old Testament thoroughfares, and they are highways of fascination even today. Still across their yellow sands turbaned Arabs go up and down, singing praise to Allah just as men sang to God in the remote time of Israel. They bear with them skin bags filled with water from the pools and streams, dates, figs, and dried goat’s flesh, such as formed the noontide repast of Isaac and his men, for in the changeless East life is today as it was in the beginning of things. When the caravans rest, they sit under the palm trees in some oasis, telling stories their fathers told, and using the Old Testament forms of speech. Still in that land of nomads to see is to “lift up the eyes,” and maidens go to draw water when the day’s heat is over just as Rebecca went to the well of Nahor.

The book of Joshua is a glorious adventure story. The siege and destruction of Jericho, the victories of Joshua, the slave boy from Egypt who became the first soldier of the Hebrews, the distribution of Canaan among the tribes of Israel, and Othniel’s valor and reward satisfy every desire of the child who craves hero stories. They satisfy now as they satisfied two thousand years ago, because they grew out of the life of a people and run the entire gamut of human emotion as only racial tales can do.

The book of Judges is a collection of incomparable narratives. The enslavement of Israel by Jabin, the defeat and death of Sisera, and Gideon’s deliverance and victory never fail to hold boys and girls who crave the heroic. Moreover, these stories will arouse interest in perhaps the finest ode known to any literature, the song of Deborah in the fifth chapter of Judges. Give the children some idea of what it has meant to the world. Ruskin said the memorizing of it in his boyhood shaped his taste for literature, and Macaulay declared it inspired him to write “Horatius at the Bridge.” Read the work of the English poet, and bring out the lovely pictures in the great Hebrew ode, for it is not fair to our young people that we allow them to go through life without knowing this gem, without leading them to see the beauty of these exquisite words:

Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment and walk by the way.

They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord.

Visualize the scenes in those lines: sumptuous, haughty Hebrews, traveling as only the prosperous traveled; men in the fine linen of lawgivers, holding places of power in the land; vagabonds lounging along the highways, begging alms of passers-by; husbandmen tilling fields far from the sound of conflict; men in every walk of life, widely separated by material conditions, yet brothers in a common weal, rejoicing in a common blessing, the victory of Barak over the foe of Israel. It is as rich in color as a canvas by Titian, and pupils in the upper grammar grades will grow to love it if it is presented as it should be, through the medium of the story.

The books of Samuel, with their tales of Saul and of David, of the shepherd boy from the Hebron hills making music for Israel’s king, his meeting and slaying Goliath, Saul and the Witch of Endor, and all the eventful life of David are glorious materials for the story-teller. Here again inspiration may be obtained from the work of a modern writer. Browning’s “Saul” will greatly aid the narrator in telling the story of the boy David, for the picture the poet gives of the afflicted monarch in his tent, the son of Jesse standing beside him singing the Hebrew gleaning songs, is as vivid as it is exquisite.

Where can we find a more splendid narrative than that of Solomon, in the second book of Kings? Where is the boy or girl who does not delight in listening to the account of the visit of Hiram, king of Tyre, when two sumptuous monarchs met; of the collection of materials and the building of the temple; of the visit of the Queen of Sheba, the adversity and death of Solomon, and that succession of events that led to the captivity of Israel? Here, too, we find the great story of the invasion of Judah and the destruction of Sennacherib; and Byron’s poem will vivify this tale just as Browning’s “Saul” vivifies that of the boy David.

The only reason why children look upon the Bible as a dull, ponderous book is that they are not familiar with the Old Testament adventure tales, and it is a mistake to think that present-day boys and girls will turn away from them. If playground and settlement workers would give more time and attention to the stories of the Hebrews, they would have less difficulty in reaching hoodlumish boys. It is necessary to use tact in presentation,—“sense,” as Lilian Bell says, “of the brand commonly known as horse,”—for to preface a narrative with, “Now I shall tell you a Bible story,” might mean an insurrection. The only way is to bring the hero on the stage and tell his tale so vividly that the listeners are held by it to the end. After they come to know such men as Gideon and Joshua, they will regard the Bible as a great storybook.

A settlement worker had this experience not long ago. She told the tale of Joshua to a group of young ruffians, who sat through it as if held by a spell, and at its conclusion the leader of the band remarked, “That was some story!” Other Old Testament heroes were then introduced with excellent effect, and the lads were amazed to learn that the Bible contained such stories. But results of this kind cannot be obtained without effort and preparation on the part of the raconteur.

Bible stories, being the perfect tales of the world, should be told as nearly as possible in the language and style in which they were written. Some modification is necessary for the purpose of clarifying, but the Biblical expressions should be used frequently. Quote freely from the original or follow the story with a Bible reading, that the child who hears the tales may catch something of the majestic beauty of expression of the Hebrew story-tellers. There can be no more pitiful mistake than to tell these matchless narratives in the vernacular of the street. To use modern slang in recounting the wanderings of Isaac or the passing of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea is to profane a marvelous artistic creation, even though it had no religious significance, and unfortunately story-tellers sometimes do this, thinking they will make the tales more interesting to children. That sort of narration will amuse and hold young folk only as long as it lasts, and leaders of children are not working merely for the here and now. Their effort is for time and eternity, and they should have sufficient vision to see beyond the present, sufficient sense of proportion to estimate values. The Old Testament tales need no modern strokes to make them attractive, because they abound in color and incidents that lead to superb climaxes, and never fail to fascinate when given with sincerity. Therefore they should be told in simple, dignified language, as the men of Israel told them when the world was young, and while they fire the imagination, they will lead children unconsciously to an appreciation of beautiful English, which is one of the cardinal aims of every story-teller who is worthy of the name.

The teller of Bible stories should draw from music and art, as well as from literature, because to follow a tale with a picture or musical number inspired by it is to heighten enjoyment and strengthen the impression already made. If children see Bendemann’s masterpiece, “By the Waters of Babylon,” after they have heard the story of the captivity of Israel, they will have a sympathy for the exiled Hebrews that they cannot have otherwise. Saul, David, and many other Old Testament heroes will seem more than ever like living, breathing men when viewed as Michelangelo portrayed them, while Giulio Romano’s frescoes, “The Story of Joseph,” or Pellafrino da Modena’s “Story of Solomon,” will intensify their color and romance and help to lead to an appreciation of art. Cheap reproductions bring these and other masterpieces within the reach of the narrator, and he should travel every bypath in which he may glean materials that will help children to love these old tales. He should keep ever before him the thought of how they have enriched the world, and how powerfully lives are influenced by stories heard in childhood. When Bertel Thorwaldsen was a blue-eyed boy in Copenhagen, he heard a tale that long afterward became the inspiration of “The Lion of Lucerne,” and young Richard Wagner, playing in a Dresden street one day, crept into a group to which a strolling bard was telling the medieval legend of “Parsifal.” It was a seed planted in a creative mind, and years afterward it flowered in two noble operas of the Holy Grail. So it was with Goethe, with Browning, with Byron, and many other great men. Perhaps in your group of youthful hearers there may be a boy or a girl who will listen as gifted children of the past have listened to an old, old story, and perhaps your telling it may result, long after your work is ended, in his giving to some branch of art a creation that will enrich the world through generations yet to come. But even though there be no budding genius among your auditors, sincere, artistic telling of the Bible stories cannot fail to produce great results. It will develop the emotional nature of the average child; it will broaden his sympathy and increase his capacity for feeling, make him more sympathetic, more responsive to the joys and sorrows of his fellow men, and better fitted to become a useful citizen.

Sources of Material for Bible Stories

Abbott, Lyman: Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews.

Aguilar, Grace: The Women of Israel.

Baring-Gould, S.: Lives of the Saints.

Canton, William: A Child’s Book of Saints.

Dearmer, Mabel: A Child’s Life of Christ.

Doane, T. W.: Bible Myths.

Fiske, John: The Myths of Israel; The Great Epic of Israel.

Hodges, George: A Child’s Guide to the Bible.

Houghton, Louise S.: Telling Bible Stories; Hebrew Life and Thought.

Kent, Charles Foster: Heroes and Crises of Early Hebrew History.

Lagerlöf, Selma: Christ Legends.

Olcott, Frances Jenkins: Bible Stories to Read and Tell.

Sangster, Margaret E., and Yonge, Charlotte M.: Stories from the Best of Books.

Smith, George A.: A Historical Geography of the Holy Land.

Smith, Nora A.: Old, Old Tales from the Old, Old Book.

Van Dyke, Henry, Abbott, Lyman, and Others: Women of the Bible.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Story-Telling and the Teaching of Ethics

The function of education is not only to give the child knowledge and a capacity for acquiring further knowledge that shall equip him for the life struggle and make success a possible attainment, but also to give him an ethical standard that shall make him fit to live among his fellows and a respect for the rights and feelings of others, or, as Goethe says in Wilhelm Meister, “Reverence for what is above, reverence for what is beneath, reverence for what is equal.” He must be taught to realize that he is part of a great unit and that individual desires must often give way to the welfare of the many. He must be taught that as an individual he owes to society obedience to the laws that govern society and allegiance to the principles that make possible a harmonious family, civic, and national life. Consequently it is required of every teacher that she give ethical instruction, that she endeavor to bring children to an understanding of what is generally accepted as right and wrong, and implant in them convictions strong enough to cause them to adhere to those standards.

In establishing ethical standards, as in establishing standards in art, literature, or music, we must appeal to the emotional side of the child as well as to the intellectual side. We must lead him to feel that the right act is the one that he wants to do, and this cannot be accomplished by a presentation of dry facts and precepts. Every teacher knows that the time spent in admonishing a child what he ought to do brings no gratifying results. He is not swayed to repugnance for one act or to admiration for another by being told “Thou shalt,” or “Thou shalt not.” At the time the command is given, fear may cause him to obey it; but conduct that is the result of force does not strengthen the character or teach high standards of action. It tends instead to harden the child and make him determined to act differently at the first opportunity. Ethical training does not mean to attempt to control the child, but to enlighten him and direct his volition to the point where he will attempt to control himself. As Ella Lyman Cabot says, “Its aim is to make the best there is so inviting to the child that he will work eagerly and persistently to win it.” The ideal that is held up to him must be so beautiful that he will be willing to sacrifice and endure hardship in order to attain to it, and through story-telling he may be led to see this ideal more vividly than in any other way, because the story makes right acts appealing and wrong acts repugnant. Moreover, through the narrator’s art the child lives the experiences of the tales he hears. He suffers with the evildoer and is rewarded with the virtuous, and because he is powerfully moved by a narrative, his character is lastingly affected by it.

In giving ethical instruction, it is necessary to use the right material. Tales selected for this purpose should be suited to the child’s particular period of mental development, they should contain a lesson the boy or the girl ought to learn, and they should be strong and virile and true to life. Much harm is done by telling stories of unusually good children. Such young folk are unpopular with boys and girls, and the story about them is as distasteful as is the “goody-goody” that is met with in real life. Instead of being an influence toward commendable action and the acceptance of a higher standard of right and wrong, the over-idealistic tale antagonizes the child and goads him toward that from which we would have him veer aside. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that girls often enjoy boys’ stories more than those written especially for girls. The normal girl wants to read and hear about live, natural young folk, and the heroine who has drawing-room manners and nothing else is very far from her ideal. Story characters that influence children must be human, full of human faults and virtues. From their failures and successes young people will learn many valuable lessons, but they will learn no lesson from one who poses as an unnatural young saint.

Moral training should begin with the babe, and therefore the mother and primary teacher need stories that have ethical values as early as they need Mother Goose tales and jingles. Very early in life the child must be brought to realize that there is a higher law than that of its own will or desire. It must be taught obedience, cleanliness, kindness to animals, consideration for the rights of others, truthfulness, industry, honesty, and courtesy, and these lessons can be inculcated more effectively by means of story-telling than in any other way. The tale of “The Little Red Hen” doing the work and reaping the reward of her labor is a sermon on industry that little people do not forget. The story of the farmer boy who rolled the stone out of the highway because he feared it might cause injury to some one, and then of the compensation that came to him at the hands of the lord of the village who placed it there, will help to make children thoughtful and kindly.

In telling stories of this type, the narrator should emphasize the fact that the greatest reward is the mental satisfaction that follows a good action, because the child who hears much of material reward sometimes thinks chiefly of the money or picnic or good time commendable conduct may bring, and if it happens that he does not receive remuneration, decides it is useless to perform good deeds. A case of this kind that came under my observation was that of a boy in a country school, a lazy, thoughtless little fellow. One day when a man drove through the school yard, his brother, who was very considerate, ran to open the gate. The stranger tossed a penny to the child, and the teacher, thinking to give a lasting lesson in consideration to the thoughtless boy, dwelt at length upon the stick of candy the money would buy. Several days later another man drove through the school yard and the thoughtless boy ran to open the gate. He received a smile and a “Thank you” but no money, and he could not be persuaded to open the gate again.

It is well to give stories in which children are materially rewarded, but they should be taught to see that material reward is not the only reward, and that desire for it should not be the motive that prompts a good action. The fireman who risks his life in saving the property or life of another is not bountifully paid, and seldom does he receive a purse for bravery. But he is true to his duty. He is giving to society the thing that he owes it, service, and his greatest guerdon is the satisfaction that comes from being steadfast to a trust. Examples of this kind are of great value to the child who is inclined to be selfish, and they are very effective in bringing all children to realize the truth of Alice Cary’s words:

There are no fairy folk who ride about the world at night,

To give you rings and other things to pay for doing right,

But if you’ll do to others what you’d have them do to you,

You’ll be as blest as if the best of fairy tales were true.

Very young children can be taught to realize that the true reward of right conduct comes from added self-respect and from winning the esteem of others, and whenever a child is given a tale in which a boy or a girl receives some wonderful treasure for kindness or courtesy or truthfulness, the narrator will do well to interpolate a sentence like this: “And the best part of it was that Albert was happy because he had done what was right. That thought gave him a glad feeling even more than the big, shiny dollar.”

Many fairy tales and fables are of particular ethical value for little children, and the narrator can draw much from the field of general literature; biography and history hold many good examples, while the Bible is a rich storehouse of material. Ella Lyman Cabot’s excellent work, Ethics for Children, discusses the ethical side of story-telling in such a detailed and complete way that it should be in the hands of every mother and teacher. The book gives valuable suggestions, not only to workers with little folk, but to those who have the training of grammar grade and high-school pupils also. Carolyn Sherwin Bailey’s Stories for Sunday Telling contains some good material for the mother and the primary teacher, while the several books by Sara Cone Bryant (listed in [Chapter Seven], “Telling the Story”) will be helpful.

The following list is one that has been used with good results:

Stories to Develop or Stamp out Certain Traits and Instincts

Deceit

Æsop: The Fox that Lost Its Tail (Adams, William: Fables and Rhymes—Æsop and Mother Goose).

Malice

Æsop: The Dog in the Manger (Adams, William: Fables and Rhymes—Æsop).

Sympathy and Compassion

Cabot, Ella Lyman: A Lesson for Kings (Ethics for Children).

Sawyer, Ruth: The Gipsy Mother’s Story of Joseph and Mary (This Way to Christmas).

Honesty

Cabot, Ella Lyman: The Little Loaf (Ethics for Children).

Faithfulness to Duty

Bryant, Sara Cone: The Little Hero of Haarlem (How to Tell Stories).

Cary, Phœbe: The Leak in the Dike (Poems).

Inattention

Bryant, Sara Cone: Epaminondas and His Auntie (How to Tell Stories).

Grimm, Jacob: Stupid Hans (German Household Tales).

Obedience

Partridge, E. N. and G. E.: The Little Cowherd Brother (Story-Telling in the Home and School).

Generosity

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin: The Boy Who Had a Picnic (Stories and Rhymes for the Child).

Bailey, C. S., and Lewis, Clara M.: The Woodpecker Who Was Selfish (For the Children’s Hour).

Bryant, Sara Cone: The Cloud (How to Tell Stories).

Bulfinch, Thomas: Baucis and Philemon (The Age of Fable).

Cabot, Ella Lyman: Margaret of New Orleans (Ethics for Children).

Cary, Alice: The Pig and the Hen (Poems).

Grimm, Jacob: The Star Dollars (German Household Tales).

Grimm, Joseph: The Elves and the Shoemaker (German Household Tales).

Wilde, Oscar: The Happy Prince.

Love and Sweetness

Bryant, Sara Cone: The Mirror of Matsuyama (How to Tell Stories).

Tolstoï, Leo: Where Love Is, There God Is Also (See Bryant: How to Tell Stories).

Forgiveness

Bible: The Prodigal Son.

Cabot, Ella Lyman: Lincoln and William Scott (Ethics for Children).

Hugo, Victor: The Bishop and Jean Valjean (Les Misérables).

Moulton, Louise Chandler: Coals of Fire (In Cabot: Ethics for Children).

Tolstoï, Leo: A Spark Neglected Burns the Whole House (In Cabot: Ethics for Children).

Cleanliness

Bailey, Carolyn S.: The Child Who Forgot to Wash (Story-Telling Time).

Kingsley, Charles: Tom, the Chimney Sweep (Water Babies).

Lindsay, Maud: Dust under the Rug (Mother Stories).

Richards, Laura E.: The Pig Brother (The Pig Brother and Other Stories).

Perseverance

Cabot, Ella Lyman: The Story of Helen Keller (Ethics for Children).

Cather, Katherine Dunlap: Old Jan’s Twilight Tale; The Joyous Vagabond; The Whittler of Cremona; The Border Wonderful; Jacopo, the Little Dyer (Boyhood Stories of Famous Men).

Holland, Rupert S.: The Boy of the Medici Gardens (Historic Boyhoods).

Industry

Bryant, Sara Cone: The Gold in the Orchard; The Castle of Fortune; The Sailor Man (How to Tell Stories).

Contentment

Browning, Robert: Pippa Passes (Poems).

Bryant, Sara Cone: The Rat Princess (How to Tell Stories).

Cabot, Ella Lyman: The Discontented Pendulum (Ethics for Children).

Cather, Katherine Dunlap: The Discontented Pig.

Menefee, Maud: Pippa Passes (Child Stories from the Masters).

Kindness

Æsop: The Lion and the Mouse (Adams: Fables and Rhymes—Æsop and Mother Goose).

Andersen, H. C.: Five Peas in a Pod (Wonder Stories Told to Children).

Bailey, C. S.: The Little Brown Lady (Story-telling Time).

Brown, Abbie Farwell: St. Francis of Assisi and the Wolf (Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts).

Bryant, Sara Cone: Prince Cherry (Stories to Tell to Children); Why Evergreen Trees Keep Their Leaves (How to Tell Stories).

Cabot, Ella Lyman: Dama’s Jewels (Ethics for Children).

Grimm, Jacob: Snow White and Rose Red; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Queen Bee (German Household Tales).

Longfellow, Henry: The Bell of Atri (Poems); (see also Wiggin and Smith: The Children’s Hour).

Partridge, E. N. and G. E.: The Stone Lion; Little Paulina’s Christmas (Story-Telling in the Home and School).

Richards, Laura E.: Florence Nightingale and the Shepherd Dog (Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea).

Stockton, Frank R.: Old Pipes and the Dryad (Lyman: Story-Telling: What to Tell and How to Tell It).

Greed

Æsop: The Dog and His Shadow (In Adams: Fables and Rhymes—Æsop and Mother Goose).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Golden Touch (Wonder-Book).

Courtesy

Cabot, Ella Lyman: A Four-Footed Gentleman (Ethics for Children).

History and biography offer a particularly rich field from which to draw material for older children, for nothing drives home with more force a lesson in patriotism, loyalty, faithfulness, heroism, or obedience than to read of some one who has been put to the test and has triumphed. Dozens of characters worth emulating will occur to any teacher, and the following books will be found of particular value:

Sources of Material to Use in the Teaching of Ethics

Baldwin, James: American Book of Golden Deeds.

Bolton, Sarah K.: Famous Leaders among Men; Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous; Lives of Girls Who Became Famous.

Lang, Andrew: The True Story Book.

Lang, Jeanie: The Story of Robert the Bruce.

Richards, Laura E.: Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea.

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PART TWO
THE USE OF STORY-TELLING TO ILLUMINATE SOME SCHOOLROOM SUBJECTS—STORIES FOR TELLING

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in History

It has been said by Walter Prichard Eaton, “The pupil who gets a mark of one hundred and thereafter hates Shakespeare, has failed—rather, his teacher has,”—and it is equally true that the instructor also has failed whose classes look upon history as a series of dates and dull facts instead of a colorful story.

To teach history successfully means to give the child vivid pictures of the past, to enable him to see as a whole the march of a race or of a nation across the canvas of time, to watch the legions of warriors go to victory or defeat, to hear the voices of statesmen whose wisdom has builded empires, to walk side by side with the men and women whose lives make up the annals of the world. To be of value to the child, history must be felt, just as a work of literature must be felt. He must live it, must approve the worthy and disapprove the unworthy, must rejoice in and sympathize with the fortunes and misfortunes of its characters, else it cannot be anything more to him than the chronology in the almanac, disliked during his school days and forgotten as soon as they are over.

Story-telling can make history alive and vital because of its power to convey the child to distant scenes and ages, and through it he may become, not only a spectator, but a participant in every human activity. If our libraries were to be swept away and publishing houses should shut their doors, we could still teach history to children, and teach it successfully, through the art of the narrator. By the medium of the story we can make the child see what has been done by his ancestors and other people in the past; by it we can interpret to him how his forefathers lived and acted, how other people have attempted to do what he is trying to do or sees done, and give him a vivid idea of human ways of living and conduct. This is history in the larger sense, and it was taught successfully by the story-teller in the past.

Before the days of printing, when books were manuscripts that no one but monks could read and kings could afford to own, story-telling was the only way in which this subject was taught. Tales of bygone days were told in castle halls and to groups of eager listeners on the village green, and boys and girls of King Alfred’s time knew as much of their country’s story from the lips of wandering bards as those of our generation know from cramming the contents of textbooks. They knew it because through the tales they heard they were able to relive it, and what has been done before can be done again. Because of the story’s power to vivify, modern children can relive the world’s story just as those in medieval times relived it, and history can be made a subject fraught with delight to the child.

Child attention centers first upon familiar things, and radiates from them to the unknown. Through his interest in creatures that are a part of his environment, the kindergarten tot becomes interested in those of other regions, in the men, women, children, and animals that are part of the life of some other child. Through knowledge of his immediate surroundings he comes to acquire knowledge of life in other surroundings, and according to the appeal it makes to his imagination, he understands and sympathizes with it, and his social sense is broadened. Therefore, in the study of history, the attention should be focused upon local environment, and from it should radiate to other sections of the world. In other words, by what the child sees happening around him, he must be led to see what has happened in the past and what is happening now in distant regions. This requires imagination, and a boy or a girl cannot see or feel these events if they are presented as a dry chronology, because under those conditions they do not arouse the imagination. He must behold them flashed on a canvas like a colorful picture, and because the story can do this, because it can make real to the imagination situations that cannot be experienced, through it he can be led to see and feel all that we desire him to see and feel.

The biographical story, the tale of the leader who towers above his fellows like the Matterhorn above the Valais foothills, is a boon to every teacher of history. Because it is unified in plot and dramatic in appeal to the imagination, it is the most easily handled of all the history material, and should be used freely. But if children are not to have a distorted idea of the story of the human race, we must not stop with the biographical tale. We must give them also a conception of the part the masses have had in the making of the great human story, of the yeomen of England, upon whose sturdy shoulders the foundation of British liberty stands, of the vassals of Italy, France, and Germany, of the army of unknown toilers who built the Pyramids and the Chinese Wall. Sometimes, in satisfying the child’s hero-love, we make him one-sided by laying too much stress upon individual achievement and not enough upon the work of the multitude. We do not lead him to value the importance of the humble who toil in the rank and file. This is not as it should be. We should make it clear to him that the stokers who feed the furnace of the man-of-war are as splendidly patriotic as the admiral who commands the fleet, and are as necessary to their land, because, were there no coal heavers, there could be no navy.

Sometimes, too, because martial events are more spectacular than those of peace, we give the impression that they are the only important and heroic ones, and fail to convince the children of the fact that the peasants of Lorraine, who tilled their fields until they blossomed like gardens, served their land as loyally as the soldiers who marched to victory under the oriflamme of Henry of Navarre. We are too prone to center the child interest around military affairs, and neglect to emphasize the importance of conflicts of another kind. The history of every modern industry, of every achievement that has meant anything to the world, is a story of struggle, of victory over opposing forces. It has its succession of events, its periods of triumph and defeat, its moments of suspense, and its thrilling climax, and if presented in all its possibilities, is as fascinating to childhood as Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Let us not fail to give these narratives of struggle that are unstained by human blood, and in doing it lead children to understand that there are other ways of serving one’s land besides riding a war horse or carrying a musket.

We teach that Robert Fulton invented the first steamboat, but it is only the exceptional child-leader who makes the most of that event, who throws upon the canvas, for youth to behold, the story of the struggle and disappointment, the triumph and despair, of the young American engineer. To give them the fact that the Clermont made a successful trip from New York to Albany in 1807, is like telling the end of a story without the beginning or intervening chapters, and a snatch of a tale never has the effect of the whole. But if the children have all the light and shade of that splendid narrative of invention, of the labor beside the Seine, of the hope and discouragement there, it becomes a fascinating, unforgotten tale. They remember the Clermont episode because they have enjoyed a story, and years afterward, when they see a ferryboat or an ocean greyhound, they will think of the New Englander through whose dreams and labor it came to be.

To the teacher who looks upon history as a great, fascinating tale, who regards it as a narrative instead of a mere bunch of dates and periods, who knows the story of man’s inner development as well as that of his outer, and who uses the myths, legends, and epics of a land as side lights to illuminate its true story, great results are possible. There is no phase or period of history that he cannot make intensely interesting to the child, no page of the world’s story that will not teem with life and color to the boy or girl who receives it from such an instructor. It may be an account of events in his own land, of happenings in the stern, white north country or in the opalescent south, it may be of knights in glittering armor or of serene-faced, brown-cowled friars, of men from the masses or from the ranks of the exalted, but it will breathe and pulsate for him, it will give him the information that he should receive, and it will give him an understanding that no memorizing of dates and outlines can give, because he has lived with those who made history, because he has suffered, rejoiced, and achieved with them.

Every great historian is more than a recounter of events of the past. He is an artist who fits himself into the moods of men and women who lived and accomplished before his time, puts them into his pages as creatures of flesh and blood, and gives to their activities as much freshness and interest as have the events that happen before our eyes. Motley, Guizot, Hume, Hallam, Froissart, and our own Parkman, Lodge, Prescott, and Bancroft created as splendidly as ever Hugo, Corneille, or Balzac created, because they endowed characters of fact with as much life as these other men gave to characters of fiction; and consequently, with sources rich in inspiration from which to draw, the teacher who aspires to vivify history by story-telling is confronted by no hopeless task. He need only go to the works of the standard historians for his background, and then, by giving the imagination sufficient play to supply setting and detail of situation, he can carry a joyful lesson to the children. This is well illustrated in the following story of Western discovery. Children love it and ask to have it told again and again, while if the bare facts are given them in outline form, it means little to them. Not every teacher is gifted to the degree of Miss Hood and can hope to weave a fact of history into a tale that deserves to rank as a children’s classic; but every teacher can put history into story form with enough skill to make it hold delight for his pupils and cause them to go from his instruction with a fondness for history, an understanding of what history really means, which is worth infinitely more than a thousand dates or outlines crammed into the mind for an examination or recitation, or stored there permanently to rust and grow useless, because they have no meaning, and therefore no broadening or illuminating effect upon his life.

THE SEARCH FOR THE SEVEN CITIES

By Margaret Graham Hood

The Story of Tejos

In the year 1530, when Nuño de Guzmán was governor of New Spain, he had an Indian slave of whom he was very fond and who was likewise fond of his master. He was a good servant and different in many ways from all the other slaves in the palace, and it often pleased Nuño de Guzmán to talk with him.

“Tejos,” said De Guzmán to him one day, “tell me of your home when you were a boy, and tell me of your father and mother.”

Then Tejos turned away from his master and stood for a long time silent.

“Master,” he said at last, “when Tejos was a boy he lived not in this land, nor was he a slave. His home was in a land far, far to the northward. My lord, it was a great land. Beyond the home of my father there was yet another country greater still. In that farther land were seven great cities, and even the smallest of them was as great as this city of Mexico. So rich were the people of those cities that they made arrowheads of emeralds, and scraped the sweat from their bodies with scrapers made of gold, and put precious stones over their doors. Their houses were wide and high. My father carried to these people the feathers that they wore upon their heads, and in return they gave him gold and turquoises and emeralds. My father took Tejos with him twice, my lord, when he journeyed with feathers to those cities, and though Tejos was then but a small boy, he still remembers the long streets where were only the stores of jewelers who sold the precious stones and made them into ornaments for the people.”

“And where,” asked Nuño de Guzmán breathlessly, “where is this land?”

“It is far away from here, my lord,” answered Tejos, sadly. “Forty days you must journey to reach it, and the land through which you must travel is a desert lying between two seas, and there is neither water nor food to be had.”

Scarcely waiting to sleep, De Guzmán began to gather a force to march in search of this wonderful land. Far and wide the story spread and on all sides the talk was of

The Land of the Seven Cities

With four hundred Spaniards and twenty thousand Indians, De Guzmán marched from Mexico, and the people waited each day to hear that he had conquered a great empire in the north.

As he went, rumors of the Seven Cities kept coming to him, and his men were often so excited he could hardly get them to sleep enough. For days they pressed eagerly forward, hoping each day to find the Seven Cities at hand; but instead of this, the country each day grew more desolate, the mountains grew steeper and the roads harder to find, while the Seven Cities, instead of coming nearer, were always farther and farther to the north.

Then the Indians began to desert and the Spaniards to complain. “We have been deceived,” they said, “and we shall all die in this bleak land. Let us return to Mexico.”

For a while Nuño de Guzmán cheered them by holding ever before them the reward that awaited them, but at last he too grew discouraged and afraid; they all turned about and marched sadly back to Mexico.

“We will go back now,” said Nuño de Guzmán, “but some day I will have the right sort of an army and I will come again. Tejos himself shall lead me, and I will yet find and conquer those Seven Cities.”

But when he returned to Mexico, Tejos was dead, and the story of Nuño de Guzmán’s misfortunes discouraged others; so for six years no one went to seek the Seven Cities. Then a strange thing happened.

The Wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca

Into the town of Culiacan there one day came wandering four strange men. They were barefooted and almost naked. The little clothing they wore was made of skins and hung in rags about them. Their hair lay in a tangled mass upon their shoulders, and their beards reached almost to their knees.

They fell at the feet of the first Spaniard they met, crying, “Thank God! Thank God! At last! At last!” Then they seized his hands and kissed them, kissed each other, and danced about, clapping their hands and shouting for joy.

“They are madmen,” said the people who gathered around to look at them. “What shall we do with them?”

“No, no,” cried the oldest of the strangers. “No, no! You do not understand. We are poor wanderers who have been lost for years among the Indians. We have been slaves; our companions have died, but at last we have escaped and now, for the first time in years, we see Christians and Spaniards and our joy overcomes us. Can you wonder at it, dear friends?”

“Lost among the Indians!” murmured the people in astonishment. “Made slaves by the Indians! Terrible! What can it mean?”

“There is something very strange about it,” said one.

“Let us take them before our Capitán,” said another, and they took them at once to the Capitán.

“Who are you?” he asked rudely, looking with disgust at their dirt and rags.

“I am Cabeza de Vaca,” said the oldest man. “I am a noble of Castile who came with Narvaez to conquer Florida. The fleet was wrecked and all were lost save these three companions and me. We have been all these years since among the Indians.”

“I do not believe a word of it,” said the Capitán. “There is something strange about it. These men may be criminals. Put them into prison until we find out.”

For three months they lay in the prison. Then they were sent for by the Alcalde Melchior Diaz. He received them with all kindness, and to him they were allowed to tell their story.

“Is it true,” he said to the oldest man, “that you are Cabeza de Vaca of Castile?”

“It is true,” answered Cabeza de Vaca. “Ten years ago I sailed with Narvaez to the Florida coast to take part in his great expedition, but, alas! all our ships were wrecked and only a few of us escaped to the mainland. There most of those who did escape died, and we four, three of us Spaniards and one a negro, have wandered ever since among the Indians. We wept for joy at sight of our own people when we reached your town, but they have treated us worse than did the Indians.”

“Do not think of that now,” said kind Melchior Diaz. “It was a mistake; you shall now be treated with all the kindness that is your due. Tell me your story.”

Then Cabeza de Vaca began the story of his wanderings:

“After Narvaez and the ships were lost,” said he, “we escaped to the mainland and were taken captive by the Indians. They were a poor, starved people who lived on roots and berries and whatever they could get, and who often went for days without a mouthful. I do not know how many years they held us as slaves, but it was for many years and our sufferings were great.

“We tried always to get to the north, and little by little we got further westward and northward.

“At last we escaped from those Indians who held us as slaves and fell in with others farther west who had never seen a white man. We had with us a rattle such as is used by their medicine men, and this, with our beards, made them think we were from heaven. They fell on their faces before us and gave us all that they had.

“We told these people we wished to go to where the sun sets, and they said, ‘No, you cannot go there. The people are too far away.’

“‘It makes no difference,’ I said, ‘you must still lead us there.’

“We saw they were in great fear, but at last they sent off two of their women to see if they could find the other people and tell them of our coming. In five days they came back. ‘They have found no people,’ said the Indians to us. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘lead us to the northward,’ and again they said: ‘There are no people there. Neither is there food or water.’

“At this I became offended and went apart from them, and at night went away by myself to sleep. But they came at once where I was and remained all night without sleep. They talked to me in great fear, telling me how great was their fright, begging us to be no longer angry; and they said they would lead us whatsoever way we wished to go, though they knew they should die on the way.

“We still pretended to be angry, lest their fright should leave them, and while we were thus pretending a remarkable thing happened: the very next day many of them became ill, and eight men died. They believed we had caused their death by willing it, and it seemed as if they must all die of fear.

“In truth, it caused us so much pain to see them suffer that it could not be greater, and we prayed to God, our Lord, to relieve them, and they soon got better.

“News of our strange power spread through the land, and the people trembled at our coming. Sometimes they would come to meet us, and bring all they owned and offer it to us. Or, again, when they heard we were coming, they would go into their houses and pile all their goods in a heap in the middle of the floor for us, and then sit down, with their faces to the wall, their heads bowed, and their hair drawn over their eyes. Thus they waited until we came and spoke to them. Then they gave us whatever we would take from them.

“Wherever we went, they brought their sick to us and begged us to cure them. We always examined them carefully, and treated them as best we knew how, and prayed earnestly to God to help us, and they nearly always got well. Whenever a sick man got well, he not only gave us all that he had, but all his friends did likewise.

“As we pressed westward and northward we came all the time to finer Indians who had more wealth and better homes than those farther east.

“At last we came to a land of plenty. The people lived in houses and had beans, pumpkins, and calabashes for food and covered themselves with blankets made of hides. They were the finest-looking and strongest people we had seen and intelligent beyond any of the others. They had nothing they did not give to us. They begged us to pray for rain and told us that for two years not a drop had fallen. When we asked where they had got their food, they told us from the land of the maize. Then I bade them tell me of this land of the maize, and they told that beyond them was a land of many people and large houses, where maize grew all over the land; that the people of that land were wealthy and wore beautiful plumes and feathers of parrots, and used precious stones for arrowheads and to decorate their houses. And they brought to me five beautiful emeralds cut into arrowheads, and many fine turquoises and beads made of coral such as come from the South Seas. When I asked whence they got these stones, they pointed to some lofty mountains that stand toward the north and told us that from there came the precious stones, and that near those mountains were large cities. They said that in those cities the houses were so large that there were sometimes three or four lofts one above the other.”

“And did you not go to those cities?” asked Melchior Diaz, eagerly.

“No,” answered Cabeza de Vaca. “I did not go because I heard that toward the sunset were other men of my kind, and I hurried westward, hoping to meet them. Therefore I did not go to the land of the cities. I longed once more to look upon the face of a Spaniard.”

“You have suffered much,” said Melchior Diaz, “but do not think of it, and now rest.”

Then Melchior Diaz sent off a messenger to Mexico to carry a letter to the Viceroy de Mendoza, telling him of Cabeza de Vaca and his strange tale.

Forthwith the messenger returned with a letter commanding Cabeza de Vaca and his companions to come at once to Mexico and appear before the viceroy.

To Mexico they went, and again Cabeza told the strange story of their wanderings.

“It is a wonderful story,” said the viceroy, when he had finished, “and you certainly deserve to spend the rest of your life in ease. Say the word, and I myself will send you home to Spain.”

Cabeza de Vaca almost wept for joy at these words. “Gladly will I go, dear friend. Gladly will I go, for I am weary of wandering and would once more see my own country.”

So Cabeza de Vaca and two of his companions sailed off to Spain, and the Viceroy de Mendoza thought much of the wonderful cities far to the northward.

The Journey of Fray Marcos

The story of Cabeza de Vaca set all New Spain talking once more of the Seven Cities.

“Of course,” said the people, as they talked, “of course they are the same seven cities Nuño de Guzmán learned of from Tejos, the Indian. He did not get the right directions, and so he failed to reach them. But now we know they are there,” and many were eager to set out at once.

But the Viceroy de Mendoza was a quiet and careful statesman.

“There have been many lives lost already,” he said, “and it will be better not to be in too great a hurry. I believe these are the seven cities sought for by Nuño de Guzmán, but I shall not send an army until I am sure.”

Then he thought of a monk called Fray Marcos of Niza, who had been much among the Indians of the north, and he sent for him to come at once to Mexico.

Fray Marcos came, and the Viceroy de Mendoza told him the story of Cabeza de Vaca.

“Now, Fray Marcos,” said the viceroy, after finishing the story, “if we should send an army, these Indians would surely make war upon us and both for them and for us there would be many lives lost. You understand them, and it might be that they would let you come among them and learn what we desire. Perhaps there lies to the northward as great a nation as Peru or Mexico. It must be taken for the church and the crown. Will you not be the one to carry the message of the cross and to take possession of the country for the king of Spain?”

“I will,” said Fray Marcos, eagerly.

“Very well,” said Mendoza, smiling. “The negro Stephen who was with Cabeza de Vaca is here, and he shall be your guide. Remember that this expedition is to be undertaken more to spread our knowledge of God than for great wealth. Therefore, bear in mind that the natives are to be treated with the utmost kindness, and my displeasure will fall heavy upon whosoever shall offend them. Say to them that the Emperor is very angry at those Christians who have been unkind to them, and that never again shall they be enslaved or taken from their homes.

“Take special note of their number, and of their manner of life, and whether they are at peace or at war among themselves. Notice the nature of the country, the fertility of the soil, and the character of its products. Learn what wild animals there are there, and find out if there are any rivers great or small. Search for precious stones and metals and, if possible, bring back specimens of them. Also make careful inquiry if the natives have any knowledge of a neighboring sea.

“If you shall succeed in reaching the Southern Sea, write out an account of all your discoveries and bury it at the foot of the tallest tree and then mark the tree with a cross. Do the same at the mouth of all rivers, and those who are sent after you will be on the lookout for such a sign. Take enough Indians with you so that you can send them back from time to time to bring to us reports of the route you have taken and how you are treated by the Indians you meet. If you shall come to any great city, do not send back word but come yourself and tell me about it. And lastly, although all the world belongs to the Emperor, be sure and plant the cross in those new lands and take possession of them in the name of the Spanish crown, and never forget that your life is of great value to your church and your country, and do not risk it needlessly. Now, go. Make all your plans and set out as soon as may be.”

Fray Marcos hastened to make his plans, and on the seventh of March, 1539, he set out from Culiacan with the negro Stephen and a few faithful Indians.

Several months went by; then, at the end of September, 1539, a traveler in a monk’s gown came walking alone into Culiacan.

“It is Fray Marcos!” cried the people. “It is Fray Marcos, who went to search for the Seven Cities!” “Did you find them, Fray Marcos?” “Where is Stephen, the negro?” “Are the Seven Cities full of wealth?”

But Fray Marcos would not answer. “I have much to tell,” he said to them, “but I will tell it only to the Lord de Mendoza himself.”

To the Lord de Mendoza he told a story even more wonderful than the story of Tejos, the Indian, or that of Cabeza de Vaca.

“All the way,” he said, “I found great entertainment, for after I told the Indians they were not to be enslaved, they could not do enough to show their love for me. I went where the Holy Ghost did lead me. The Indians guided me from place to place, and some went ahead to tell others that I was coming. Everywhere they came to meet me and gave me welcome. They had food ready for me; and where there were no houses, they built bowers of trees and flowers that I might rest safe from the sun.

“I saw naught that was worthy of notice until there came to me some Indians from an island off the coast, and these wore about their necks great shells that were of mother-of-pearl. To these I showed the pearls which I carried with me for show, and they told me that in their islands there were great stores of such, and that there were thirty islands.

“And then I passed through a desert of four days’ journey, and there went with me the Indians from the island and from the mountains I had passed. At the end of this desert I found other Indians, who marveled much to see me, because they had not before seen a white man. They gave me great stores of food and sought to touch my garments, and called me Hayota, which in their language means ‘A man come from Heaven.’

“As best I could, I told to all these Indians of our Lord God in Heaven, and of our great Emperor over the sea. Then I asked them if they knew of any great kingdom thereabout or of any great cities.

“And they told me that farther on were high mountains, and at the foot of those mountains was a large and mighty plain on which were many great towns and people clad in cotton. Then I showed them metals that I carried with me and said to them, ‘Have the people of those cities any of these?’ And they took the gold metal from my hand and said: ‘Of this do the people of those cities make the vessels from which they eat, and also do they make of it thin plates to scrape the sweat from their bodies, and the walls of their temples are covered therewith.’

“Then I asked concerning the precious stones known to the people of the cities, and the Indians answered that they had round, green stones that they prized much and wore hanging from their noses and ears.

“The Indians offered to take me to the cities, but because it was a long journey from the sea, and your lordship had commanded me to keep close to the coast, I did not go.

“It was now Passion Sunday, and I felt inclined to tarry among the people I was with. I did so, but I sent on ahead of me the negro Stephen.

“I told him to go to the northward fifty or threescore leagues, and to take with him Indians, of whom he should send back from time to time messengers bearing me news of all that he learned.

“We agreed that if it were the mean country of which he learned, he should send me a cross no longer than my hand; but if it were a great country, he should send me a cross the length of two hands; and if it were a country greater and richer than New Spain, he should send a great cross.

“Stephen went from me on Passion Sunday, after dinner, and within four days there came to me messengers bearing a cross as high as a man. He sent me also word that I should at once come after him, for he had news of a mighty province; that he had with him certain Indians who had been to that province, and one of them he sent to me.

“The Indian whom Stephen had sent told me it was thirty days’ journey beyond the town where Stephen was, to the first city of the province, which was called Cibola. He said there were seven great cities in this province all under one lord. The houses, he said, were made of stone and the smallest of them were of two lofts, one above the other; and the house of the lord of the province had four lofts and was wide and long. He said, too, that the gates of the finest houses were cunningly wrought with turquoises, whereof they had plenty.

“The same day that Stephen’s messenger came to me there came also another Indian from the seacoast, and he told again of the many islands in the sea and of people who have many pearls and much gold.

“And that same day there came to me three Indians with their faces and breasts and arms painted.

“They came, they said, from a province toward the east that bordered upon that of the Seven Cities. They had heard of me and wished to see me. They told me of the Seven Cities of Cibola, the people, and the houses, in the same manner that Stephen had sent me word. I sent back the Indians who had come from the islands on the seacoast, and hurried on after Stephen.

“Each day messengers came to me from Stephen, all carrying large crosses and all telling of Cibola.

“At last came Indian messengers who told me of three other kingdoms called Marata, Acus, and Tonteac. They said that the people of those provinces dressed even as the people of Cibola, with gowns of cotton that hang to their feet, and they bound them with girdles of turquoises. And they told me much more, to make me know that these provinces were in all ways as great as Cibola.

“I traveled on for days, stopping to know the people among whom I passed and always being received by them with all tenderness.

“They brought me their sick that I might heal them and sought always to touch my garments. They gave to me cowhides so well tanned that I could not well believe them to have been dressed by savage people.

“As I went on, I came to great crosses set up in the ground by Stephen to let me know that the good news of the country increased. I came to a pleasant town at last where indeed were people clad in cotton, both men and women, and they wore turquoises in their noses and ears. The lord of the village came with his brethren to greet me, and they were well dressed in robes of cotton and hides and wore collars of turquoises about their necks.

“It was a fair country, better than any I had yet seen; so I set up two great crosses and took possession of it for His Majesty, the Emperor. They offered me gifts of all they had, but I took not one thing save food.

“I came now to a desert and went into it, and I found that the Indians had gone on ahead of me and built bowers beneath which I ate and slept, and in this manner I traveled for four days.

“Then I entered a valley where were many people; men and women came to meet me with food. All of them had turquoises hanging from their noses and ears and collars of turquoises three or four times double about their necks.

“Here they knew of Cibola as much as we in New Spain know of Mexico and could answer all I wished to ask about the people.

“As I went on I met more and more people, and passed through a fine country where is much grass and water. The people were in all ways civil and kind and told me about Cibola and Acus, and Tonteac and Marata and Quivira. Here I saw a thousand oxhides all nicely dressed and chains of turquoise, and they told me they all came from Cibola.

“And now I had two deserts to cross and was fifteen days’ journey from Cibola.

“I entered the desert, and many Indians went with me, and others went on ahead to make ready for me; and each day there came word from Stephen, telling me all was true and to hurry after him.

“For twelve days I journeyed thus, and then there came running to meet us an Indian in great fright—his body covered with sweat and dust and his face showing the greatest sadness.

“He told us that the day before, Stephen had reached Cibola, and had sent messengers into the city with presents for its lord, and to let him know they came in peace.

“But the lord of the city fell into a great rage, and dashed the presents of Stephen to the ground. In his fury he drove the messengers out of the city, and told them that if they again appeared they would surely be killed, as would also Stephen, if he dared to come near.

“The messengers hurried to Stephen and told him what had happened, but he was in no wise afraid; he answered he should go, nevertheless, and bade the Indians fear not, but to come with him.

“They went on, but as they were about to enter the city, many of its people met them and seized them and cast them into a great house that stood just outside. They took from them all that they had, and left them all night without food or drink. The next morning Stephen and his Indians tried to escape, but they were scarce outside their prison when the people of the city set upon them, and Stephen and all the Indians, except the messenger and one other, were killed. These two had been struck down and left for dead, but were only stunned. They had lain under the dead bodies of the others until the angry people had gone back into the city. Then they had crept away.

“My Lord de Mendoza, so great was my grief at this terrible news that it seemed for a moment I must indeed die, but when I saw all my Indians begin to weep and lament, I knew I must not give way.

“I straightway gave to them many of the presents I had intended for the people of Cibola, and then I resolved that though I might not enter the city I would still look upon it, and I told them I would nevertheless go on. They begged me not to go, but when they saw I was firm two of them agreed to go with me. So we left the others to await our return and journeyed forwards. We traveled one day, and then we came to a round hill. This I climbed, and on looking down saw at its foot the city of Cibola. It was a fair city, my lord. The houses were as the Indians told me, of two and three and four stories and built of stone. The people were somewhat white and dressed in white garments. Greatly was I tempted to risk my life and go thither, but knowing that if I were killed all knowledge of the country would be lost, I gave it up and contented myself with planting a cross upon the hilltop in token that I took possession for the crown of Spain.”

“You have done well, Fray Marcos,” cried Mendoza, “and now it is time to send an army.”

The Disappointment of Coronado

When Mendoza wanted to send an army, the first person he thought of was a brave soldier and fine nobleman named Francisco de Coronado, who sat by his side, listening eagerly.

Coronado knew all about the expedition of Nuño de Guzmán, and had heard the story of Cabeza de Vaca. Also, he had talked with Mendoza before the viceroy had sent Fray Marcos on his journey, and had said he would be willing to spend a fortune in fitting out an army to take the Seven Cities.

So Mendoza turned to Coronado and said: “Is it still your wish, my noble friend, to lead an army against this kingdom of Cibola?”

“It is,” said Coronado.

“Well, then, make ready at once, and I will help you in every way that I can,” said the viceroy.

The news spread rapidly, and again all New Spain was talking of the Seven Cities. In a short time three hundred Spaniards and eight hundred Indians had enlisted, and so many gentlemen of noble birth had offered to go that the viceroy was much embarrassed in choosing officers, for of course he must take the noblest gentlemen, and there were too many!

A fine sight they were—those cavaliers of Spain—in their glittering armor, mounted on prancing horses, their lances gleaming in the sunlight and their banners flying. Out of Compostela they marched in the gayest spirits, thinking of the loads of gold and jewels they would bring back with them.

But it was very different when they reached the desert and the mountains. They did not know how to bear the fatigue of such a journey, nor how to care for their horses and cattle and sheep. The animals died in large numbers, and the courage of the soldiers weakened rapidly as they grew weary.

The soldiers had come with the thought of conquest, so they did not treat the Indians they met so kindly as Fray Marcos had done, and of course the Indians did not like them very well, and in a little while there began to be trouble.

At last they came to a narrow pass in the mountains.

“I am afraid the Indians will try to keep us from passing,” said Coronado to the Master of the Field. “Go you with a company of soldiers and guard that pass until all the army come up. Then we will go through.”

The Master of the Field took his company and stood guard at the pass. But that night, while all but the sentries were asleep, the Indians crept down upon them and the sleeping camp was roused by a shower of stones and arrows and the wild yells of the Indians.

Now the men had lain down with their guns beside them; so they were ready, and they sprang up and began fighting bravely. For a while the battle raged hotly, the Spaniards firing their guns and the Indians replying with stones and arrows. But when the Indians saw some of their number falling dead, they were frightened and fled away in the darkness, and the Spaniards held the pass.

After that the Spaniards had little peace, but nevertheless Coronado managed to keep up their courage. On they went, up through that country we now call Arizona, over almost the same road that Fray Marcos had traveled. They paused where is now the city of Tucson, and then marching northeastward, crossed the Gila River and moved on toward Cibola. At last, where today stands the town of Zuñi, they reached the first city of the kingdom whose fame had so long filled with golden dreams the minds of the Spaniards. But instead of the great, fine, glittering city they had expected they saw only a village of a few hundred houses.

The hearts of the Spaniards sank as they gazed upon it. Coronado called three of his men and said to them, “Go into the city and say to the people that we are not enemies, but have come in the name of the Emperor, our lord, to defend them and to join with them in friendship.”

The messengers went into the city and delivered Coronado’s message, but the people of Cibola received it with scorn.

“We did not ask you to come,” they replied, “and your lord had no right to send you. This is our land and we can defend it. Go back to your lord and to your own land, for if you stay here you shall not one of you live.”

The messengers turned to go back to Coronado, and even as they went the people of Cibola began firing arrows at them.

Coronado got his men quickly together and gave the command to attack. The people of Cibola were gathered upon the walls of their city and rained down arrows and stones upon the Spaniards as they came. The Spaniards were many of them so weary from their long journey that they had not strength enough left to pull a crossbow. Indeed, for a time it seemed they must be beaten, so fiercely did the Indians battle against them. The glittering armor of Coronado and the earnestness with which he cheered on his men, told the Indians that he was the leader of the Spaniards, and they tried particularly to kill him. Twice they felled him to the ground, and once he must surely have been killed had not a brave knight stood across his body and guarded him from the rain of stones until he recovered. He would not give up. Weak from the blows he had received, aching in every part, and with an arrow sticking in his foot, he led the last charge, shouting “Santiago!” as he rode.

“Santiago!” echoed his soldiers as they followed him straight into the town. The Indians fled as the Spaniards entered, and the battle was over.

The Spaniards almost wept with rage and despair as they looked about them. The houses, it is true, were made of stone and were large, as had been said, but there were no jeweled gates, no vessels of gold and silver, no fine city, no stores of wealth to carry back to Spain.

So great was Coronado’s despair that he fell ill almost unto death. He could not bear to give up. It seemed he must find those seven wonderful cities. As soon as he was able he sent out parties in all directions to see what could be found.

For almost two years they searched. Whenever an Indian told them a new tale, they started off at once to see if it were true. They heard of a great river to the westward, and Arellano, one of the brave officers, led a party at once in search of it. Across the dry, hot desert of Arizona they went, and never stopped until they came to the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. Below them flowed the mighty river between walls hundreds of feet deep and so steep they could not descend to the water, though they were almost dying of thirst as they stood over it.

Scarcely had they got back before the army was again all excitement because an Indian had told a tale of a great city to the northeastward. Coronado himself led them in search of it. Up they went through New Mexico, traveling for days among herds of buffaloes that reached farther than they could see.

They went so far north as to enter that part of our country now called Kansas. They found in reward for their long journey only a few Indian villages.

At last, when more than two thirds of his men were dead, Coronado gave up and marched back to Mexico. And this was the last search for the Seven Cities that were not.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in Geography

In the study of geography the story means as much as in history. The child is keenly interested in what he is doing and in what those around him are doing, and when he discovers that people in China, in South America, in Australia, or in Russia are doing the very things he is attempting to do or sees done, that they are engaged in industrial occupation very much as his father or uncle or neighbor is engaged in it, that distant occupation loses its remote quality, and the country with which it is associated becomes real and near to him. In the larger sense geography is something that must be felt and imagined. It is an interpretation of foreign activities and the regions in which they take place, and because the story can interpret these activities, because it can make situations real and familiar instead of aloof, it is of inestimable value in teaching the subject. Here the myth and fairy tale can be used with excellent results, because through them the child sees something of the struggle of man in his effort to interpret the world and comes to have a broader sympathy for the ideals of people of other regions. Moreover, in many instances it tends to fix definite information concerning a certain locality and to invest distant regions with vivid interest, for to the boy who associates the Rhine or Danube or Himalayas with the tale of a hero or people who once lived and did brave deeds there, those rivers and mountains will be more than black specks on a map. If he hears of the two frogs in Japan who started out to see the world, he will not say that Kioto is somewhere in South America, because the spot has been fixed in his mind by a story. Because it is associated with something he has enjoyed, it stays there, and while the highest aim of the study of geography is not merely to stuff the mind with facts, but to broaden the horizon and bring the world within the child’s own dooryard, the acquisition of certain information tends to give him that broad outlook which makes all people seem creatures of his world and all activities a part of his own experience. Unfortunately, however, teachers sometimes lose sight of this fact, and the larger aim is made subservient to a memorizing of data.

Geography and history are so closely related that it is difficult to separate them, and in making one vivid we must draw constantly from the other. The field is limitless. In fact, there are so many stories to give the geography class that teachers sometimes say, “When are we to have time for formal recitations?”

Too much recitation and not enough story is responsible for the fact that boys and girls sometimes give startling information about the location of places. Shorten the recitation period, if necessary, but do not fail to give the stories that bring far-away places as near as one’s own dooryard, and let tests and examinations prove which method is better. We must possess before we can give, and the pupil who is assigned a number of pages and expected to recite about them often fails miserably, because interest, which must underlie the acquisition of knowledge, has not been aroused. We may tell him to study the course of the Rhine and locate the cities that dot its banks, and one will mean no more to him than the other. But if he hears the tale of the building of the king of German cathedrals and the legend of the architect’s compact with the Evil One, Cologne will have an individuality very different from that of Coblenz with its bridge of boats. If he listens to the tale of Maui fishing up New Zealand from the bottom of the ocean, of the demigod chieftain who was the discoverer of Hawaii and the patriarch of his people, there will pass before his eyes at the mention of places among the Pacific Islands pictures of a dark-skinned, sea-loving race with a history fully as fascinating as that of his own people.

If there is not time for him to recite it all, let him write about it. This will help to solve the composition problem, because the reason for much of the miserable written English work is due to the fact that the child has nothing to give. He is told to elaborate upon a subject that lies far from his interest, one of which he has little knowledge, with results that every English teacher knows. But if he has been interested in it by a story, he can give that story back in oral or written form, even though the construction be far from perfect.

Another value of using stories with a geographical or historical background is that they develop the child’s social instinct and give him something of a realization of the brotherhood of man. Through hearing and reading them he becomes broader and more tolerant. He sees that in every part of the world men have their standards and ideals, which, although they may be greatly at variance with his own, are entitled to respect because they represent deep convictions and desires. Instead of viewing the world through a keyhole, he sees it across unobstructed fields and comes to have a bigger human understanding. In the study of geography there is a finer opportunity than anywhere else in elementary education to divert the child’s feet from a narrow, provincial trail into the broad highway of cosmopolitanism.

As in the study of history, so in geography the story should radiate from local environment to other sections of the world, and every worker with girls and boys, whether mother, teacher, or librarian, should endeavor to give them some idea of the story of their own locality. The child should know something of the legends of the people who built their camp fires on the spots that are his public parks and gardens, and teachers especially should aid the earnest group of men and women that is patiently collecting and preserving our American folklore, by giving some of it to the children. It will not only heighten pride in their own locality, but it will broaden their understanding of other lands and races and their sympathy with the struggles of different peoples. This kind of work belongs to the field of history, but it so greatly increases interest in geography that the teacher should not miss the opportunity of using this material.

There are legends clustering about every section of our country that the people of that locality should know, and it is a matter of regret that the average man or woman has seldom heard of them. Europeans are inclined to say we are a people of no traditions. While the charge is untrue, and our land is rich in legendary lore, it is true that only a small percentage of Americans are familiar with it. One reason for this general ignorance is that much of it has been buried in scientific treatises, which are unavailable to the layman. But within the last few years a large amount has been put within reach of the story-teller. The unceasing work of the American Folklore Society has resulted in unearthing and preserving much that would otherwise have been lost and that is important enough to have a place in our schools. Nothing is more fascinating to the child than stories of his own region, and our young people ought to be privileged to share in that joy with boys and girls of the Old World.

There are peasant lads in France, Italy, and other European countries who can entertain by the hour with tales of their rivers and mountains—not those of some distant province, but the peaks that tower above their native village, the streams along which they trudge on their way to school. California, Washington, and Oregon children should be given legends of the Yosemite, of Lake Tahoe, of Mount Shasta, of the Columbia River, and of Mount Rainier. Boys and girls among Southern bayous should be taught the traditions of their region, of the Indians and Creoles who made history there when that section was a province of France; while along Northern lake and inland river are tales of forest folk, of pathfinder and black-robed message bringer, of knights of the Old World come to seek fortune in the New, that are a part of the heritage of every youth living there. Let us give them to our young people, that they may love their home spots, not just because they are beautiful and are theirs, but as the French child loves the Rhone or the Austrian the Danube, because of the stories that tend to make them enchanted ground.

In using the story in geography the teacher’s work does not end with telling the story. The places mentioned in it should be located on the map, that their exact position may be fixed in the mind of the child. Interest in the story will make this a pleasure rather than a task for the boy, just as it becomes a delight rather than a hardship for him to follow the route taken by his father or uncle when he goes on a journey, or to work out the itinerary of a trip he hopes to take himself. One small boy studied the geography of Virginia with keen interest after reading Lord Cornwallis’ Silver Buckles, and more than one man and woman attest to the fact that some book read and loved during their school days did more to fix the location of river, city, and mountain in their minds than hours of classroom recitation spent in bounding states and countries and tracing the courses of rivers.

The following legend of Niagara Falls is illustrative of one type of tale that will greatly add to the child’s interest in geography by investing certain localities with story associations. Much other material is given in the appended bibliography, and the wide-awake teacher will be able to glean much more from libraries and adapt it to her work.

THE GOD OF THE THUNDERING WATER

Retold from an Iroquois Legend

Before the white man sailed westward across the Atlantic, in fact, before Columbus was born or anybody even dreamed about a short route to the Indies, a little Indian girl lived on the shore of Niagara not so very far above the cataract. She was a happy little thing, and as she grew to maidenhood she became the fairest girl of her tribe, and her father, who was a mighty chieftain, promised her in marriage to the most powerful of his braves. This Indian was a swift runner, and around the council fire not another tongue was so nimble or eloquent as his, and never did his arrows fail to pierce the heart of the deer at which he aimed them. But that mattered little to the girl. He was not her ideal of a husband, and she could think of nothing more dreadful than becoming the mistress of his wigwam. Yet her father had spoken and she must obey, and with a sad heart she made ready for the wedding, weaving the handsomest of wampum belts and ornamenting her moccasins with gay beads and bits of woodpecker feather.

The wedding morning dawned, and the Indians began the games and merrymaking that always marked a marriage. The bridegroom and the young braves vied in races and wrestling matches, and the women too had a part in the festivities, singing and chanting weird songs as they tended the fire and roasted venison for the feast. Everybody was happy,—every one but the bride, who did not want to marry, and who sat in her wigwam looking sadly out upon the sport. Suddenly came the decision that she would not be the squaw of the man she detested.

Quickly, softly, she crept from the wigwam and hurried to the river bank. The others were so busy with their merrymaking that they did not see her go, and soon she came to where her canoe was moored to some bushes. She stepped into it, pushed it from shore, and began drifting down the stream. It was good to be there on the water, for, like all Indian girls, she loved to paddle, and in her joy of skimming along with the current she began to sing.

Suddenly a whoop went up from the village of her people. It was not the cry of those victorious in a game, it was a shout of anger, a cry of alarm, for they had seen her and believed she was trying to escape from the marriage every one knew was distasteful to her. The bridegroom started in pursuit, then another Indian and another, until every man in the village was rushing to the river and some had already begun the chase in canoes.

“They shall not take me back,” the girl murmured. “I will not go back to the village and become Kunawa’s squaw.”

With swift, powerful strokes she paddled down the stream. She forgot that the cataract was roaring below her, forgot that her canoe was going rapidly and surely toward the bright foam from which no boat could come back. She thought only that she was fleeing from a wedding, and not until she saw the rapids beneath her did she realize her fate. Then she began her death song, and those in pursuit heard it for a moment, loud, clear, and plaintive as the canoe cut into the cataract, then suddenly silenced as it shot down to the rapids. Some of the women wailed and joined in the funeral dirge, and some of the others cried out in fear to the Great Spirit.

“It is the last of Kunawa’s bride!” they exclaimed. “She is now on her way to the Spirit Land.”

But it was not the last of the girl. Far down in the mist of the cataract, Heno, the Thunder God, had seen her. He held forth his arms, and as the canoe dropped to the rapids, she went into them, and bearing her through the watery depths, he placed her in a cavern behind the fall where he had lived since the beginning of things, and where the girl would live with him henceforth.

Many years passed. She was no longer a young maiden, but a tall, sturdy woman, and Heno gave her to one of his sons to be his squaw. She lived there in happiness with him in the cavern under Niagara, and often she thought of her people and her native village above beside the river. Because she remembered and loved them, Heno was kind to them, and when pestilence came to the region he lifted her to the shore that she might tell them where to go to escape the disease.

Once a great monster, a snake all green and white, came trailing his body through the forest like a river between hills, and made straight for the village by Niagara to feed upon the people there. But through the Indian girl Heno had told them of the coming danger, and they fled before the monster so fast that when it reached the village it found only a place of deserted camps. The great creature hissed with wrath, but Heno saw it from the mists and struck it dead with a thunderbolt. The great mass rolled to the river, floated down the stream, and lodged so tight above the cataract that a fold in its body sent a great volume of water out of its course, forming the Horseshoe Fall. The flood centered there destroyed the home of Heno too, but the Thunder God arose with his children and the Indian girl, and ascending to the heavens, has lived there ever since, where he thunders in the cloud mists as he once did in those of the fall. His voice is so mighty that the echo of it is always sounding above Niagara, and although white men say it is nothing but the noise of falling water, the Indians know better. They know it is the song of the god of the Thundering Water.

Sources of Material to Use in History and Geography

The history and geography references have been combined because each of the books listed here is valuable in both lines of work. This plan also carries out the Play School idea, which is that there is no line of demarcation between the two subjects.

Baldwin, James: The Discovery of the Old Northwest.

Becquer, Gustavo Adolfo: Romantic Legends of Spain.

Brabourne, Lord (Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen): River Legends (London and England).

Converse, Harriet Clarke: Myths and Legends of New York State Iroquois.

Griffis, William Elliot: The Unmannerly Tiger and Other Tales (Korean).

Guerber, Helène A.: The Story of the English; Legends of the Rhine; Legends of Switzerland.

Hardy, Mary E.: Indian Legends from Geyser-land (Yellowstone).

Hearn, Lafcadio: Kwaidan (Japan).

Janvier, Thomas A.: Legends of the City of Mexico.

Johonnot, James: Ten Great Events in History.

Judson, Katharine B.: Myths of California and the Old Southwest; Myths and Legends of the Great Plains; Myths and Legends of Alaska; Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest.

Lang, Andrew: True Story Book.

McMurry, Charles A.: Pioneers of the Mississippi Valley.

Perry, F. M., and Beebe, Katherine: Four American Pioneers.

Pitman, Leila Webster: Stories of Old France.

Skinner, Charles M.: American Myths and Legends; Myths and Legends beyond Our Borders (Mexico and Peru).

Smith, Bertha H.: Yosemite Legends.

Warren, Henry Pitt (Ed.): Stories from English History.

Westervelt, H. D.: Legends of Old Honolulu.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in Nature Study

Nature study, as a formal subject in the elementary schools, is often uninteresting to the child, because many teachers think that there the bare truth should prevail, and present information concerning the sciences as a series of dry, emasculated facts. The result is indifference toward what might be a keen pleasure, and sometimes even distaste for it. But if the nature lesson is presented in a manner that brings vivid pictures to the mind of the child, if he is given some vision of what cannot be understood by mere description, it becomes a living reality, and not only fixes information that is the foundation for scientific study later, but enlarges the emotional life and quickens the imagination. It gives him a feeling of close contact with nature and makes him so responsive to its varied life, moods, and aspects, that he comes to love it.

Those who understand nature love it more than those who do not. The man who knows the elm, the beech, the hemlock, and various other forest brethren, finds a pleasure in the woods that is impossible to him to whom a tree is just a tree. The latter is like Peter Bell, of whom Wordsworth wrote:

A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.

He goes on his way thinking that trees are good for lumber, to produce shade and break the force of winds that might otherwise blight his crops, but he has little conception of how they affect human happiness and human life. When tired and nerve worn, he does not yearn for the peace of the redwoods, but for some artificial stimulus in a city distant from the one in which he has his cares. Why? Because he was not born with a love of nature that is as rare as genius, and was not fortunate enough to be led along the path on which it is acquired. That there are many men and women of this type is proved by the ruthless way in which our forests have been destroyed, by the abuse of privileges in public parks and gardens, by the way in which trees are slaughtered in city streets. It is certain that love of nature is not born with every one, and that what is the fortunate heritage of the few must be instilled into the many. This can be done, and it can be done through story-telling. The careless child, the unobservant child, to whom a flower is just a flower or a bird a bunch of feathers, can be led to open his eyes and see what he did not see before, while the one who has already found joy in the life of field and stream will respond with intense pleasure because a new and roseate light is flashed upon what is already familiar.

Children learn to love nature just as they learn to love a picture, a dog, or a swimming hole, through experience with it that gives joyous results. The country lad, whose Saturdays and vacation days are associated with cowslips, dragon flies, and quiet hours beside a trout stream casting a line for the elusive catch, is not likely to find schoolroom nature study a dull subject, because, through hours of enjoyment, he is equipped with an emotional and imaginative background that gives color to every fact presented. But he who has not had this opportunity, who knows as little of wild life as a cormorant knows of the Colorado crags, will not respond eagerly to a series of facts, because experience has not previously aroused his imagination concerning them, and he cannot comprehend their mystery and wonder. If these facts are presented through the medium of the story, if they depict the life of the open as vividly as some painting that meets the eye, they will give pleasure and furnish incentive for further investigation. They will not only awaken the uninformed child to a realization of the wonders and delights nature holds for him, but they will give the other, more fortunate child additional pleasure, just as a favorite fairy tale does when told again and again by one who loves it and can make its moods his own.

This does not mean that all information should be presented through the medium of the story. The story should be used only to give such information as is natural to the story form. But nature study can be wonderfully illuminated by the story, because many of the truths of science do lend themselves to plot, and where they have been put in parallel literary form, they are as replete with beauty and imagery as the fairy tale, and afford the fancy as free play as do the adventures of sprites and goblins. The marvel of the brown bulb or seed metamorphosing into the brilliant-hued blossom, of the homely caterpillar evolving into a bit of flying color, of the majestic movements of stars and planets through worlds remote but as exquisitely constructed as our own, fascinates the child and furnishes wide, untrammeled avenues along which his imagination may roam. There is almost no branch of science that is not rich in material for the story-teller. Dr. Carrel, the great French specialist, once said that some day an artist will arise who will weave the facts concerning the circulation of the blood into a tale as fascinating as any conte from the Arabian Nights.

It is not likely that physiology will ever be the nucleus of stories to give to children in the early years of school life, but Dr. Carrel’s words hold a valuable hint for the narrator, who should not fail to draw from truth as freely as he draws from myth and fable. An overdose of one kind of food, no matter how wholesome, disarranges the digestive apparatus, and an overdose of one kind of literature makes a one-sided man. There are some facts to show that a too free feeding on fairy tales has led to crooked thinking and susceptibility to superstition, and the story-teller should balance his work in improbable tales with those of fact that fire the imagination because of the marvels related in them.

This is not so difficult as it may seem, for many of the truths of science have been put into simple language by men who were poet enough to bring to children something of their mystery and beauty, and there is no dearth of books that can be used with gratifying results by workers among children as young as those of six to nine years. Part of the story of evolution is enjoyed in this period. The boy in the age of fancy is fascinated by listening to an account of early man’s struggle with nature, and tales of the tree dwellers, of cave and cliff dwellers, of the discovery of fire and the adventures of the first wanderers, mean as much to him as any fairy tale, because they have the very characteristic that makes the fairy tale delightful—an element of mystery that permits the fancy to roam unchecked.

Older children revel in the truths of science, if they are presented in story form. Take, for instance, David Starr Jordan’s “Story of a Stone.” Where is there a fairy tale more fascinating than this narrative of “a bit of petrified honeycomb,” plowed up by a Wisconsin husbandman as he made ready to sow his winter wheat? The style and language have the charm of Andersen, the plot is as well sustained as that of any Thuringian folk tale collected by Grimm, and it begins as fairy tales have begun since the beginning of time:

Once upon a time, a great many years ago, so many, many years that one grows very tired in trying to think how long ago it was; in those old days when the great Northwest consisted of a few ragged and treeless hills, full of copper and quartz and bordered by a dreary waste of sand flats, over which the Gulf of Mexico rolled its warm and turbid waters as far north as Escanaba and Eau Claire; in the days when Marquette harbor opened out toward Baffin’s Bay, and the northern ocean washed the crest of Mount Washington and wrote its name on the pictured rocks; when the tide of the Pacific, hemmed in by no snow-capped Sierras, came rushing through the Golden Gate between the Ozarks and the northern peninsula of Michigan, swept over Plymouth Rock, and surged up against Bunker Hill; in the days when it would have been fun to study geography, because there were no capitals, nor any products, and all the towns were seaports,—in fact, an immensely long time ago, there lived somewhere in the northeastern part of Wisconsin a little jellyfish.

Dr. Jordan has also woven into story form information concerning the animal life of sea and stream, of a mother and baby seal, in the delightful tale of “Matka and Kotik,” and there is not a boy or a girl in the heroic period who does not listen eagerly to the adventures of a salmon, “a curious little fellow, not half an inch long, with great, staring eyes which made almost half his length, and with a body so transparent that he could not cast a shadow.” The account of the battle of the fish there under the ripples of the Cowlitz, the beginning of the eventful journey down the river, the merry conflict with the herring and the terrible one with the sea lions, swimming always and always, growing larger and more daring, and having in his watery realm as many adventures as bold Robin had in his greenwood, hold the children from the beginning to the end of the story. They sympathize as he struggles up the stream again, “growing poor and ragged and tired,” and through his life and adventures they come to have an interest in the world of fishes that they will not have without the tale. Such stories demonstrate the fact that information concerning the sciences can be put into fascinating story form, and every worker with young folk should endeavor to present some of it through this delightful medium.

The child will find such tales far more appealing than the so-called nature stories in which animals are over-personified and in which they meet man in situations that every intelligent boy or girl knows are impossible. A lad is not brought into harmony with nature by being given yarns that caricature nature, and many of the modern nature stories do this very thing. Children know that a wild bear does not walk into a little girl’s flower garden, and then politely say “I am sorry” and back out because the small mistress of the garden is kind and instead of throwing stones at him explains in elegant English that it is rude to go into another’s property unbidden. They know that animals and children do not converse together in the same language, and that bears do not have courses in ethics. The nature story that fascinates the child must be true to nature’s laws. He may listen to some of the sugary, impossible yarns written to point a moral, but they do not give him keen pleasure, and because they are ridiculous in his eyes, he draws no lesson from them. One of the aims of story-telling is to give ethical instruction, but there is a wealth of tales that reflect nature and life correctly that should be used for this purpose, and the facts of science should not be distorted in an attempt to emphasize a lesson.

Tales pervaded by over-sentimentalism will not stir deep response in children. This is why the nature story that is true to the facts of science is the one that interests the boy or girl. It is like the racial tale, full of conflict, of temporary defeat and final triumph. The young salmon grown old, struggling up Snake River to the foot of the Bitter Root Mountains, was sore of muscle and unsightly of skin, and his tail was frayed and torn, but the desire of his nature was fulfilled at last. He scooped out a nest and covered the eggs of his companion, and then, because the work of his life was done, was free to drift downstream. Such stories give insight into nature and engender a love of nature; and besides quickening the imagination and enriching the emotional life, they help to give stability to the child character, because through them he learns the workings of certain inexorable laws.

There is such a vast amount of material to use in teaching nature study, that the suggestions and bibliography given in this chapter can by no means be comprehensive. In the realm of geology there is the story of limestone, of slate, of quartz and granite, of rock salt and sandstone, and particularly interesting to the child is the story of coal. For him it abounds in color, and beautiful indeed are the pictures that he sees as he listens to this narrative of the carboniferous forests that grew in the beginning of time, of the lush, dank swamps of the Permian or Triassic or Miocene Period, and the strange animal life that peopled them. From astronomy and botany one may glean as much as from geology, while entomology, zoölogy, and ichthyology hold untold delights for the child.

A wonderful science story is that of the coral polyp, building from some submerged cliff or crag until a little island rises above the blue water. In my own childhood it meant as much as ever a fairy tale meant, and I can still feel the pleasure I experienced the first time I heard it. It is full of mystery and wonder, and a story of rare beauty for the child. I have used it often in story-telling, and it never fails to bring enthusiastic response; and very popular with the children is this song of the insect builders, of which I do not know the authorship, but which is one of the fragrant memories of my childhood:

Far down in the depths of the deep blue sea,

An insect train works ceaselessly;

Moment by moment and day by day,

Never stopping to rest or play,

Rock upon rock they are rearing high,

Till the top looks out on the sunny sky:

The gentle winds and the balmy air

Little by little bring verdure there,

Till the summer sunbeams gayly smile

On the birds and flowers of the little isle.

Older children enjoy hearing about the different forms of coral, of the characteristics of that of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, and of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic. They enjoy, too, hearing about the coral industry, of the fishing for it along the shores of Africa, of the departure of the seekers from Sicily, of the Feast of the Coral Fishers that is such a picturesque feature of the island life, of the polishing and carving and preparing the product for trade; they like the legend the southern Italians tell of how the first medallion in Sicily was made as an offering of gratitude by a fisher lad to the young Princess of Naples. From beginning to end the coral story is a narrative that charms the child, and it is but one of the forms of sea life, which holds rich opportunities for the narrator, while sea life is but one of the fields of science from which he can glean with splendid results. In fact, the possibilities for story work in the teaching of science are almost beyond imagining until one begins to survey the field and enumerate sources of material, and the story-teller will be restricted in it only by her ability to organize material and present it to the children in story form.

Sometimes writers, thinking they will make nature stories more enjoyable to boys and girls, people them with supernatural folk who are supposed to be responsible for the marvels that occur in them. It is a practice that scientists decry, and it is condemned by all who believe that a story fit to give to children must be worthy of the name of literature, and consequently, whether fact or fiction, must be true in spirit. The tale that portrays a fairy up in the sky keeping the planets in motion like so many checkers on a board, or one in which enchanted creatures bury their beads in the ground, causing them to send up roses and lilies and other beautiful blossoms, is not a nature story. It may be a charming fanciful tale, but it should not be given to teach the truths of science. Science stories, like Bible stories, need no sugar coating to make them attractive. When given as stories, and not as a string of facts, they are full of suspense, and accounts of actual happenings in star land, under the waves, or deep in the earth are as fascinating to the child as the fancied ones of nature’s forces were to primitive man in the forest, when he crept close to the tribal story-teller and in big-eyed, wondering awe sought to know the meaning of the great globule that gleamed in the sky by day and the numberless tiny ones that gleamed there by night. The primitive animal tale, which gives early man’s belief as to how certain creatures came by their characteristics, is very interesting to the child, and while in a broader sense it belongs to the field of geography, my own experience has been that if told in connection with animals or flowers studied, it is received with enthusiasm by boys and girls. But the child should understand that these narratives are primitive man’s conception, and that the science stories are the real “why” and “how” stories.

THE WONDERFUL BUILDERS

Out in the heart of the Pacific, far out where the blue waves roll their shining masses between Samoa and the Australian mainland, where the brown-skinned islanders and the white-winged sea birds seem always happy, a little animal floated around one day, floated from among the shoals of Tutuila toward the open sea. It was a tiny creature, and as curious as it was tiny, for it looked more like a spot of clear jelly than anything else, and its name was Polyp.

Quite lazily it floated about in the water, now under a stretch of seaweed, all purple and opalescent like ropes of wonderful colors, now through the clear, bright current past the gaping mouth of a shark. But the shark, although always on the watch for something to devour, did not get the little polyp, and soon it came to a submerged rock deep under the waves. This seemed a very good resting place, and there the polyp stayed.

Days passed, weeks lengthened into months, and still the polyp kept to its place on the under-sea rock. But it was not drowsing and sleeping like a lazy creature. It was busily at work, for the very minute it landed on the rock it decided to make a house.

Now you must not think that it could not work, because, although it did look like a drop of jelly and was small and curious, it was alive. It had arms, very, very tiny arms, finer than the finest silk thread in your mother’s workbasket, and so thin and delicate looking that nobody could see them. But those arms were stronger than they looked, and with them it held on to the rock tight and fast.

Then, what a queer house-making! The little, jellylike body began to swell. It raised itself up in the shape of a tube, and around the edge of the tube came a little rim. This rim was the beginning of the house of the polyp.

The waves rolled on. The sun beat down brightly and hotly as it always beats down in the South Sea country, and then came another change. A knot rose in the middle of the jelly, and out of that knot reached a mouth and feelers.

Now the work began in earnest. The polyp began to eat, to eat as greedily as a boy who has had not a bit for a whole day. It took in chalk and phosphorus from the sea food that came its way, yet it seemed never to get enough, and all the while the little feelers kept reaching out for more food and pouring it into the open mouth. As it ate, the chalk it took in piled around the little rim, which I told you was the beginning of the house, and although the polyp wanted much to hold some of that nice chalk food in its mouth long enough to get the full taste, it could not. The white substance went right down and piled up on the rim; so it is no wonder that the little creature was always hungry.

Well, it ate and it ate. The rim kept growing and growing, as of course it must with so much chalk piling up on it, and as the house grew higher and higher the polyp kept moving to the top. The part below was hard and white like stone, and still the polyp kept eating, eating, and building, building.

For a long time it kept on, until finally it died. Then one day another drop of living jelly floated that way, and finding the chalk house of the other polyp, stopped there and began building on top of it. The waves rolled on. The sun shone, and all the while the house went steadily higher. Other polyps too came and began building beside and above it, and as they died they left their hard, white homes behind them as the first polyp had done. Others and still others came, until, as many, many years passed, the chalk houses reached the top of the water and men called them an island.

The waves rolled by. Seaweed drifted that way and lodged itself on the chalk reefs. It decayed and turned to soil. Sometimes the water and sometimes the wind brought bits of plant and seed from some other older islands, until at last there were flowers and trees and birds singing in the branches.

Now the ships of the world sail by, going toward China or Australia or to the American shores far, far away, and sometimes they stop at the little island, and sometimes those on board rest there among the palms and think it so delightful a land that they wish they never had to go away, but might stay there always and always. Yet but for a wee, curious sea creature that island would not be, for it had its beginning in a tiny animal, more like a drop of jelly than anything else, that floated one day between Samoa and the Australian mainland, and made its house upon a bit of submerged rock.

Sources of Material for Science Stories

Beard, James Carter: Humor in Animals.

Bergen, Fanny Dickerson: Plant Work.

Burroughs, John: Squirrels and Other Fur-bearers.

Collins, Archie Frederick: The Book of Stars.

Comstock, John Henry: Insect Life.

Du Chaillu, Paul B.: The World of the Great Forest.

Fabre, Henri: Insect Adventures; The Life of a Fly; The Hunting Wasps; The Mason Bees; The Life of a Caterpillar.

Frye, Alexis Everett: Brooks and Brook Basins.

Grinnell, Joseph and Elizabeth: Birds of Song and Story.

Grinnell, Morton: Neighbors of Field, Wood, and Stream.

Groos, Karl: The Play of Animals.

Hawkes, Clarence: Shovelhorns: The Biography of a Moose.

Holder, Charles F.: Stories of Animal Life.

Ingersoll, Ernest: Wild Life of Orchard and Field.

Jordan, David Starr: Science Sketches.

Lea, John: The Romance of Bird Life.

Miles, Alfred H.: Animal Anecdotes.

Miller, Ellen R.: Butterfly and Moth Book.

Morley, Margaret W.: Butterflies and Bees.

Porter, Gene Stratton: Moths of the Limberlost.

Porter, Jermain G.: Stars in Song and Legend.

Roberts, Charles G. D.: Earth’s Enigmas; Haunters of the Silences; Kindred of the Wild; Kings in Exile.

Thompson, Jeanette May: Water Wonders Every Child Should Know.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Story-Telling in Domestic Science and Manual Training

People are likely to smile when a story-telling enthusiast suggests that his art will intensify the interest in manual training and domestic science, but a little investigation usually convinces them that this contention is not merely a wild theory. Cooking and sewing and wood, metal, and leather working each has an interesting story, and through understanding how these crafts originated and how they have developed with the progress of the race, he comes to have an appreciation of their true dignity and value. In a broad sense these tales belong to the field of history and geography, for domestic science and manual training have a background in history and present-day geography. But since the school gives them as separate subjects, a consideration of story materials touching them will be valuable to teachers of these subjects.

It is a far cry from the first roast meat of primitive man, discovered by accident to be more delectable than that untouched by heat, to the banquet of the twentieth-century gourmet, but they are chapters of the same tale, each intervening portion of which is interesting. There seems to be no relation between the grass skirt of the prehistoric belle and the creations of Worth or Paquin, but they are links in the same chain, beads strung upon the same thread, as are the rush mats of the cave woman and the rugs of Teheran. There are dozens of stories to give to girls that will increase their interest and delight in household crafts. Tales of the lace makers of Italy and Spain, of medieval tapestry weavers, of dower chests of European peasant maids, the contents of which pass from generation to generation, of royal costumers and court tailors, their problems, patience, and artistry, all tend to give a touch of romance to something many girls are inclined to hold in contempt. They enjoy hearing about cookery in foreign lands, of ways of serving meals that are very different from our own, and no one is more amused by Lamb’s “Dissertation on Roast Pig” than she who deals with problems of roasting and baking.

Domestic-science girls who are told something of the legends clustering around various foodstuffs enjoy the cooking class more than those who hear nothing but lectures on chemistry, dietetics, and comparative nutritive values, and they take more pleasure in preparing a meal because they know stories about the various dishes that comprise that meal.

This is no unproved theory, but one that has been tried successfully with a group of fourteen-year-old girls, who took keener delight in bread making after being told of the bakers of Nuremberg and who brewed coffee with more interest when they knew the tale of how Arabians discovered the use of coffee.

There are stories of wood, metal, and leather workers that should be given to every boy, not only because they throw new light upon what he is doing and add interest to it, but because they lead him to respect those who toil with their hands. Stories of medieval carving, of house building in different lands and ages, now of the brush hut of the Australian aborigine, now of the workmanship in the palace of a sultan or czar; of the poet craftsmen of Nuremberg, of the pottery making of the Aztecs, of the building of Venice upon piles hewn from Tyrolean forests, these and dozens of kindred subjects are rich in materials that will give children pleasure and knowledge. To the boy or girl who loves the work in manual training and domestic science they bring additional pleasure, while in the indifferent they awaken interest; and, moreover, the snobbish child who is inclined to think handcraft beneath his respect, will be led to see that the carpenter who strives to make each effort more worthy than the preceding one, or the housewife who puts the best of herself into the preparation of a meal, is in the same class with Phidias or Shakespeare in earnestness of purpose, even though not in results, and is as deserving of honor. The first step toward success with these branches is to dignify them in the eyes of children, and nothing accomplishes this as effectually and rapidly as the story. To know that the crafts were worthy of the best efforts of those of other times and lands is to make them feel they are worthy also of their best effort.

There is another reason why these stories should be told. In the midst of the agitation in favor of vocational training, the force of which is sweeping away and modifying some of the old educational standards, there is danger that in catering to the demand for the practical in schools we neglect that which conduces to dreams and ideals.

A man may advance beyond the ranks of a journeyman joiner and make a good living if he has no thought beyond the work of each day as it dawns, but without vision he cannot become the master builder, and romance is the corner stone upon which the temple of vision stands. The palaces of old Hellas were built to strains of music, for the beauty-loving Greeks knew that melody gave men lofty thoughts, and believed work performed to its accompaniment would be of higher order than that performed without it. Bands were hired to play as the toilers worked, and boys who were to become builders were inspired to emulate the efforts of great craftsmen by being told stories of their achievement. In our day we cannot expect the state to provide bands and symphony orchestras to inspire toilers, but during the days of their apprenticeship we can give them tales that will have a tendency to glorify their chosen craft. We can cause them to feel that only the best efforts of hand and brain are fit to go into this craft, because it is a monument to the memory of those who lived and died in its ranks, and that every worthy effort of each succeeding toiler helps to make that monument nobler and more enduring.

THE DERVISH OF MOCHA

Retold from an Arabian Folk Tale

The dervish Hadji Omar was a fortunate man. No one of his day was so well versed in lore of the ancients and in the knowledge of his own time, no one was so highly esteemed by his people or so loved and trusted by the caliph. At every royal banquet he sat in a seat of honor, and whenever he went through the streets of Mocha the populace shouted, “Hail, Omar!”

But there came a time when the fortunes of the dervish changed. One afternoon as he sat in the court garden he heard a conversation that dismayed him. Beyond the palm trees that screened him from their sight, the caliph and his council were planning how to defraud the common people and enrich themselves. Hadji Omar listened, grieved, and that night went to his friend, told what he had heard, and tried to dissuade him from a course of dishonor.

Then the caliph forgot all the happy hours he had spent with the dervish, forgot that he had loved him even as a brother, and remembered only that the dervish was trying to interfere in his plan. He flew into a rage and declared that Omar should be exiled from Mocha, and that a price would be upon his head should he ever return. Never again should he sit at the royal banquet table. Never again should he pass through the streets amid cries and calls of endearment. He should live in the wilds like a hunted creature and get his food as the birds of the field get theirs.

So out from the city that he loved went the wise and righteous dervish. He took the camel trail into the desert, and after a time came to an oasis where he stayed. A miserable existence he had there, because few food plants grew in the spot. Sometimes a caravan came by, and a merchant or camel driver pitied him and gave him dates or milk. But sometimes he had nothing to eat, and always his meals were so scanty that he grew thin and weak and haggard.

One day—he had been a long time without food and was faint from hunger—he found some berries growing on a tree beside a spring. They were so bitter that he could not eat them; so he tried the experiment of roasting them over the coals. This made them more palatable, but still they were viciously hard. Hadji Omar was so hungry that he was willing to do any amount of work to get food; so he boiled the berries, hoping they would soften. Still they were hard, but he managed to eat a few of them and drank of the water. His hunger and fatigue seemed gone, and he realized he had made a great discovery.

Hastening back to the city, he told the guard his story and was allowed to go into the presence of the caliph. There he produced some of the roasted berries, which were boiled according to his direction, and the governor and council drank of the water. They pronounced it a kingly beverage, and the decree went forth that Hadji Omar was to go free.

Thereafter he lived with the caliph, who loved and trusted him as before and led a more exemplary life because of the influence of the goodly dervish.

Hadji Omar was honored during his remaining years, and after his death was revered as a saint, not only because he was wise and righteous, but because he discovered to Arabia the beverage of the coffee berry.

Sources of Material to Use in Domestic Science and Manual Training

Clinch, George: English Costume from Prehistoric Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century.

Goldenberg, Samuel L.: Lace, Its Origin and History.

Knight, James: Food and Its Functions.

Lowes, Emily Leigh: Chats on Old Lace and Needlework.

Morse, Frances Clary: Furniture of the Olden Time.

Norton, Edith Eliza: Rugs in their Native Land.

Planché, James Robinson: History of British Costume.

Ransom, Caroline Louise: Studies in Ancient Furniture.

Singleton, Esther: Furniture of Our Forefathers.

Stories of the Ancient World Retold from St. Nicholas (Clothing).

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Does the Work of the Story-Teller Pay?

And now arises the question, Does all this effort on the part of the story-teller pay? Is it worth the labor required for the domestic-science supervisor, the manual-arts director, the music, literature, geography, or history teacher, to prepare stories that touch upon his work? That question can best be answered by estimating results.

As stated in [the opening chapter of Part One], story-telling can simplify the entire education problem. It will create noble ideas in boys and girls of today just as it created ideals and established standards in those of the past. It will arouse an ambition to live and to achieve so that they may be worthy of the emulation of children of the future even as they emulate the heroes of days gone by. In no other way can such deep desire be awakened as through story hearing and reading. In no other way do children realize so completely the truth of Longfellow’s words:

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.

Yet in many homes story-telling is almost unknown because the mother does not deem it of sufficient value to make some sacrifice of her time and provide for it. She does not know that the story-telling mothers of the past have been those whose children have risen up and called them blessed; that the confidence of their boys and girls, won around the fireside as old-time tales were told, has been held unshaken to the end.

The force that in the long ago moved men to great achievement has lost none of its power. Twentieth-century children respond to stories as eagerly as did boys and girls by the sea of Hellas when Greece was young, as they did in medieval castle hall to the strains of minnesinger and harper, because child nature does not change. The story hour in the home is a formidable rival of the street and the nickelodeon, and the teacher whose fund of tales is large and who tells them joyously has little trouble with discipline. Her charges know that she holds the key to Magic Land, and that if they are good she will open the gate. They remember her with affection, and best of all remember the dreams that came into being under her spell. She is queen of her little realm through the royal right of the minstrel, and no pretender can dislodge her from her throne in the hearts that she has won.

Yet some school officials, men of education and refinement, regard story-telling as a very good means of entertainment, but unworthy of a place in the curriculum, and when urged to include it ask, “Does it pay?”

If it is worth anything to make formal schoolroom subjects joyous instead of boresome, then story-telling pays; if it is necessary to give the child something that will be a perennial rainbow in his soul, something that will keep him sweet and full of faith and hope when disappointments come and illusions go, that will cause him to laugh at age even in the time of white hairs and wrinkles, then story-telling is vitally necessary. He cannot grow bitter who possesses Aladdin’s lamp. Dark skies may lower over his head and the thunder crash ominously about him, but if the seeds of romance have been planted in his soul, if poesy has been nurtured into flower there by the world’s best stories heard in his youth, he will retain, even in the midst of blackness and tempest, a vision of turquoise skies behind the clouds, a dream of sun-kissed fields where grow everlasting flowers of fragrance and beauty.

Is the reward to the worker not worth the price? One guerdon lies in the thought that he who joins the ranks of story-tellers becomes a member of a glorious company, one with which the greatest souls of the world were not unwilling to be identified. Goethe never felt it beneath his dignity to gather a group of children about him and delight them with a tale, and nothing speaks more eloquently of the sweetness of Verdi’s nature than one of his letters to his librettist that relates how, in his visits back to the hill town where he was born, it gladdened him to see gamins swarm from every quarter, exclaiming, “Una favola, signor, una favola!”

“He is a happy man,” says Châteaubriand, “who keeps through a turbulent lifetime the heart of a child, who carries with him to the end of his journey some of the illusions stored up in his youth, for contact with envy and calumny and deception are apt to cause them to take flight.” The author of Faust and the creator of Otello each had his share of brushing against the things that make men bitter. They had sounded the depths of discouragement and disappointment, yet they had the hearts of children, and who knows but that telling stories to children had something to do with keeping them young? During Verdi’s period of struggle and heartbreak, when Milan jeered at his compositions and critics declared him a man of no talent, when obstacles piled so high it seemed beyond mortal power to remove them, when no one in the city but himself and his wife believed in him, instead of becoming sour and worthless, as any but a granitic nature like his would have done, he returned to his native highlands and told stories to children who thought him more wonderful than a king; then he went back to his labor strong and fit. Forgetting himself in delighting the village bambinos bolstered up his courage and his faith and helped to make him an exuberant giver. Perhaps the present-day story-teller, like that master at Roncone, if he approach his work reverently and keep in mind a thought of what it has meant to the world, may receive as much as he gives.

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