"Tell me, how many have passed already?" said Sancho.
"How should I know?" answered Don Quixote.
"See there, now! Did I not tell thee to keep an exact account? There is an end of the story. I can go no further."
"How can this be?" said Don Quixote. "Is it so essential to the story to know the exact number of goats that passed over, that if one error be made the story can proceed no further?"
"Even so," said Sancho Panza.
8. The danger of overexplanation is fatal to the artistic success of any story, but it is even more serious in connection with stories told from an educational point of view, because it hampers the imagination of the listener, and since the development of that faculty is one of our chief aims in telling these stories, we must leave free play, we must not test the effect, as I have said before, by the material method of asking questions. My own experience is that the fewer explanations you offer, provided you have been careful with the choice of your material and artistic in the presentation, the more the child will supplement by his own thinking power what is necessary for the understanding of the story.
Queyrat says: "A child has no need of seizing on the exact meaning of words; on the contrary, a certain lack of precision seems to stimulate his imagination only the more vigorously, since it gives him a broader liberty and firmer independence."[8]
9. The danger of lowering the standard of the story in order to appeal to the undeveloped taste of the child is a special one. I am alluding here only to the story which is presented from the educational point of view. There are moments of relaxation in a child's life, as in that of an adult, when a lighter taste can be gratified. I allude now to the standard of story for school purposes.
There is one development of story-telling which seems to have been very little considered, either in America or in our own country, namely, the telling of stories to old people, and that not only in institutions or in quiet country villages, but in the heart of the busy cities and in the homes of these old people. How often, when the young people are able to enjoy outside amusements, the old people, necessarily confined to the chimney-corner and many unable to read much for themselves, might return to the joy of their childhood by hearing some of the old stories told them in dramatic form. Here is a delightful occupation for those of the leisured class who have the gift, and a much more effective way of reading aloud.
Lady Gregory, in talking to the workhouse folk in Ireland, was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendors of the tale. She says: