STORIES AND STORY-TELLING

STORIES
AND
STORY-TELLING

BY
ANGELA M. KEYES
Head of the Department of English, Brooklyn Training
School for Teachers

NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1911, by
D. Appleton and Company

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

All the stories in this book have been tested with children. Favorites easily available in other collections have been omitted.

The seventy-five or more very short stories, intended to help young children to express their observations, experiences, and fancies, have been included at the request of many teachers.

The writer hopes that by providing the busy teacher with “tellable” stories, she may help to win for story-telling the dignity of established scholastic place.

CONTENTS

STORY-TELLING

With high esteem and full of respect I greet a genuine story-teller; with intense gratitude I grasp him by the hand.

—Froebel

The school is joining hands with the children for fuller recognition of the story and story-telling.

Note, by the way, that it is with the children. In an elder day grown-ups, too, yielded themselves to the witchery of the story. But printing and the book banished the wandering story-teller; with a little progress in science came recoil from the superstitions and absurdities of the folk tale; the increasing complexity of life bred in the superficial thinker contempt for the unperplexed nursery fable; the intellectual pedant found it distressingly naïve; pressure of affairs robbed the busy man of any leisure for it. So, among peoples advancing in civilization, the grown-ups gradually left the story more and more to the children. And the children, wise youngsters that they are, have never allowed themselves to outgrow it.

Is it not delightful to note that learning is bringing the adult back to the story? The trend of thought to-day, urging him to look to the natural beginnings of things, is taking him back to the story. The historian searches it for early glimpses of fact; the philosopher sees lasting wisdom in it; the literary seer marvels at the truth and beauty of fairy-tale symbols of life; the busy man of affairs accompanies his children to juvenile drama and nonsense opera. The art of story-telling itself is again finding an audience among men and women, as well as children. Best of all, the school, directing its effort toward the natural development of the young child, is pressing the educational properties of the story.

Reiteration of these properties now is timely. Psychology is throwing clearer light on the education of the feelings and the taste; the story should be helpful here. The thoughtful in the community are urging more attention to the spiritualizing and humanizing subjects in the courses of study; the story belongs in this class. Other favorable present conditions will appear as the merits of the story are briefly set forth.

The story and story-telling will

(1) Give pleasure.

(2) Stir and direct the imagination.

(3) Arouse and direct the feelings.

(4) Cultivate the taste.

(5) Help to shape thought and language mode.

(6) Stimulate and direct potential literary creativity.

(7) Serve as foreword for book-study of literature.

(8) Give knowledge of life.

(1) The story will give pleasure. Educational thought is growing more and more cordial toward this value. Undisturbed by any charge of “soft pedagogy,” it finds wholesome pleasure, not merely relaxing, but constructive, building toward physical health, mental brightness, and moral virtue. Here is the story’s opportunity. Every one admits it is pleasure-giving. The stern-minded among us must realize that this is its deepest educational value. It is from the good pleasure the child gets from the story that will ripen good taste, good will, good effort, and all the other goods some teachers and parents regard as more substantial merit. Besides, joy appears to be here to stay. To attempt to take it out of the plan of things is, to say the least, short-sighted. American civilization is looking hopefully to the school for better national standards of pleasure. The school is under obligation to educate the children to enjoyment of wholesome pleasure.

(2) The story will stir and direct the imagination. We do not yet grant in practice the importance of the imagination. We do not purposefully exercise it, as we do, for example, the reason. We say glibly that imagination is at the root of the successful man’s arrival at material profit, of the explorer’s discovery and the practical scientist’s invention, of the poet’s song and the philanthropist’s vision of a state of society in which the kingdom of heaven will be nearer at hand; but we give little or no training to the imagination. Here again is the story’s opportunity. Through the story the interpretative story-teller may give the imagination consistent exercise.

(3) The story will arouse and direct the pupil’s feelings. The school to-day is emphasizing the necessity of educating the heart, the climactic third of the three great H’s,—the Head, the Hand, and the Heart. And psychologists are telling us that to educate a child to be kind, unselfish, filial, reverent, gentle, courageous, good-tempered, to educate him to admire goodness, justice, valor, to be sensible of beauty, to aspire and make effort toward excellence, is as practicable as to train him to do or to make something. It calls for more delicate but not different treatment; working not by dictation, but by magnetic suggestion. The story-teller may render a great service to the individual and to the community by helping to form right feeling-habit.

(4) The well-chosen story will cultivate the taste. Psychology is urging early direction also of the æsthetic sense. The story-teller, through her own joyous response to beauty, has it in her power to awaken and direct the children’s appreciation of beauty. It is she, too, who must help to lay the foundation for that better taste in novel or play that America eagerly desires, and that publisher and playwright say they stand ready to satisfy as soon as the public arrives at it.

(5) The story will help to form the child’s thought and language habit. As this is the value most often acknowledged in classroom practice—though not always by the best methods—it is not necessary to do more at this point than restate it. Mastery in thought and language is far-reaching usefulness, affecting individual growth and social harmony. The story, because of its easy, more or less artless composition and graphic diction, lends itself to starting right thought and language mode.

(6) Story-telling may help to stimulate and direct potential literary creativity. In spite of its breadth of view the school appears insensible to the rights of children born creative. The array of geniuses recently marshaled by a Chicago professor, that teachers pronounced hopeless dunces and in some cases drove from their classes, should set the school thinking. It is reaching out helpful hands to the little unfortunate ones, the blind and the deaf and the sick; but it continues to dismiss the divinely commissioned little sister or brother, with the platitude that his genius will survive if it be sufficiently sturdy. This is a specious half-truth unworthy of repetition. It is, besides, discrimination against the individual. The school is not meeting its obligation to all the children of the community. It will not do to lay the blame to the community’s “commercialized” standards. In spite of apparent emphasis on the useful arts, the community would not lose from the varied web of its civilization the bright thread of painting and music and story. Maturing thought is convincing it that the fine arts are finely utilitarian. Here, again, is the story’s opportunity. The simple materials and childlike fancy in it may stimulate gradually and naturally play of the creative imagination.

(7) Story-telling should be at least foreword for book-study of literature. The thoughtful teacher of literature to-day finds in the classic story all the elements of her material, and sees in the child listening to it the most promising student of literature. At the freely sympathetic period the child becomes familiar with the inner life of language as used to represent fundamental motive, character, and action. This is precisely the kind of knowledge that he should bring as basis for study of more advanced literature. The printed page will be informed with lively meaning, to which his imagination, feeling, and æsthetic sense can respond. It is largely the school’s neglect of oral foundation in literature, which, by the way, should not be confined to the lowest grades, that is at the root of feeble appreciation in book-study of literature.

(8) The story holds in it a greater value, as much greater as life is than literature; it will give knowledge of life. The writer might have said experience of life, because of the child’s strong tendency to be and to do what attracts him. Students of literature, to-day, are urging that it is not a mere “polishing” study, but the substantially useful subject from which we may get clear and inspiring knowledge of life. They would have literature recognized as the reflection of life, idealized, it may be, but therefore stronger reflection. As life is the occupation that all of us, no matter what our special vocation may be, must engage in together, a study that throws light on it is indispensable. Here is a great opportunity for the story. Every genuine story, sense or nonsense, is a glimpse of life, which will early give guiding knowledge and experience.

The story-teller cannot, by the way, afford to ignore the evil in life. You may have read the story of Kipling’s “kid”; how the parents in fond but foolish love for their only son shut away from him all knowledge that evil has come into the world, and how the son, grown to manhood, enters army life, where he meets his first temptation and falls. The moral of the tale is obvious. Though it is wise to keep in the wake of their experience with evil, the story should help to provide the children with knowledge and modes of conduct for the situations of real life. The cunning story-teller, presenting this or that bit of life, from which he has not made the mistake of taking out the evil already within the child’s experience or presently to be met, touches the child into recoil from evil and into admiration and imitation of the triumphant way of virtue.

The story should, however, oftener engage children’s attention with good, rather than evil, as the central, active force in life. And the story told to the growing boy or girl, and to the youth, should prompt him to fine and finer endeavor. It is a fatal error to assume that teachers and parents cannot help to raise the community’s standards, that the best the rising generation may carry out from home and school is negative prudence, readiness to accept questionable social practices and ideals, that they themselves may achieve worldly success. If each generation does not leave the world a little better for its part in it, it has lived in vain, and its “guides, philosophers, and friends,” the parents and teachers of it, have denied their office. The story helping toward this kind of constructivity should lead. It is to the habit formed in its children that society must look for higher standards of living.

The story will widen the child’s outlook on life. On the wings of the word the listener may fly away to the uttermost bounds of the earth. In the story world he, if poor, may be rich; if sad, merry; if inarticulate, he may find expression.

Though it is not exhaustive, this is an imposing array of reasons for admitting the story to unquestioned educational dignity. If the school feel the need of broad, scholarly precedent, it may find it in the work or in the recorded opinions of such seers as the Lambs, Longfellow, Carroll, Hawthorne, Scott, Stevenson, Browning, Ruskin, Froebel, Emerson. As yet story-telling is largely left optional with the teacher. Should it not be made a delightful school requirement? It addresses itself, it is true, mainly to the æsthetic taste and the feelings, it does not guarantee consequent action. But give it place early enough, and, if it must bring it, the other good effect will be added unto it.

The best reason for admitting the story to scholastic dignity still remains the best, its lasting charm for the children.

Kinds of Stories to Tell

We appear to be coming to the agreement that we should tell the children many of the old, old stories and some of the new, many stories from the world of the imagination, some from the real world; stories that will aid them in interpreting their world, themselves, other children, some grown-ups, nature; stories that will direct aright the imagination, the sympathies, and the taste; playful stories and more serious, sensible and nonsensical; short stories and longer; stories to be told over and over again, stories to be told in passing. To meet the child’s and later the girl’s and boy’s changing tastes and interests, and the needs of their developing imagination and sympathies, our choice should embrace, besides a great many others that as yet have eluded classification, fairy tales, fables, myths, legends, romances, tales of adventure, stories of animal life, child life, growing boy and girl life, stories of great men and women.

Some teachers find it hard to see any educational value in play-stories like “The Three Bears,” nonsense stories like “Chicken-Licken,” and drolls, or farce “funny” stories like “Lazy Jack.” They do not get the child’s point of view. They are disturbed by the apparently idle pleasure or extravagance of them. “Chicken-Licken” appears to be nothing but driveling nonsense. The writer has no desire to attempt to turn it into sense nor to press unduly the claim of this particular type of story. But why not let it in as a nonsense tale, an opportunity for giving the mind a frolic? This is advanced by some students of the tale as its possible origin. It may be thought of as a reflection in literature of the naïveté of childhood; it catches capitally its guilelessness in motive, social intercourse, and deed. Its form also is childlike. The child ekes out invention in the manner of the tale, by the open artifice of cumulation and repetition. Or the story may be dignified into literary introduction to that type of classic which records the very common human situation, “much ado about nothing.”

The same teachers are disturbed also by the ethical code of many of the folk tales; they find it crude and fleshly. It deals in large and sense-delighting rewards. But may it not be possible that the child must be allowed time to grow to a more discriminating standard of conduct and a finer kind of satisfaction?

It is to be hoped, however, that even then the child will retain his capacity for laughing at merry play and hearty comedy. Laughter is good for the world. It is a tonic to the emotions, and regeneration to the spirit, spurring it to fresh and better effort; it is a sign, too, of broadening imagination and sympathy. The man that has no laughter in him is like Shakespeare’s man that has no music in him, “fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Let no such man be trusted.” Most stories will give the children a more reserved pleasure, happy mental and æsthetic satisfaction; some a fine gladness and exaltation. But let us not be too narrow to admit the wholesomely “funny” story.

The over-strained, anæmic, goody-good story is likely to breed up a generation of canting hypocrites. The little child is much occupied, it is true, with the task of being good, and he is a great admirer of the good people in the stories. There is room in children’s literature for the rather obviously moral tale, if it be not too often presented and if it be really charming. From this point of view, Constance D’Arcy Mackay’s book of plays called “The House of the Heart and Other Tales” is a suggestive contribution to children’s drama.

For the younger children the story with plenty of action, often with animals as characters, and with happy ending has proved best. The story with less joyous “inevitable ending” is, however, not to be excluded; life is not to be distorted. Besides, not all sad-ending stories are negative in effect, leaving the child knowing only “what not to do” rather than “what to do.” A story like Hans Andersen’s “Daisy,” for example, induces constructive inference and effect.

The Principles of the Art of Telling Stories

Story-telling is one of the most spontaneous of the social arts. Yet it is an art, governed by at least partially discerned principles. Analysis of them will be helpful to the story-teller, but only in so far as he grasps the fundamental principle that story telling among the speech arts, like wood-carving among the manual arts, indeed, even to a greater degree, must be kept what it is by nature, apparently without art, naïve and unelaborate.

Getting the Story

The story-teller must wholly take into himself the life of which he speaks, must let it live and operate in himself freely.

—Froebel.

The story-teller must himself possess the story before attempting to give it to another. This sounds obvious, but it is not granted in practice. Much poor schoolroom story-telling is evidently “unprepared.” People born with a natural turn for story-telling, and those who in their childhood heard real story-telling, need to make less preparation than others; but all story-tellers need to make preparation. Much of the story-telling masquerading as such is quackery, showing neither genius nor study. Even in the very early days when formal instruction in story-telling was unknown, the wandering story-teller watched constantly to make his performance tell, modifying his method in the light of its effect upon his hearers. Later on, in the Middle Ages, the court story-teller was professionally trained (and also handsomely remunerated and given the place of honor at the banquet). Intellectual study of the story will not, by the way, destroy spontaneity. It may dash it temporarily. Coleridge tells us that his professor in poetics did not hesitate to subject to the scrutiny of the microscope the most delicate flowers and fruits of fancy. (English in the schools has suffered from the results, in its teachers, of the “literary affectation,” which condemns attempt at definite English scholarship.) Let us give all outlet possible to natural ability, and to the inspiration of time and audience; but let us not neglect the forethought of preparation. Shakespeare did not, Sir Henry Irving did not, Duse does not. Some teachers fall back on reading the story; this has its own place, but it cannot take the place of telling. The belief that story-telling should be studied is gaining ground in a most convincing quarter, the home. The office of motherhood is deeply associated with things done instinctively right; but the mother herself at mothers’ clubs and elsewhere is seeking instruction in this chief mother art.

To get the story, relax your imagination and sympathy and let them go out to it. Sit down with it and read and re-read it, or listen to it, and brood upon it until you absorb its life, until you think and feel and move in its being. Conjure up its scene and people and happening.

Some may find imagining difficult. Perhaps it was neglected in their training. Let them not be discouraged; each succeeding attempt to realize scene and person and action will make the task easier.

You may, by the way, study the story in either of two places: a lovely natural spot, where under the lure of century-wisdomed tree, or amid sweet smells, or flash of birds, or beckonings of shadows, you may catch the glamour of the old-world setting in the stories; or in a city street swarming with children, old-faced before their time. The environment in the second studio, far from destroying your effort to grasp the wonder-world of the story, will make special appeal to you. Here you will feel divine compulsion to make child life more abundant: to bring from story land bright hosts of gay fairies and gentle children and brave knights and real as well as fiction heroes as saving company for the little worldlings, to make them chuckle with a child’s hearty glee at trick of goblin or sprite, or quake with delicious tremor at the tread of the terrible giant. You will find that the “toughest,” most crabbed city urchin will succumb to the witchery of the fairy folk, to the charm of beauty and the fair play of kindness and honesty.

The child’s world reflected in the story is the right of the child in the city tenement district, and society’s hope for him. It is, by the way, no less the right of the rich child and no less society’s hope for him.

After you have let the story take possession of you, take possession of it. To take possession of the story,

(1) Seek its spirit and intention.

(2) Grasp its elements; its setting, its action, its characters.

(3) Master its workmanship, or its composition and style.

Its spirit and intention. Students of folklore hesitate to impose on the folk tales ethical or æsthetical motive; but they would not object to our seeing in them, in addition to certain primitive ideas, this or that playful fancy or more serious reflection of life; in “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” for example, hearty testimony to the worth of honest effort, the record raised to some degree of æsthetic merit by the charm of elfin appreciation; in “Star Dollars,” crude sketch of childlike goodness and faith, the picture touched into beauty by the benediction of heaven; lovely symbol of gentle living, like “Diamonds and Toads”; sweet blossom of immortal beauty and goodness blighted by the withering poison of envy, yet triumphantly blooming, like “Snow White;” simple appreciation of kindness of heart, like the “Hut in the Wood;” idyl of the beauty and integrity of goodness, like “Beauty and the Beast;” in “The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean,” naïve history of a merry-tragic situation; in “The Wolf and the Seven Kids,” the happy triumph of mother wit sharpened by love. For the children they, as well as the more modern tales, must be kept direct, simple stories. But the student need not miss a broader significance. He can hardly fail to appreciate the analogies to human conduct so often implied in Hans Andersen’s tales, done, as in Dante’s great tale, with conscious intent. He must not, however, ask the children to probe for hidden meanings, and he must not strain at suggesting them in his interpretation. The story is not to be turned into an abstraction; its concreteness is the secret of its power to please and to move.

After you have thus characterized the story to yourself, grasp its elements: its setting, or time and place; its action; its persons, or characters. And cultivate sensibility to their appropriateness.

The setting. The lovely fairy romances, old and new, like “The Frog Prince,” “Cinderella,” Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” occurred in the all-possible “once upon a time,” or in that delectable bygone when “wishing was having,” or in such right good kingly times as Arthur’s or Charlemagne’s. Sometimes the place was an enchanted castle shut away behind a hedge of thorns and trees, in the very heart of a forest, a hedge that sprang up in a quarter of an hour, with thorns long enough to impale unworthy suitors; sometimes it was the highroad out to the world, upon which many a stout hero set foot to seek fortune. The merry gallant history of “Tom Thumb,” fairy fledgeling, wizard-fostered, king’s jester and doughty knightling, is referred to the magical days of Merlin and the chivalrous court of Arthur. We find him, too, versatile little imp, in his mother’s practical pudding bowl, in the red cow’s mouth, in a giant’s stomach, inside a fish; and each place is capital setting for him. Who says that giants are figments of the imagination? The people of Cornwall record that it was in their land that Jack killed the giant, and they point out a castle built on a rock standing in the sea as the stronghold of the monster. (Let the folklorists find in this primitive belief, if they will; let us find, also, artistic fitness.) What a delightful plausibility the tale takes on from this minutely recorded geographical setting, as delightful in its way as the vague long ago and dim place of other tales! Here, in the apparently artless tale, is the artistic device by which Defoe hoodwinked the England of his day into believing that Robinson Crusoe was fact and not truer fiction.

Note the appropriateness in change of scene; Andersen’s “Ugly Duckling,” among the modern tales, affords a good study. The artistic principle is applied more naïvely in the old story of “The Hut in the Wood” at the transformation of the hut into a castle to be fit setting for the sovereign power and beauty of kindness; also in “Mother Holle,” at the emergence of the child from the dark well and darker despair into the lovely meadow where the sun was shining, and thousands of flowers were blooming, and wonderful little ovens and red apple-trees called out to her, and golden shower fell on her and glorified her. In “Dummling,” at the stage when enchantment is brought in, the scene changes completely to a stone castle in whose courtyard are stalls containing stone horses.

Note the narrative use made of setting. The appearance of the sea, in “The Fisherman and his Wife,” as the fisherman carries each succeeding wish of his wife to the flounder, does as much to tell the story as the action itself.

Setting, then, is part of the whole. It is not to be overdone, nor is any part in the simple story, but its appropriateness is worth appreciation.

The action. The action is of course the chief part of the story. The motive of the action is easy to find. But again note that it is faithful to life and that it paves the way for appreciation of the motives of greater literature. In the simple tales, as in the novel and the drama, the action arises from love, hate, envy, spirit of adventure, friendship, malice, spirit of fun and play. Grasp the details of the action. In some versions of “The Frog Prince” the falling of the princess’s golden ball into the well is made the occasion for the appearance of the magical frog, which, for the aid he offers, imposes the condition of companionship and love. The princess pretends agreement. Her repugnance to the frog becomes the complicating force. And (in some tales) her father’s insistence that she keep her promise to the frog makes all come out happily; the frog stands revealed a prince in disguise, and marries the princess. In “Dummling” the despised stupid third and youngest brother sets out to seek his elders; then come the three acts of unkindness he prevents; then the failure of the elders at the task set forth in the enchanted castle, and Dummling’s success, due to the aid of the creatures to whom he had shown kindness, followed by his triumphant marriage to the youngest and dearest of the princesses. In “The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership,” the story opens with the doubtful compact entered into by the mouse on the cat’s representation of friendship, and her agreement to his proposal that they lay by a pot of fat for the winter. The cat has the hardihood to propose the church as the safest hiding place for the pot of fat, hypocritically saying that no one would dare steal anything from a church. Then comes the cat’s first “gulling” of the frank little mouse with his story of having been asked to be godfather to his cousin’s remarkable child. “Beauty and the Beast” is another good character study, and from an important point of view for the little child’s story a better one, as this time virtue is unmistakably triumphant.

The student will gradually develop sensibility to the typical materials of folk story: human difficulty overcome by supernatural aid; the task of guessing a name, or the forfeit of a child, as a condition for aid, as in “Rumpelstiltskin;” trial and triumph of the despised ugly third sister or stupid third brother; doughty deeds that overcome bulk of body with nimbleness of wit, as in “Jack the Giant Killer;” greed of wishing whose indulgence precipitates loss of all, as in “The Fisherman and his Wife;” reward of kindness to animals, as in “The Hut in the Wood.”

The characters. Characterize the people in the story. In their varied company is the story-teller’s opportunity to acquaint the child with the chief kinds of persons to be found in literature and life; the child himself, cherishing mother, doting grandmother, virile father sending his sons out to find their place in the world, loving brother and sister, gentle people, hateful people, ill-tempered people, cruel people, jealous people, kind people, wily people, frank people, brave people, cowards, old people, children, sad people, merry people. Besides these, animals, pigs and bears, cows and hens and goats, inhabit the child’s world side by side with man, helping the story to make its way to the child’s affections. Then there is the host of witching fairy folk: fairies, giants, elves, pixies, witches, goblins. Music as well as language has attempted to suggest them, and with surprising agreement in artistic convention. Language makes fairies light, airy, tripping; goblins, grotesque; so does music. Language makes the giant huge, clumsy, big-handed and big-footed, but stupid; Wagner gives ponderous musical motif to the dragon, the “laidly worm,” the giant of his music dramas, and also makes him conquerable.

The workmanship, composition, and style. Much story-telling is spoiled by disregard of the composition of the narrative. By composition here is meant what is meant in painting or sculpture, the arranging, or grouping, of the materials, to build out the whole.

The method of grouping in the folk story is apparent. At the beginning of the story are the time and place, some of the principal characters, and the motive of the action. Next follows the action, easily separable into rise, course, resolution. In many of the stories, for example, in “The Frog Prince,” there is after the action an explanation of enchantment; and an assurance that all went well ever after or quaint formula like that parodied in “They stepped on a tin, and the tin bended, so my story’s ended,” whose purpose, similar to that of Shakespeare’s rhyming couplet in his earlier dramas, is to give conclusive ending to the tale. Like “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,” who stayed on at the theater after the curtain had gone down on the last scene, the children, though sensitive to artistic reserve, are not always satisfied with highly reserved ending.

The story-teller should cultivate sensibility to story-building; it is the creative principle of story-telling. It is really surprising how lacking the beginner is in consciousness of structure. He should study structure until he can feel the tale making: the scene putting in, the people coming in, the motive revealing itself, the action starting, and going forward until it arrives at climax and solution, the whole winding up with happy prophecy of the far future.

Grasp especially the composition of the action. It is usually built on one of the following plans:

(a) The single line of sequence, as in Hans Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” or “The Sleeping Beauty,” or “The Frog Prince;”

(b) The three-parallel line—what the first did, what the second did, what the third did,—as in “The Golden Pears” and in “Dummling;”

(c) The balanced antithetical plan, two contrasting courses of action placed side by side,

as in “Mother Holle” or in “Diamonds and Toads.”

(d) The cumulative plan, as in “Henny-Penny,” “The Cat and the Mouse in the Malt House,” “The House that Jack Built,” “The Old Woman and her Pig.” Do not miss the increase in interest and suspense.

Note in the three-parallel structure the climactic “thirdness” and its distinguishing characteristic; it is the youngest and the stupid third member of the family who turns out to be the cleverest and most favored of fortune; it is Dummling who marries the sweetest princess; it is the woodcutter’s third daughter who proves considerate of the dumb animals, frees the castle of enchantment, and marries the prince.

Note, too, that the old-world story-tellers were sensitive to the dramatic effect of the contrasts in life. The miller’s daughter, innocent victim of her father’s ambition, sits down in despair to weep over an impossible task, and “at this moment the door opens and in comes a comical little dwarf” who with three magical whirrs of the spinning-wheel turn a roomful of straw into gold. It is the very day of her fifteenth birthday that the princess must take to explore the castle and come upon unsuspected spinning-wheel with which to prick her finger that the witch’s prophecy may be fulfilled, but, as is the merry good luck of romance, it is on the last day of the hundred years that the prince goes hunting to spy, not deer, but the towers of the identical castle in which the Sleeping Beauty lies, inquires about it of everyone until he meets the very man who can tell him what “my father told me,” and rides off to awaken the princess. It is always so in literature sound at heart, whether it be in a Shakespearean comedy, in which cottages appear in the forest in the nick of time as night is falling and lovely ladies and gallant knights are footsore and weary; or whether it be in simple fairy tale abounding in porridge pots, appearing when folks are on the brink of starvation and cooking like mad, “as if they would feed the whole world” at the magic words, “Little pot, cook,” or in frogs popping out of near by wells in time to say, “Your wish shall be fulfilled, within a year you shall have a little child,” or in small ovens and red apple-trees placed “conveniently low.” The scholarly student of narrative or dramatic technique recognizes this as what he calls comic relief to offset the pathos of the situation; the student lacking this knowledge accepts with satisfaction the plausibleness of timely happening.

After this careful work read the story again for enriched appreciation of it. Now put the book away and go about your business.

By and by see whether you know the story. Let no mistrust born of book dependence and neglect of the constructive imagination daunt you. Boldly sketch in time and place, introduce the first characters, suggest the motive of the action, start the action, carry it forward to climax and solution, wind up the whole. Now criticise your product. Is it the thing you meant it to be? Thackeray tells us his characters and plots got out of his hands and finished themselves. Is it the tale as “’twas told to you,” is it an improved version, is it a new story? One and all may be in place.

Some will feel that they have spoiled the story. They have bungled the structure through unskillful placing, or omission of necessary details. They have dulled life, dimmed beauty, obscured truth for lack of words. Well, there is no harm done as yet. These students, studying again the parts in which they failed, will appreciate now more thoroughly play and interplay of character, detail and course of action, vivid word. The cat in “The Bremen Town Musicians,” they will note, is capitally described (in some accepted texts) as having a face that looked like “three days of rainy weather;” Snow-White and Rose-Red were “like the rose-bushes in their mother’s garden;” they will not miss in “The Cat and the Mouse” the cat’s sly description of the pot of fat and the apt names he gives his bogus godchildren. In this way the appropriate word or phrase will come to them easily.

The question often asked, “Am I to hold myself to the text?” is interesting. It applies of course only to artistic texts, not to formless source material. Some people contend that this destroys the spirit of story-telling, making the art mechanical instead of creative.

Story-telling is creative effort, never mere repetition of the letter. It is creative effort, whether you make live again something produced by another, or make live more abundantly by perfecting matter and form produced by another, or make new life. The question cannot be answered offhand. If it were true that the text form, the composition and diction, in which you found the story, were the perfect reflection of its life and that the story suffered no change in your comprehension of it, and that it were your intention to pass it on without modification or loss to the child, and that he could receive it without change in form, then the answer appears to follow: you are to be faithful to the text. In some cases the form in which the folk tale is found has suffered through translation, in others it may be intrinsically faulty; in many texts of “The Frog Prince,” for example, the Iron John incident is too detached and very much out of perspective. The story-teller who can make it better should do so, or who feels prompted to give the children another product from old materials will use them, though the folklorists will forbid him to palm off his product as old-world lore. Any training in story-telling that does not give outlet and direction to such ability and to originality neglects an important obligation to the student. It is notable, by the way, that it is the student with the literary artist’s instinct who is surest to “get” the style of any good original he may be reproducing. Proper simplification of standard texts and the question of adaptation to younger and older audiences will be considered later.

Are we not inconsistent in our attitude toward form in language? We profess to recognize reverently an intimate relation between the matter and the manner in the sculptor’s, the painter’s, the musician’s art. But we constantly deny any integrity to language as a medium of expression. We do not, to be sure, attempt to tamper with the form the great poets gave their message. Indeed we “get” the verse running through the simple prose tale, although it is scarcely less artless than is the prose. But everyone because he can speak in words appears to feel competent to tell the prose body of the stories in “his own words.” Now, every word in the folktale may not be so necessary to its thought as very minute details in Shakespeare’s or even in Kipling’s or Andersen’s or Stockton’s form are considered to his thought. But there is such a thing as folk-story style, easy, loose sentence liberally sprinkled with ands and sos, picture-making word, distinctive epithet, recurrent jingle, rhythmic swing. It is surprising how insensible students are to it. Yet it is due largely, no doubt, to the best of all causes, the belief that the story is to be given living form by the teller. Dull rote memorizing will not of course do this. The method of study set forth suggests how the story-teller may easily develop sensibility to folk-story style and easily train himself to “do,” or “catch,” it.

Let us not be afraid of a due regard for form. Right attention to form is not testimony to the worth of the superficial. The poet says, “The soul is form and doth the body make.” Let us see to it that we make the language body of our story by clear reflection of its spirit.

The question of oral interpretation, or oral form, the more important aspect of form, while properly a matter to be settled by the student during the stage of preparation, is here more conveniently considered under the next head.

Telling the Story

This is truly the stage of creation. No matter how familiar you made yourself with the story in the privacy of your studio, you will now find happening something surprising. The story will come to your own ears and stand revealed to your imagination with the joy of discovery. The truth is, it was made to be shared with another, and you hadn’t it at all until you gave it away. What spontaneity rewards you! How you find yourself rising to the occasion—your own latent capabilities, the expanding possibilities in the story, the response of your audience!

Let us take up the topic, telling the story, under the practical heads:

(1) Choosing or meeting story-telling time;

(2) The story-teller’s part;

(3) Controlling canons of the story-teller’s part.

(1) Choosing or meeting story-telling time. “To everything,” says Ecclesiastes, “there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven ... a time to weep and a time to laugh ... a time to keep silence and a time to speak.”

Is there an ideal time for telling a story? Assuredly; at this time the story comes to the listener with more pleasure, or stronger appeal to the feelings. But the “pedagogical” story-teller, parent or teacher, must take care not to mistake suitable occasion. The error is not that the story-teller may have, like the Ancient Mariner, a tale of sin and virtue to tell to the soul that must hear it. To say that the story must not be narrowed to didactic purpose is not to exclude altogether the story that may work spiritual reformation. The trouble is that the story-teller sometimes precipitates irritation rather than reformation by untimeliness. The moment when the child is defiant or angry and the teacher or parent cross is not the psychological moment for such a story. It is at the turn in the tide of feeling that the story-teller may send into the wavering stream the saving grace of the tale.

There are times when the pupils are “on” for a mental frolic; these are the times for the play or “funny” stories. Sometimes, in order to quicken desirable response, the teacher or parent will judge it better to run counter to the mood of the children. She will sharpen the wits of dull children with a humorous story, or broaden the horizon of the narrowly matter-of-fact with a tale of adventure or of supernatural occurrence. Celebrations or memorials call out appropriate stories. The early Hebrew father took advantage of his sons’ questions about the festivals celebrated in their midst to tell the great Bible story. The Christian Church sometimes narrates the lives of the saints to her children on feast days to inspire the heroism of holy living. Things observed in nature, and home and school circumstances, will suggest many stories. And when all has been said about special times, it remains true that almost any time in the wonder years of childhood is story time.

But the teacher may say, “Story-telling time means precisely eleven-fifteen on Tuesday morning; the individual teacher has nothing to say about it.” The thing to do, then, is to induce the story-telling mood at eleven-fifteen Tuesday morning. What we should urge here between ourselves is the obligation to give place heartily at this time to the story. No matter how ill things may have gone and how cross we ourselves may have become, we must now let pleasurable anticipation take possession of the classroom.

(2) The story-teller’s part. The rôle of story-teller is simple yet subtle, more easily shown than explained. The story-teller is recounter of a happening, real or fictitious, merry or pathetic, that because of its appeal to the imagination and sympathies has been given currency in language. To share with another the glimpse of life it gives the imagination, the feeling it arouses, the æsthetic satisfaction it yields, was man’s reason for telling it. The story-teller’s part, then, is so to employ and interpret the medium of currency as to free this force.

Beginning the story. The story-teller should begin the story with the air of having something interesting and enjoyable to tell. If the contents of the story had not been interesting, they would never have made a story; the story-teller may depend on this intrinsic interest. He should have also the air of leisure; story-telling is one of the social arts of leisure and pleasure; besides, stories record significant occurrences, which should be given the emphasis of time. His initial manner should give hint of the spirit of the particular story he is to tell. The first phrase, “There were five-and-twenty tin soldiers,” sounds the playful martial spirit of Hans Andersen’s “Brave Tin Soldier;” the story-teller echoes it in martial bearing and in martial swing and ring in his speech, in, of course, the playful manner of a story about a little toy soldier. Mother-love broods through the story of “The Wolf and the Seven Kids;” the story-teller suggests, in voice and eyes and fostering posture, its loving pride and anxiety. Should the story-teller begin in rather obvious make-believe-matter-of-fact style, his eyes hinting fun, the children will chuckle in delighted anticipation of a nonsense or a humorous story. The wholly impassive manner adopted by some story-tellers in telling “funny” stories to adult audiences will not do with children. The adult’s enjoyment consists largely in his ability to remake as fun what the teller is representing as sober fact. Children, because of their lack of knowledge and experience, need more leading. Stories like “The Three Bears” correspond in spirit to nursery rhymes like “This little pig went to market;” they should be kept as childlike, mimetic, rhythmic, and playful. Southey gives the key to the spirit of “The Three Bears” in the setting. Every detail shows how well he caught the child-note: interest in wild animals, the bear a favorite; tendency to dramatic mimicry; response to rhythm; pleasure in possessions, this very complete “house of their own,” kept by bears, delights the children. A hero story like “Jack the Giant Killer” calls for a bold spirit. “Snow-White and Rose-Red” sounds the domestic note: cheerful fireside group; mother reading from a “large book,” children spinning, animals lying near. The setting here, though long, may easily be made attractive by the story-teller’s own pleasure in every detail.

The characters also should be introduced with hint of their personality. “Snow-White and Rose-Red were as happy, as busy and cheerful,” says the story-teller, showing cheerful pleasure in them, “as any two children in the world.” “Snow-White,” softening voice and eyes, “was more quiet and gentle; Rose-Red,” adopting a livelier manner, “liked better to run about the fields and pick flowers and chase butterflies.” “There was once a widow who had two daughters; one of them,” says the story-teller, smiling in the pleasure goodness and beauty, whether physical or spiritual, always excite in us, “was pretty and industrious; the other,” voice and face expressing disapproval of her, “was ugly and idle.” “A certain man had a donkey,” says the story-teller, with such suggestion of possibilities in the donkey evident in forward posture, in face and voice, that the listener at once suspects that, as Hans Andersen would put it, that donkey “became worth talking about.”

The story-teller begins then, as both prophet and sibyl, telling yet, especially at this stage, not “giving it away.” He must let the story reveal and the child discover; this is the joy of it.

Building out the story. Having laid the foundation upon which he is to build the happening, the story-teller should, as a rule, in building fashion pause. He then enters upon the action, carrying it forward, slowly or rapidly, according as its course demands, arousing suspense and increasing the interest in the outcome. How he does this will be suggested farther on. As the story proceeds he must of course treat character consistently. Sensibility to the nature of the particular character he is interpreting will enable him to voice and conduct it appropriately. Nothing more than suggestion is in place. The story-teller’s fairy voice may be light and tinkling like silver bells, his witch made graphic through pointed, hag-like chin and fingers and stooped body, his fox smooth and sly, his wolf snarling, his giant, as said before, big-voiced and ponderous. He can hardly fail to catch the steely high voice and proud manner Hans Andersen intended for the vain but delightful Darning Needle.

After, as a rule, pausing to give effect to the climax of the action, the story-teller passes in many stories to a brief but clear explanation of enchantment, and winds up the whole happily, leaving the child supremely pleased.

(3) Controlling canons of the story-teller’s part. Some of the chief canons governing the story-teller are directness, spontaneity, graphicness, reserve, skill in the use of the voice, simplicity.

Directness is the principle of immediateness, by virtue of which story and listener are brought into contact. It has its roots in the social and magnetic nature of the art. In its fullest sense it is comprehensive of all the other canons.

Directness concerns both the outer and the inner self of the story-teller.

The part played by the outer self is simple. Before beginning his story the story-teller should “go to” and “gather” his listeners. He does this by assuming the physical position and mental attitude of communicator. A person who has anything to tell another that he thinks will move or please him does not stand aloof. The story-teller should not stand aloof. He may place himself in front of his listeners, at such a point as will enable him to command all. Before beginning he will get the listening attention by invitation of posture and direct face to face look, or by the magnetic force of the story now animating his whole person. Some story-tellers then begin to address themselves to someone near by whom they feel to be the most responsive listener, or whom they wish to interest, then address a wider and wider circle until they are reaching everyone. Others project the story into the ears of someone in the middle of the group, making this the radiating point from which to grasp all.

The story-teller through his outer self must observe the principle of directness in another way. In looks and actions his external self must help to convey the spirit of the story: posture, facial expression, gesture, voice must not contradict but declare what the lips are saying. It is in recognition of the relation between the external self of the story-teller and his story that some story-tellers “make up,” or put on appropriate costume. This has its power and charm. But for the “everydayness” of story-telling in home and school it is undesirable, unnecessary, and impracticable. What is necessary is something less troublesome but more important: such domination, or absorption, of the external self by the spirit of the story as will subdue it to the story-teller’s use. This will help to induce the right feeling response. Feeling, as everyone knows, is “catching.” Fun will call out fun; pathos, pathos; gladness at beauty, goodness, or truth, like joy. The whole being of the Ancient Mariner told his story. Simple stories do not demand emotional intensity, but the principle remains. The student will find it helpful to sit opposite Tadema’s “Reading Homer,” to get an idea of the recounter’s abandon.

The principle of directness as it applies through the inner self of the story-teller is as easy to understand. The story-teller must not allow any intruding mental state or circumstance, any intruding “self,” to come between the story and the listener. Such a self may be

(1) The diffident or embarrassed self of the self-conscious story-teller.

(2) The vain or affected self of the insincere story-teller.

(3) The weakening self of the patronizing story-teller.

(4) The non-seeing self of the non-spontaneous story-teller.

(5) The non-sensible, or non-artistic, self of the “sledge hammer” story-teller.

(6) The non-communicating self of the “acting” story-teller.

(7) The misinformed self of the lifeless story-teller.

(1) The self-conscious self is not hard to overcome. Diffidence arises from a false modesty, due to the story-teller’s failure to realize his obligation to the child and to the story. His part now is not to occupy himself with mistrust of his own ability, but to bend all his energies to interpreting the story for the listener. Embarrassment may be due to natural shyness or to lack of ease in the art of story-telling. If due to the first, it should also disappear as the story-teller realizes his obligation; if to the second, time and practice will probably cure it. It is well to throw off embarrassment vigorously at the outset and plunge into the story; it is surprising how easy and complete will be the victory.

(2) Vain insincerity is a more serious intrusion. It shows itself usually in an affected manner and a false ring in the voice. The story-teller is not engaged in telling the story, but in exhibiting himself. The children will at once sense such a fraud. The pity is that they should ever have had the chance to do so; it is often the beginning of insincerity in them. This story-teller also must strive to realize his important office.

(3) A patronizing story-teller is as great an obstruction. His manner is unctuous and “glawming.” It dwarfs the listener, belittling him and undermining his frankness. Hear how the great queen did in Morris’s tale:

“Then she held him a little season on her weary and happy breast,

And she told him of Sigmund and Volsung and the best sprung from the best;

She spake to the new-born baby as one who might understand.”

The spirit of the italicized words should be the story-teller’s guide. Watch the child the first time he comes under the sway of the patronizing story-teller, how he eyes the babying smile meant to be engaging, how he holds aloof. The story-teller must trust the child and trust the story. He chooses the story for its suitability in arousing and directing the child’s imagination, sympathies, or æsthetic sense. Having made the selection on this basis, his part now is to be, not officious meddler, no matter how well meaning, but communicator.

The patronizing story-teller is inclined to “thin out” the story. There is a proper kind of remaking allowable in telling a story or in fitting it to younger or older audiences. If too much is necessary, the story is probably not in any degree suitable; it might better be left until the children are older. There are for the meantime plenty of stories more nearly available. Some modes of simplification of the content allowable are: omission of details in description and omission of minor characters and incidents, in some cases to be added later; preparatory talk or explanation, reduced to its very lowest terms; conversation or explanation after the telling, to be followed soon by another telling. The form may be made easier by simplification of the complicated sentences or unchildlike modes of speech, by very sparing use of running explanation, by use of roundabout easier phrase to be replaced by the directly descriptive word.

The power and the glory for the listening child are more surely in the message as the seer, yourself or another story inventor, saw and delivered it, than in any garbled paraphrase of it, all that many attempting story-telling can manage. Their opportunity lies in the field of interpretation, unless they are genuinely engaged in changing the story or in themselves telling a different story or in truly artistic simplification. Have faith in the little child: in his sensibility to artistic fitness, in his intelligence, in his ready sympathy. Have faith in the story.

Best of all modes, the story may be simplified, not by making it over into something else, but by making it into itself through interpretation.

(4) Some story-tellers bring an uninformed self to the story. The root of their difficulty is failure to see and feel the child world. So important is the principle of insight that it will be taken up at length, under the heading spontaneity.

(5) A story-teller lacking in artistic sensibility does not discern the story as a form of art, though a naïve form. He intrudes between the story and the child what, for lack of a better term, the writer called a “sledge-hammer” self, or a didactic self. It resorts to pedagogical pounding, dealing largely in stress on words and in the falling inflection. It vainly attempts to force the story and the child into contact through the intellect, or sometimes the bugaboo of conscience, instead of by the open pathway made by freeing the spirit of the story.

One example, by the way, of the tendency to force the didactic note is the made over version of Southey’s “Three Bears,” in which the story begins with Silver Locks (the little wee woman of the older version is coming back) and makes much of her naughtiness, left in Southey’s story to indirect playful condemnation. This puts her at once in the emphatic position, robbing the three bears of their rank, and the story and the children of the play spirit.

(6) The story-teller who confounds dramatization (not dramatic suggestion) with narration substitutes a detached exhibiting self for the story-teller’s intimate, communicating self. He fails to tell the story. This also will be considered at length under another canon.

(7) Finally, an intruding self is the misinformed self of the lifeless story-teller. It makes story-telling nothing but colorless word-calling. It arises from a false psychology, resting on the assumption that the child’s imaginative and emotional life differs in kind from the adult’s (sound in so far as it condemns strain on the imagination and the emotions); a false ethics, mistrusting attention to oral form, or to beauty of speech; wrong habit in speech. Whatever its source, it prevents the contact of child and story.

The canon of directness, then, requires that both the outer and the inner self lend themselves to telling the story to the listener without obstruction.

Spontaneity is the canon of naturalness, by virtue of which the story has genuine life. It creates the illusion that the story-teller is spinning his tale from within out, its life having become part and parcel of his imaginative and emotional experience. It depends upon insight. The story-teller of childlike tales must “live with our children,” as Froebel said; he must cultivate sensibility to the child’s world, catch its spirit of play and happiness and activity, respect its serious moods, note its affectionate intimacy with animals, cats and dogs and hens and horses, respond to its humor, feel above all its emotional sincerity and simplicity. The child carries himself unaffectedly. It is easy to detect the story-teller who fails of insight into the child’s world. He is either wholly insensible to its characteristics, or he grotesquely exaggerates everything. The first method leaves the child unmoved, the second undermines his sincerity.

The story-teller need not, however, be afraid to give full value to story materials: to idealize its people and happenings; to make its heroines frankly good and beautiful, its supernatural properties adequate, its “great huge bears” satisfyingly huge; to give its seven-leagued giants voice possibilities that will cause half-quaking, half-chuckling listeners to shake in their shoes in whole-hearted enjoyment; to make its porridge pots, that cooked or stopped the minute a certain good little girl said so, magical. Story art, like all art, idealizes its materials the moment it selects them; the story-teller in turn holds them up to view of the imagination. Nor need the adult story-teller be afraid of illumining the view more fully than might a child teller, by the light of the adult’s richer knowledge and experience. No, the story-teller is not to impoverish nor dull the story; but he is to guard against giving the listener the impression of unsuccessful pretense at it, and against urging him to strained imagining and feeling. Until, alas, custom stales him to its false ring, a child condemns the unseeing story-teller, not recognizing him as kith nor kin.

To satisfy the canon of spontaneity, then, the story-teller must see and feel the tale he attempts to tell, that he may re-create its spirit.

By graphicness is meant vividness, by virtue of which the story is made plain to the imagination and quick to the feelings. It is secured by the various means of oral interpretation (to be considered under another heading), helped out by facial expression, and sometimes by gesture or by dramatic suggestion. It is governed by the imperative complementary canon of reserve. Reserve is the canon of artistic restraint; as applied here, it keeps story-telling the art of communicating, not allowing it to pass beyond the limits of dramatic suggestion into dramatization.

It is the greater degree of artistic reserve that divides story-telling sharply from dramatization and gives it its special magnetic charm and enduring strength. The essence of dramatization is sensible actualization, the essence of story-telling is imaginative suggestion. The story tells, yet leaves to the listener exhaustless discovery. At each re-telling the story allures the listener’s imagination to catch added import. The listener maturing into the adult may penetrate a specific detail in the childlike allegory and uncover a symbol of everlasting life, eternal youth or truth or beauty, and having found it, he can never with listening exhaust the depths of it. Is it fanciful to conjecture whether it be some response to this imperishable integrity that urges children to demand the same tale over and over again? Psychology has discerned in them wiseacres learning the realities of life through play. Why not also through story?

Dramatic suggestion as an aid to language and subordinate to it is, however, in place. It was indulged in freely by primitive story-tellers. Children use it instinctively. Hint of happening, by show of action; or glimpse of character, by posture, facial expression, suggestion in tone, is sufficient. Such hint at once makes the situation or character plain to the imagination. The queen in Hans Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” for example, is well brought into the story by the story-teller’s taking on a look of shrewdness, with perhaps shaking of the head, before he tells what the queen thinks of this “real” princess who presents herself thus bedraggled. In doing this the story-teller must preserve the appearance and intention of narration. As soon as some students of story-telling attempt dramatic suggestion they lose the listener and lapse into playing rather than telling. Even when dialogue or monologue demands a degree of impersonation the story-teller must keep in mind that it is for the purpose of telling the story to the listener. He shows, or illustrates, looking back to insure that the listener is following, or to make communication. After the story-teller’s pantomime of surprise and delight at finding the shoes, in “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” for example, he looks at his listeners to communicate his feeling to them and invite their corresponding emotion, then makes verbal communication to them.

Suggestive gesture may also be used to make language graphic. (Beginners often neglect to keep the hands free for gesture they may be impelled to use.) For the sake of the child we must recover, if we have lost it, the speaking face, animated body, and eloquent hand of our childhood. As the word gains in meaning, we resort to gesture more sparingly. Gesture should precede the word. Watch the unconscious child in his use of gesture; he tells with the hand and body before he tells with the word. Some beginners drop a gesture so quickly that they might as well have done without it, others sustain it too long. Gesture is used, as a rule, for one of two chief purposes, demonstration or appeal to the imagination or feelings. When the story-teller is using it to show shape or size or place, he does not need it any longer after he has done this. If he is using it to send the imagination of his listeners out or to appeal to their emotions, he must sustain it until it has accomplished its effect. Sometimes a quick strong gesture makes powerful appeal to the imagination; sometimes sustained gesture serves as aftermath, still telling to the imagination. Gesture must not appear detached from the story-teller, that is, put on from the outside; it should come from within, in the story-teller’s effort to tell. It is helpful, too, to note that gesture partakes of the imitativeness of art,—thus we speak of kingly gesture, commanding gesture, witchlike gesture. When dealing with things that address themselves to the expanding imagination, gesture should be indefinite and broadly suggestive rather than definitive. Too prescriptive an indication of the size of the bears in “The Three Bears,” for example, dwarfs for some generous imaginations the delightful hugeness of the great huge bear and the irresistible littleness of the little small wee bear. Free sweeping gesture is in place in the heroic legend.

Suggestive posture is another means of giving vividness. The story-teller might learn much from the painter and the sculptor about the eloquence of pose. The Pre-Raphaelite school of painting was no doubt guilty of extravagance, but in pose and facial expression it caught some of the secrets of artistic suggestion. We know how the sculptor, too, represents listening, or surprise, or courage. The sculptor is, of course, very much more dependent on posture than is the speaker. But posture should help the story-teller, just as do tone and quality and rate of voice. It will not do, for example, to settle back heavily in the seat while telling, “Out popped the gingerbread boy and—” It must not be forgotten, however, that pose also is under the imperative restriction of reserve; narration is not the static art of posing. Constant or violent change in posture, too, except in particular stories demanding it, is out of place; story-telling is the quiet if animated and graphic art of communication. Posture and facial expression, like gesture, should precede the word, prophesying of it, and sometimes be sustained during pause for effect.

Before leaving this canon, the story-teller should understand that graphicness should sometimes be veiled under a pervading elusiveness. Some stories should be wrapped about with the charm of impalpability; the mystery of them is the secret of their appeal. This is the atmosphere for the romantic fairy tale, like “The Sleeping Beauty,” and for many of the legends and romances.

We are now ready to sum up the canon of graphicness. We have defined it as the dynamic principle of vividness by virtue of which the story is made plain to the imagination. It is secured by the supreme agency of speech, aided sometimes, in greater or less degree, by posture, gesture, facial expression, and dramatic suggestion. It is under the imperative restriction of the canon of reserve.

In an art defined as story-telling the skillful use of the voice is the chief technique to be mastered, and, alas, the least regarded. It is, however, gaining ground. Story-tellers are finding it increasingly reasonable to believe there is close connection between what is to be told and how it is told. While it is true that so strong is the vitality of the what that it will usually triumph in some degree over the how, this is no sound argument for abandoning it to that fate. It is also true, because of the social nature of language, that the listener will do much, no matter how dull the how, to inform and transform the what in the light of his own knowledge and experience. This is precisely in just measure what he is to do. But this argument also is weak.

Man tries to utter his meaning, to give sound to the sense of his thought. All students of words appear to agree to this as a primary creative principle. And in the utterance of language he employs instinctively what some story-tellers condemn as the “show” tricks of elocutionists: suggestive quality or pitch of voice; slow or rapid rate of speaking; grouping, inflection, and pause. Mastery of this instinctive use of speech in its fullness and perfection, as a means to an end, is what is meant by mastery of oral technique. Whatever the method of mastery, direct or indirect, surely the end should be granted.

It has taken many people a long time to convince themselves that the speaking voice is in need of proper exercise and training. They have expected too much of the speaker. The living person back of the speech, the personality, is the chief element in speech; without the speaker to utter his meaning, speech would be nothing but empty word mouthing. But they should give the speaker at least as much fair play as has the singer, training in the use of the voice. The set jaw, wrong coördination, the half-open throat, the closed glottis, or “voice box,” the immobile lip (whose remedy, by the way, is not mouthing), the thick tongue,—all these, causing indistinctness, nasality, throatiness, are impediments to speech. So are throat or nasal or dental obstructions. So is incorrect breathing.

The nice art of enunciation and articulation is worth mastery. Phonics appears to some people like a science of very small things. It has not only an æsthetic value, but, if you must separate them, an intellectual value. Masters of enunciation and articulation give not only finish but richer meaning to language. This, again, is no doubt due to the lively connection between sound and sense. Open mouth and throat well to pronounce the vowels in joy, or shine, and confirm the truth of this; note the force of vowels, consonants, or aspirate pronounced accurately in glisten, shimmering, hushed, croaked, scream, harsh. It will be understood of course that the requirements of character suggestion may demand slurring, chopping off, drawling, and all sorts of speech vices; when in place they become virtues.

We are fond of using the expression “as natural as breathing.” How many are breathing as nature would have them? The speaker should be past master of breathing: be able to expand the diaphragm and fill full and deep, to supplement this basal stock, as opening the mouth to enunciate a vowel or to speak a phrase gives easy, unobtrusive opportunity, to expend breath economically.

The story-teller should “find” his particular voice. To do this he may read or speak in his ordinary tone and note where it vibrates. This is his natural, or at least second-nature, voice, working basis for improvement; re-placing, purifying, strengthening, making flexible.

He should be able to place tone, to give it this or that quality, as the needs of interpretation may demand. He should be able to keep feeling out of the voice, and to speak with feeling without violating the principle of reserve.

Understanding, feeling, and æsthetic appreciation are rooted in the story-teller, to be sure, but they must be transmitted by the organs of voice. He will be delighted to find that the physical action of these organs, if easy and responsive, appears to deepen his own understanding and feeling and to send them in greater fullness to the listener.

One of the most important principles of oral technique is perspective, through which the central idea is kept dominant throughout the story. Proper application of this principle gives the whole story unity and increasing interest and point. To give the story perspective the story-teller employs grouping, pause, rate, pitch, and inflection. Space permits of nothing more than this mere enumeration of these means and of pointing out a very limited use of one or two. Beginners often err in grouping. In the story of “The Frog Prince,” for example, they will say “there was a king,” making this a more or less complete and leading idea, instead of “there was a king who had beautiful daughters;” at this point, moreover, by use of the complete falling inflection they destroy the subordinate relation of this idea to the succeeding one, “but the youngest was the most beautiful.” Untrained speakers and badly trained readers overuse the falling inflection. Story-tellers will find it helpful to practice the sustained, or “forward pointing,” voice. It is necessary to the proper building out of units of thought. The story-teller should “make,” for example, the word picture with the voice, bit by bit, much as the painter does the line and color picture with the brush, each added detail going toward the whole.

Mastery of pause is important. In ordinary communication the story-teller, as does everyone else, uses pause a hundred times a day, but he is inclined at first to overlook its part in story-telling. He should learn to pause to make clear not only the divisions of single sentences, but of the whole story, its setting, action, resolution, and close. He should use it also to set off for dramatic emphasis or emotional effect significant or climactic circumstances, persons, or details of action. Pause is one of the simplest and most effective means of emphasis. Of course, like every other means of speech, it is sometimes best ignored.

This bare glance at speech technique shows us that the story-teller should have such command over the agencies of oral transmission as will enable him to convey the story fully to the listener. Let his point of departure be the effort to utter his meaning.

When telling stories to young children the story-teller may do more or less “leading” of the feelings and the taste, thus educating the child to respond to what is playful or brave or humorous or beautiful. If the story-teller will show pleasure in obedience, fun, good-nature, loveliness in nature or art, shape, for example, or color, or sound, or adaptability to use, the imitative listener will respond in like appreciation. Some beginners find it difficult to do this. Sometimes the source of the difficulty is bad habit in reading. This affects story-telling when the story has been prepared from the printed page. The student comes to the story-telling class with the habit formed of suppressing in his reading appreciation of excellence or of beauty. Two students talking together outside of class may do the natural thing; if describing beauty—loveliness of nature, human loveliness, goodness, heroism—they show pleasure in it by smiling lip and softly shining eye; “beauty,” as Wordsworth has it, “makes them glad.” But nine times out of ten the beginner in story-telling who has prepared the story from a book allows no appreciation of beauty to get into voice or self as he tells, for example, “In olden times, when wishing was having, there lived a king who had beautiful daughters, but the youngest was so lovely that even the sun himself, who has seen so much, marveled whenever he shone in her face.” He is not of course to magnify this phrase unduly; he must keep it in proper perspective.

It is astonishing how imperfectly we talk and tell. As indicated before, words as they are uttered represent to the young listener, and, so lively is language, in great degree to the adult also, exactly what the speaker puts into them. If he utters bright dully, he contradicts truth; if he pronounces loved coldly, he robs it of the human warmth of itself; if he mumbles lovely, he dwarfs beauty. To correct wrong habit in speaking, the student of story-telling should cultivate sensibility to the feeling and æsthetic suggestions in language, and during the stage of apprenticeship be content to be conscious until more spontaneous appreciation shall relieve him of watchfulness.

To take another example, in the story of “The Hut in the Wood,” beginners often fairly shout “night was coming on,” “the owl hooted,” “the trees rustled.” The thing to be communicated here through the details is the emotional state of the girl. It is communicated by sympathetic interpretation: lowering of voice, with suggestion in it of the sounds heard, accompanied by shrinking in posture and dawning of fear in the face.

Leading is open to abuse. The more the language of the story tells on its face when interpreted so as to set free the associations bound up in it, the more the story-teller must trust it to carry its own effects.

The story-teller is governed most by the supreme canon of simplicity. His must be a peculiarly unelaborate, apparently artless art. In gesture and facial expression, in dramatic suggestion, in speech, his is that form or degree of the artistic manner that will carry to the listener the unaffected, frank, childlike kind of life with which the child story deals: not intense in manner; not intellectual nor artificial in gesture; not pedantic nor studied in speech—but sincere and simple.

The Child’s Part in Story-Telling

Let us tabulate some of the things the child naturally does as his part in story-telling. The table will be incomplete, but it may be suggestive. What is the child’s part in story-telling?

(1) It is listening.

(2) It is remaining silent.

(3) It is commenting.

(4) It is joining in.

(5) It is re-telling.

(6) It is partial re-telling.

(7) It is telling other stories.

(8) It is inventing stories.

(9) It is expressing sometimes story images in other media.

(10) It is sometimes playing the stories.

(11) It is growing by the power and grace of the story.

(1) It is listening. Let us not underrate the child’s quiet part as listener harkening to the story again and again to catch wider and deeper vision of it.

(2) It is remaining silent. When it is the silence of delight, be content; this is result enough. When it is the spiritual silence out of whose brooding may be born reverent awe or insight into justice or cheerful good will or virile endeavor, bring all your wisdom to bear to decide whether you will help or hinder by leaving the child to himself, and in case of doubt give the story the benefit of it, trusting it to deliver its own message in due season.

(3) It is commenting. On the other hand, do not be unmindful of another opportunity. A child, like an adult, is inclined to talk some stories over; meet him halfway. Indeed, in some cases, lead the way; stimulate an inert class to talk over some of the more objective type of stories. It is your opportunity to get and clarify the child’s point of view.

(4) It is joining in. We learn, from the snatches of story-telling history that have come down to us, that it was the custom of the audience to join in at the rhythmic repetitions, as people do at the chorus of a comic song. The children show the same tendency; encourage it. It not only pleases them, but it is an easy and natural beginning in reproduction. The child’s dramatic sense prompts him to come in also when the story-teller reaches dialogue; encourage this also.

(5) It is re-telling. Rightly conducted, reproduction of stories is profitable for shaping the pupil’s thought and language mode. But is the exercise rightly conducted? The children listen in breathless delight as the teacher tells the story; she demands it “back,” the children struggle, interest flags, teacher and children toil on, and joy dies out in story and listener. This is too bad. Story-telling is a legitimate opportunity for unalloyed pleasure; the school is not too lavish of such times. What is the root of the trouble? It lies in one or more sources: the practice of requiring premature reproduction of some types of story not grasped by the children to the definite point of re-telling; the teacher’s unreasonable or wrong standards of achievement; the pupil’s lack of familiarity with the story, due to the teacher’s tendency to turn reproduction into a test or task.

The tendency of the school to require immediate verbal reproduction of all stories is unwise utilitarianism. It is limiting the teacher’s choice of stories undesirably. Feeling compelled to demand reproduction of every story, the teacher confines her choice to stories the children will take hold of easily. We can all testify that we have heard and been moved or delighted by recitals we could not reproduce; their purpose was to accomplish exactly what they did accomplish. The child is capable of responding in æsthetic pleasure or spiritual uplift to stories as yet beyond his re-telling. It is highly desirable that he be given the chance of contact with such material and that its seed be given time to root and flower. To urge him to immediate reproduction is to develop shallow glibness at the sacrifice of something finer. Under the compulsion of reproduction the teacher excludes, also, not only beautiful and spiritualizing stories, but long stories. Long stories are not desirable on the mere ground of length, but even this ground has its claim. The longer stories give sustained exercise to the imagination, and they give the story-teller ampler field to set forth character or action and to let the story yield fuller measure of delight. Short and long and longer and shorter are all in place. And not all need nor should be reproduced.

How much should the teacher expect when she asks pupils to tell back any stories they have heard only once, or at most twice? Exactly what the pupil gives, what he grasped. Many teachers are disturbed, however, by the meager “language training” afforded by this very brief re-telling. Why not let the stories, by reiteration of them on the teacher’s part, impose their thought process and language mode on the forming habit of the child? This does not mean that reproduction must be verbatim repetition, nor that the children’s individuality is to be suppressed. But what a mockery, especially in some quarters, is this prevalent idea in the schools that the child must not be familiarized with the language of the story, but that he should be compelled to “tell it in his own words.” Alas, “his own words”! Would not familiarity with the story’s language bring riches to the thought-starved and language-starved children of some unschooled parents, anxious that their children shall enjoy advantages denied to themselves? Would it not help in foreign sections?

(6) It is partial re-telling. Let the children come into possession of the story naturally and gradually. At each re-telling of it by yourself look for firmer and fuller reproduction. Help to keep the children’s interest centered in the story, not so much by commenting patronizingly, “How well John told the story!” but rather by openly enjoying the story John is telling. Let language come, as it should, with the effort to express the thought. And do not interfere with composition by unnecessary questioning. Your first method of helping the pupils’ reproduction might be by supplying omitted parts rather than by questioning analytically for them, as is so commonly done at present. (Questioning has of course its place: it serves to lift into consciousness the relations existing among the parts of the story.) Try co-operative telling: tell part yourself, then let a child or several in succession tell the next, helping if necessary but not anticipating, and perhaps finish the story yourself. The children will soon be able to manage more. Simple, artistic illustrative picture or blackboard sketches, showing in succession the main divisions of the story, will help to give it uninterrupted sequence. (When divisions are made either orally or pictorially, they should be true portions of the whole.) Presently the children will find themselves telling the whole of some stories without undue feeling of strain, and with great pleasure to themselves and their classmates.

Is it natural, by the way, to reproduce in the same company a story just heard? This is the common school practice. In an adult audience this would of course never be done except on the frank basis of practice in so doing or for some other accepted purpose. The children enjoy dwelling on the story. And they may practice, with the motive of telling the story at home. The teacher need not, therefore, strain at devices to make reproduction more natural, yet she might often take advantage of or contrive more natural occasion for it. The natural occasion is social intercourse and entertainment. There is space only to indicate one or two ways of securing this attractive natural motive. Sometimes let at least a day elapse before asking for the reproduction; you may then let the exercise be an opportunity to enjoy the story again. Tell the same story over and over (if it be a good one) yourself on appropriate occasions, and encourage the children to do the same thing. Let individuals, or groups, or classes, visit and exchange stories.

(7) The child’s part, telling similar stories and (8) inventing stories, should go without saying. Do not neglect the opportunity offered by (8). If you reduce the class to workable groups at a time for this exercise, it should be practicable. Do not press prematurely the creative imagination, but do not neglect it. Give play to the natural working of a little child’s fancy, the boy’s or girl’s, the youth’s imagination. It is wise to follow the lead of the child here, then be at hand, not to deprive the child of the efficiency of independence and of the pleasure of making, but to help when necessary that his attempt may be encouragingly successful.

(9) It is sometimes expressing story images in other media. Here, again, the adult will do well to follow the lead of the child; of course of the most freely expressive child. The inert must be stimulated. Left to himself the child would not commit some of the excesses in sensible representation that adults impose upon children, though objective representation is natural to man at the childlike stage. It is not necessary that the child represent materially every set of language ideas. The teacher should not, on the other hand, stop natural attempt to represent even the more elusive kinds of ideas; there may be a budding Watts or Chase in her class, capable of picturing the highly fanciful and spiritual.

Keep the exercise growing. Its aim is to give constructive outlet to the child. The child’s conception of the story, with expression of it and each re-hearing, is growing. The practice of keeping a child’s first attempts at expression in drawing or modeling or cutting or his attempts at any one stage too long about the classroom, before his eyes, is dwarfing. There is, of course, the other side to the question. To accept nothing as accomplishment is deadening to effort. It is possible, however, is it not, to meet the child on childlike standard of achievement, to acknowledge the day’s accomplishment, yet without disheartening him, or even talking to him about the better things he will do, to keep our own faces turned toward the morrow?

(10) It is playing the stories. This, if not done with every story without discrimination, or without reference to the children’s instinctive selective sense, if kept at least fairly spontaneous and progressive, is a form of constructivity heartily enjoyed by the children. It is wise here again to follow the child’s lead. Let us understand, however, by this the lead of the majority of our most normal children and of the most gifted individuals. Many children meager in imagination, feeble in initiative, inadequate in execution, will need the strong lead of other children or of the teacher, qualified child seer from her experience with more favored children. Let her give to these from her abundance, becoming best playfellow and guide. But let her keep herself in the attitude of playing with the children.

Let us see how playing the story might develop. As soon as the story takes possession of the child he shows a tendency to enter into its persons and its action; to mimic the voices, to ape the manners, to do the doings. Give outlet to this; let the child take on and play out the life of the story, or yourself propose playing the story.

Do not, by the way, clutter up the child’s direct outlet with staging and properties and stage terms. It destroys spontaneity and reality. Let the schoolroom be the place, and, as a rule, the school furnishings any necessary things, and the school children, in their ordinary clothes, the people. The delight of “dressing up” may sometimes be allowed; but a mere suggestion in costume, if it be something distinctive of the character impersonated, is all that is necessary; a gold paper crown, for example, will at once make a queen of any child. Why not with the little children talk simply and naturally: “Let us play” (not act nor dramatize) so and so. Who’ll be so and so? I’ll be so and so. Where will you have your home? And so on. Do not at the beginning press even this simple kind of planning; let the play develop with the playing of it. Help the children, however, gradually to gain in planning.

Playing has a tendency to make the form static; it is a mistake to let this happen too soon. Do not, as is the practice, stop telling the story yourself after the children have once played it. You will find that their intimate experience in playing it will bring a more pointed attention to the next hearing of it, and that their next playing will be richer in detail, or stronger in structure, or truer in characterization, or more appropriate in dialogue. Do not, of course, keep the children on one story either for playing or other form of reproduction until they weary of it.

Far from deploring, by the way, the child’s crudities in dialogue, appreciate the opportunity to let him express himself and to develop his language sense. Keep the language way open to him. He will catch the force of your comment on how some character spoke, himself suggest to another pupil what the person the pupil is impersonating should say, note how you talk when you impersonate, or how you respond in dialogue with him.

Playing the stories is open to educational abuse by being turned into insincere show work. This results, too, in exclusion of pupils who do not excel. Keep playing the stories, at least for the little children, the spontaneous universal thing they make it—play. Their own selective sense guides them in assigning or assuming rôles. It is abused, also, by adult patronage. The teacher laughs at the children rather than with them, or laughs when the true child seer would be serious. The child thoroughly enjoys playing the stories, but this does not mean that he laughs constantly or at his own performance. Encourage him to catch the fun or humor of a situation or of a remark; enjoy the playing openly when it is merry, laugh and laugh heartily, but do not turn his genuine playing into a sham. Do not, on the other hand, take him too seriously; he does not always take himself so. In short, get the child’s point of view here as elsewhere.

The “last’s the best of all the game;” it is (11) growing by the power and grace of the story.

May the child nurtured on the wit and wisdom of the simple story simply told live happy ever after!

Thus we arrived at this place together, where the people were in the habit of spinning up the tow. It was an enforced custom with them that each in turn should relate some little tale, or history, and to tell the truth, not only the noble women, but also myself and my friend, found our entire pleasure in such stories, and we often used to stop old beggars and give them a trifle more for telling us them.

—Jucundus Jucundissimus, 1680.

STORIES

Now the children all draw near

’Tis the time a tale to hear.

THE FAIRY HORSESHOE

At midnight a long time ago an honest hard-working blacksmith heard someone in his shop hammering, hammering, hammering, for all the world like another blacksmith making a shoe. But the sound was very quick and light, more like tapping, tapping, tapping. And all the time, whoever it was was whistling the prettiest tune you ever heard, and singing between times:

“I’m a cunning blacksmith,

I can make a shoe,

Heat the iron,

Bend the iron,

Hammer it true—

Il y ho, il y hoo,

Il y ho, il y hoo—

I’m a cunning blacksmith,

I can make a shoe.”

The blacksmith listened and thought, and listened and thought, and listened and thought. Then he sprang out of bed on tiptoe, crying softly, “I have it! I have it! It’s one of the wee small people. I’ll catch him if I can for good luck.” The blacksmith needed some good luck. His work was to shoe the horse and shoe the colt and shoe the wild mare; and he did it well. But he hadn’t enough to do, and so he was very poor.

Well, to go back, the blacksmith sprang out of bed on tiptoe. Then without making the least bit of noise in the world that ever was heard, he opened the door of his bedroom and looked all about the shop. He couldn’t see sight nor light of anybody, but he heard the hammering, and whistling, and the singing between times:

“I’m a cunning blacksmith,

I can make a shoe,

Heat the iron,

Bend the iron,

Hammer it true—

Il y ho, il y hoo,

Il y ho, il y hoo—

I’m a cunning blacksmith,

I can make a shoe.”

“It’s very odd,” said he, under his breath; “where can the wee small thing be!” All of a sudden, as he peered about more sharply, he spied it stuck in the girth of a white mare standing in the stall nearest the forge. The elfin smith was wearing a bit of an apron before him, and a tid of a nightcap on his head, and hammering away at a speck of a horseshoe.

“He’ll bring me good luck, if I can only catch him,” said the blacksmith so softly that his own ears could scarcely hear. And without making the least bit of noise in the world that ever was heard, he tiptoed up behind the wee small body, opened his hand, and—snatched him up, crying, “Ha, ha, I have you.” With that he opened two fingers to take a look, when—out jumped the elf, crying, “Ho, ho, see me go,” and away he did go like a streak of lightning.

But he left the wee bit horseshoe in the blacksmith’s hand. And it did bring him good luck, so that ever after he had plenty to do. So many horses and colts and wild mares came to be shod that he had to build a larger shop with nine-and-seven stalls.

When the blacksmith died, he left the good luck fairy horseshoe to his sons, and they left it to their sons, and they left it to their sons; so that if they haven’t lost it the blacksmith’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren have it yet.

—Angela M. Keyes

THE MOUSE AND THE SAUSAGE

Once upon a time a little mouse and a little sausage, who loved each other like sisters, decided to live together. They planned it so that every day one would go to walk in the fields, or to buy things in the town, and the other would stay at home to keep the house.

One day, when the little sausage had prepared cabbage for dinner, the little mouse, who had come back from town with a good appetite, enjoyed it so heartily that she exclaimed: “How delicious the cabbage is to-day, my dear!”

“Ah!” answered the little sausage, “that is because I popped myself into the pot while it was cooking.”

On the next day, when it was her turn to prepare the meals, the little mouse said to herself: “Now I will do as much for my friend as she did for me; we shall have lentils for dinner, and I will jump into the pot while they are boiling.” So she did, without stopping to think that a simple sausage can do some things not to be attempted by even the wisest mouse.

When the sausage came home, she found the house lonely and silent. She called again and again, “My little mouse! Mouse of my heart!” but no one answered. Then she went to look at the lentils boiling on the stove, and, alas! found within the pot her good little friend, who had perished for love of her. Poor mousie had stayed too long at her cookery, and when she tried to climb out of the pot, she had no longer the strength to do so.

The little sausage could never be consoled! That is why to-day, when you put one in the pan or on the gridiron, you will hear her weep and sigh, “M-my p-poor m-mouse! Ah, m-my p-poor m-mouse!”

—French folk tale

THE STORY OF THE LITTLE BOY AND THE LITTLE DOG

There was a little boy and there was a little dog. The two lived together and loved each other, and where one went the other followed.

Now, all of a sudden, the little boy and his nurse moved away to another city, far, far off. This puzzled the little boy so much that for once he forgot the little dog. When he remembered him, it was the middle of the night. But, for all that, he got up and waked his nurse to ask her where the little dog could be. The nurse rubbed her sleepy eyes and said,

“Sleep now, my lamb, and wait till day,

Thy little dog is on the way.”

Then she closed her eyes and straightway fell fast asleep, and so there was nothing for the little boy to do but to fall asleep, too.

At break of day the little boy was at the window watching for the little dog. But alas! no little dog came. When the little boy asked his nurse what could be keeping the little dog, she said,

“Be patient, my lamb, ’tis but peep of day,

Thy little dog is on the way.”

Well, the morning and the noon passed, and no little dog came. The little boy grieved so that he could neither eat nor play. At last when evening began to darken, and still no little dog came, and still the little boy watched at the window, the nurse put on her bonnet and shawl and went out to find the little lost dog.

It wasn’t long before she was back with a dog that looked something like the dear lost one, but much thinner and quieter. When the little boy said so to his nurse, she said,

“Yes, poor doggie! But he came a long way,

Without bite or sup, a night and a day;

Give him, my lamb, a bowl of warm milk,

And soon you’ll see him as sleek as silk.”

The little boy ran and gave him the milk. When the little dog had lapped up the milk, he felt so much better that he licked the little boy’s face, and the two frisked about the room.

But the little boy noticed that the little dog did not caper so merrily as he used to do. Indeed, the poor creature soon became quiet and sad again. And, although the little boy made his own legs go as fast as a windmill, he could not coax the little dog to run a race with him. He saw, too, that the little dog found it very hard to curl himself up on the hearthrug for a nap. And the next day the little dog was so wretched that he refused to eat.

“Poor, poor doggie, what ails you, whatever ails you?” cried the little boy. “You’ll die if you do not eat.” He lifted the dog tenderly into his lap, when—what should he feel on the stomach but a seam! “Nurse,” he cried, “come quickly; something is stitched so tight around the poor dog’s body he cannot eat nor breathe.”

The nurse ran in with the scissors in her hand. And lo!

With a nip and a snip, and snip and a nip,

And a very loud pip!

out came the little boy’s own little dog.

“Now I see through it all,” cried the nurse. And what she saw was what had really happened.

While the little dog was on his way to the little boy, a dog-seller snatched him up and carried him into a shop. There he tried to change him into a French poodle by sewing him into a skin-tight black jacket with curly trimming. But by great good luck it was down the street past this very shop the nurse walked and spied the little dog peeping out to see how he might escape.

“Oh, I’ll never forget thee again,” cried the little boy. And he didn’t. The two lived happy together ever after, and where one went the other followed.

—Angela M. Keyes

THE STORY OF THE TWO CAKES WHO LOVED EACH OTHER IN SILENCE

On the shop counter lay two gingerbread cakes. One was the shape of a man with a hat, the other of a maiden without a bonnet. Both their faces were on the side that was turned up, for they were to be looked at on that side, and not on the other. On the left the man wore a bitter almond—that was his heart. The maiden was honey-cake all over.

As they were only samples, they stayed on the counter a long time. And, at last, they fell in love with each other. But neither told the other, as should have been done, if anything was to come of it.

“He is a man and must speak first,” thought she. But she was happy, for she knew he loved her.

His thoughts were far more extravagant; that is the way with men. He dreamed that he was a real street boy, and that he had four pennies of his own, and that he bought the sweet maiden and ate her up.

So they lay on the counter for weeks and weeks, and grew dry and hard.

But the thoughts of the maiden became ever more gentle and maidenly. “It is enough for me that I have lived on the same table with him,” she said, and—crack! she broke in two.

“If she had only known of my love,” thought he, “she would have kept together a little longer.”

“And that is their story, and here they are, both of them,” said the baker, for it was he who was telling the story. “They are remarkable for their curious history, and for their silent love, which never came to anything. There they are for you.” So saying, he gave the man, who was yet whole, to Joanna, and the broken maiden to Knud.

But the children were so impressed with the story that they could only look at them, they could not eat them up just yet.

—Hans Christian Andersen