tive of unpleasant or
evil feelings, should be avoided.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND REFLECTIONS

The studies so far given are comprehensive, and are suited to all forms
of fictitious narrative. Most of the illustrations have been drawn from
the simpler tales in the earlier volumes, but the studies are equally
applicable to the more difficult selections of the later volumes, and
may be easily adapted by the parent to children of any age. The
restrictions of space have compelled us to offer but one set of studies
here, but there are many simpler and many more difficult ones scattered
through the books where the juvenile readers will find them, and it is
hoped become interested in them. In another place we have shown parents
how these may be found easily and used consecutively if they wish so to
use them.

The studies here given serve to systematize the work and enable parents
to see the logic of the plans. Children are not interested in the
studies as such, nor in the plan, and, in fact, are liable to be
repelled if the machinery of instruction is evident.

Fortunately, children like to read many times the things they enjoy, and
should always be encouraged to do so. But they are likely to read
stories over and over again, for the plot only, and to become so
fascinated by it as never to notice the more valuable and intrinsically
more interesting things the narrative contains.

Yet every person who reads or tells stories to young children has
without doubt often noticed how insistent they are upon verbal accuracy.
The story must be told the third time just as it was the first and
second times. This means that they are sensitive to the thing as a
perfect whole, and feel that any change mars the beauty of the story as
a scratch mars the face of a favorite doll, or a broken seat spoils the
toy buggy.

There comes a time when, if you give a boy a mechanical toy, he is more
interested in how it is made than in the running of it. He wants to
"take to pieces" everything he has. Then he will enjoy analytical work
on a story if he is led to it intelligently. Then the old stories come
in for new readings, "to see how they are made," to find something in
them that he never found before.

The style of reading which a child does when he is "looking for
something" is very different from his reading when he is absorbed in the
story. Suppose he is trying to find out what kind of a man is James, in
_Rab and His Friends_. He forgets f