The majority of the class, however, seemed to feel with
another who asked, "Why didn't he promise while the Danes were there? He
needn't have kept it when they went away."

Another way of stating our aim in telling stories to children is that a
story presents morality in the concrete. Virtues and vices _per se_
neither attract nor repel, they simply mean nothing to a child, until
they are presented as the deeds of man or woman, boy or girl, living and
acting in a world recognised as real. One telling story is that of the
boy who got hold of Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and who said
to his mother, "Mother, I've been reading 'The Little Merchants' and I
know now how horrid it is to cheat and tell lies." "I have been telling
you that ever since you could speak," said his mother, to which the boy
answered, "Yes, I know, but that didn't interest me." Our children had
been told the story of how the Countess of Buchan crowned the Bruce, a
duty which should have been performed by her brother the Earl of Fife,
who, however, was too much afraid of the wrath of English Edward. A few
days after, an argument arose and one little girl was heard to say, "I
don't want to be brave," and a boy rejoined, "Girls don't need to be
brave." I said, "Which would you rather be, the Countess who put the
crown on the King's head, or the brother who ran away?" And quickly came
the answer, "Oh! the brave Countess," from the very child who didn't
want to be brave!

Froebel sums up the teacher's aim in the words: "The telling of stories
is a truly strengthening spirit-bath, it gives opportunity for the
exercise of all mental powers, opportunity for testing individual
judgement and individual feelings."

But why is it that children crave for stories? "Education," says Miss
Blow, a veteran Froebelian, "is a series of responses to indicated
needs," and undoubtedly the need for stories is as pressing as the need
to explore, to experiment and to construct. What is the unconscious need
that is expressed in this craving, why is this desire so deeply
implanted by Nature? So far, no one seems to have given a better answer
than Froebel has done, when he says that the desire for stories comes
out of the need to understand life, that it is in fact rooted in the
instinct of investigation. "Only the study of the life of others can
furnish points of comparison with the life the boy himself has
experienced. The story concerns other men, other circumstances