elling in
school finds its second value; ethics is the first ground of its
usefulness, English the second,--and after these, the others. It is,
too, for the oral uses that the secondary forms of story-telling are so
available. By secondary I mean those devices which I have tried to
indicate, as used by many American teachers, in the chapter on
"Specific Schoolroom Uses," in my earlier book. They are re-telling,
dramatization, and forms of seat-work. All of these are a great power
in the hands of a wise teacher. If combined with much attention to
voice and enunciation in the recital of poetry, and with much good
reading aloud BY THE TEACHER, they will go far toward setting a
standard and developing good habit.

But their provinces must not be confused or overestimated. I trust I
may be pardoned for offering a caution or two to the enthusiastic
advocate of these methods,--cautions the need of which has been forced
upon me, in experience with schools.

A teacher who uses the oral story as an English feature with little
children must never lose sight of the fact that it is an aid in
unconscious development; not a factor in studied, conscious
improvement. This truth cannot be too strongly realized. Other
exercises, in sufficiency, give the opportunity for regulated effort
for definite results, but the story is one of the play-forces. Its use
in English teaching is most valuable when the teacher has a keen
appreciation of the natural order of growth in the art of expression:
that art requires, as the old rhetorics used often to put it, "a
natural facility, succeeded by an acquired difficulty." In other
words, the power of expression depends, first, on something more
fundamental than the art-element; the basis of it is something to say,
ACCOMPANIED BY AN URGENT DESIRE TO SAY IT, and YIELDED TO WITH FREEDOM;
only after this stage is reached can the art-phase be of any use. The
"why" and "how," the analytical and constructive phases, have no
natural place in this first vital epoch.

Precisely here, however, does the dramatizing of stories and the
paper-cutting, etc., become useful. A fine and thoughtful principal of
a great school asked me, recently, with real concern, about the growing
use of such devices. He said, "Paper-cutting is good, but what has it
to do with English?" And then he added: "The children use abominable
language when they play the stories; can that directly aid them to
speak good English?" Hi