ce of students that she had at last, with much
difficulty, brought herself to the point where she could forget herself
in her story: where she could, for instance, hop, like the fox, when
she told the story of the "sour grapes." She said, "It was hard at
first, but now it is a matter of course; AND THE CHILDREN DO IT TOO,
WHEN THEY TELL THE STORY." That was the pity! I saw the illustration
myself a little later. The child who played fox began with a story: he
said, "Once there was an old fox, and he saw some grapes;" then the
child walked to the other side of the room, and looked up at an
imaginary vine, and said, "He wanted some; he thought they would taste
good, so he jumped for them;" at this point the child did jump, like
his role; then he continued with his story, "but he couldn't get them."
And so he proceeded, with a constant alternation of narrative and
dramatization which was enough to make one dizzy.

The trouble in such work is, plainly, a lack of discriminating
analysis. Telling a story necessarily implies non-identification of
the teller with the event; he relates what occurs or occurred, outside
of his circle of consciousness. Acting a play necessarily implies
identification of the actor with the event; he presents to you a
picture of the thing, in himself. It is a difference wide and clear,
and the least failure to recognize it confuses the audience and injures
both arts.

In the preceding instances of secondary uses of story-telling I have
come some distance from the great point, the fundamental point, of the
power of imitation in breeding good habit. This power is less
noticeably active in the dramatizing than in simple re-telling; in the
listening and the re-telling, it is dominant for good. The child
imitates what he hears you say and sees you do, and the way you say and
do it, far more closely in the story-hour than in any lesson-period.
He is in a more absorbent state, as it were, because there is no
preoccupation of effort. Here is the great opportunity of the cultured
teacher; here is the appalling opportunity of the careless or ignorant
teacher. For the implications of the oral theory of teaching English
are evident, concerning the immense importance of the teacher's habit.
This is what it all comes to ultimately; the teacher of young children
must be a person who can speak English as it should be spoken,--purely,
clearly, pleasantly, and with force.

It is a hard ideal to live up to,