Reading_. M. Kennerley.

Olcott, Frances J.: _The Children's Reading_. Houghton.

CHAPTER III

THE TELLING OF FAIRY TALES

The telling of stories refreshes the mind as a bath
refreshes the body. It gives exercise to the intellect and
its powers. It tests the judgments and feelings. The
story-teller must wholly take into himself the life of which
he speaks, must let it live and operate in himself freely.
He must reproduce it whole and undiminished, yet stand
superior to life as it actually is.--FROEBEL.

The purpose of the story.--To look out with new eyes upon
the many-featured, habitable world; to be thrilled by the
pity and the beauty of this life of ours, itself brief as a
tale that is told; to learn to know men and women better,
and to love them more.--BLISS PERRY.

Expertness in teaching consists in a scholarly command of
subject-matter, in a better organization of character, in a
larger and more versatile command of conscious modes of
transmitting facts and ideals, and in a more potent and
winsome, forceful and sympathetic manner of personal contact
with other human beings.--HENRY SUZZALLO.

Story-telling as an art. No matter how perfectly the tale, in a
subjective sense, may contain the interests of the child, or how
carefully it may avoid what repels him; though in an objective sense
it may stand the test of a true classic in offering a permanent
enrichment of the mind and the test of literature in appealing to the
emotions and the imagination, in giving a contribution of truth and an
embodiment of good form; though it may stand the test of the
short-story--furnishing interesting characters, definite plot, and
effective setting; though its sequence be orderly and its climax
pointed, its narration consistent and its description apt--the tale
yet remains to be told. The telling of the tale is a distinct art
governed by distinct principles because the life of the story must be
transmitted and rendered into voice.

Story-telling is one of the most ancient and universal of arts.
Concerning this art Thackeray has said:--

Stories exist everywhere: there is no calculating the
distance through which stories have come to us, the number
of languages through which they have been filtered, or the
centuries during which they have been told. Many of them
have been narrated almost in