ent son and managed to earn a livelihood by
spinning. One day the mother lost patience and threatened to send from
home this idle son if he did not get work. So he set out. Each day he
returned to his mother with his day's earnings. The humor lies in what
he brought, in how he brought it, and in what happened to it; in the
admonition of his mother, "You should have done so and so," and Jack's
one reply, "I'll do so another time"; in Jack's literal use of his
mother's admonition, and the catastrophe it brought him on the
following day, and on each successive day, as he brought home a piece
of money, a jar of milk, a cream cheese, a tom-cat, a shoulder of
mutton, and at last a donkey. The humor lies in the contrast between
what Jack did and what anybody "with sense" knows he ought to have
done, until when royalty beheld him carrying the donkey on his
shoulders, with legs sticking up in the air, it could bear no more,
and burst into laughter. This is a good realistic droll to use because
it impresses the truth, that even a little child must reason and judge
and use his own common sense.

_The Story of the Little Red Hen_ is a realistic tale which presents a
simple picture of humble thrift. Andersen's _Tin Soldier_ is a
realistic tale which gives an adventure that might happen to a real
tin soldier. _The Old Woman and her Pig_, whose history has been given
under _The Accumulative Tale_, is realistic. Its theme is the simple
experience of an aged peasant who swept her house, who had the unusual
much-coveted pleasure of finding a dime, who went to market and bought
a Pig for so small a sum. But on the way home, as the Pig became
contrary when reaching a stile, and refused to go, the Old Woman had
to seek aid. So she asked the Dog, the Stick, the Fire, etc. She asked
aid first from the nearest at hand; and each object asked, in its turn
sought help from the next higher power. One great source of pleasure
in this tale is that each object whose aid is sought is asked to do
the thing its nature would compel it to do--the Dog to bite, the Stick
to beat, etc.; and each successive object chosen is the one which, by
the law of its nature, is a master to the preceding one. The Dog, by
virtue of ability to bite, has power over the Pig; the Stick has
ability to master the Dog; and Water in its power to quench is master
over Fire. Because of this intimate connection of cause and effect,
this tale contributes in an unusual degree to the d