Tales give excellent
suggestions as to the right use to be made of the old mythologies.
Many of the supplementary readers now being so widely used in the
public schools are good, simple versions of these old stories which
helped to make the world what it should be. For the rest there are
two standard children's magazines which help to form a good taste in
literature and which are continually suggestive of the right sort of
reading material. These are The Youth's Companion and St. Nicholas.

[Sidenote: Nature Study]

Finally, all appreciation of literature and art depends upon a love of
and some knowledge of nature. Fairy stories and mythology especially
are so dependent upon nature for their inner meaning and significance
as scarcely to be intelligible without some knowledge of natural
processes and laws. Of course, it is true that art in its turn
idealizes nature and fills her beautiful form with a beautiful soul;
so that the child who is being developed on all sides needs to take
his books and his pictures out of doors in order to get the full good
of them.

[Sidenote: Art and Nature]

No amount of music, art, and literature can make up for the free life
in the fields and under the sky which all these arts describe and
interpret. If he should be so unhappy as to have to choose between
nature and art, it would be better for him to choose nature, because
then, perhaps, art might be born in his own soul. But there is happily
no need for such a painful choice. He can sing his little song out of
doors with the birds and notice how they join in the chorus. He can
paint evening sunsets with the pine-trees against it far better out of
doors than indoors with copy perched before him. He can look down the
aisles of the real woods to watch for the enchanted princess, or for
the chivalrous knight whose story he is reading. Art and nature belong
together in the unified soul of the child. Well for him and for the
world in which he lives if they are never divorced, but he goes on to
the end loving them both and seeing them both as one.

CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATES

If the child was intended to grow into a man of family, merely, family
training might be sufficient for him, but since he must grow into a
member of society, social training is as necessary for him as family
training. Failure to recognize this truth is at the bottom of the
current misconceptions of the Kindergarten. There are still thousands
of persons who supp