story, a children's story, about
a good and a bad little mouse.

She had been asked to do that thing, for a purpose, and she did it,
therefore. But it was easy to see from the expressions of the listeners
how trivial a thing it seemed to them.

That was at first. But presently the room grew quieter; and yet quieter.
The faces relaxed into amused smiles, sobered in unconscious sympathy,
finally broke in ripples of mirth. The story-teller had come to her own.

The memory of the college girls listening to the mouse-story brought other
memories with it. Many a swift composite view of faces passed before my
mental vision, faces with the child's look on them, yet not the faces of
children. And of the occasions to which the faces belonged, those were
most vivid which were earliest in my experience. For it was those early
experiences which first made me realise the modern possibilities of the
old, old art of telling stories.

It had become a part of my work, some years ago, to give English lectures
on German literature. Many of the members of my class were unable to read
in the original the works with which I dealt, and as these were modern
works it was rarely possible to obtain translations. For this reason, I
gradually formed the habit of telling the story of the drama or novel in
question before passing to a detailed consideration of it. I enjoyed this
part of the lesson exceedingly, but it was some time before I realised how
much the larger part of the lesson it had become to the class. They
used--and they were mature women--to wait for the story as if it were a
sugarplum and they, children; and to grieve openly if it were omitted.
Substitution of reading from a translation was greeted with precisely the
same abatement of eagerness that a child shows when he has asked you to
tell a story, and you offer, instead, to "read one from the pretty book."
And so general and constant were the tokens of enjoyment that there could
ultimately be no doubt of the power which the mere story-telling exerted.

The attitude of the grown-up listeners did but illustrate the general
difference between the effect of telling a story and of reading one.
Everyone who knows children well has felt the difference. With few
exceptions, children listen twice as eagerly to a story told as to one
read, and even a "recitation" or a so-called "reading" has not the charm
for them that the person wields who can "tell a story." And there are
sound reasons