tale. This is
scarcely more than a brief and condensed reminiscence; it is the stepping
back into a mood once experienced.

Let us say, for example, that the story to be told is the immortal fable
of _The Ugly Duckling_. Before you open your lips the whole pathetic
series of the little swan's mishaps should flash across your mind,--not
accurately and in detail, but blended to a composite of undeserved
ignominy, of baffled innocent wonderment, and of delicious underlying
satire on average views. With this is mingled the feeling of Andersen's
delicate whimsicality of style. The dear little Ugly Duckling waddles,
bodily, into your consciousness, and you pity his sorrows and anticipate
his triumph, before you begin.

This preliminary recognition of mood is what brings the delicious
quizzical twitch to the mouth of a good raconteur who begins an anecdote
the hearers know will be side-splitting. It is what makes grandmother sigh
gently and look far over your heads, when her soft voice commences the
story of "the little girl who lived long, long ago." It is a natural and
instinctive thing with the born story-teller; a necessary thing for anyone
who will become a story-teller.

From the very start, the mood of the tale should be definite and
authoritative, beginning with the mood of the teller and emanating
therefrom in proportion as the physique of the teller is a responsive
medium.

Now we are off. Knowing your story, having your hearers well arranged, and
being as thoroughly as you are able in the right mood, you begin to tell
it. Tell it, then, simply, directly, dramatically, with zest.

_Simply_ applies both to manner and matter. As to manner, I mean without
affectation, without any form of pretence, in short, without posing. It is
a pity to "talk down" to the children, to assume a honeyed voice, to think
of the edifying or educational value of the work one is doing.
Naturalness, being oneself, is the desideratum. I wonder why we so often
use a preposterous voice,--a super-sweetened whine, in talking to
children? Is it that the effort to realise an ideal of gentleness and
affectionateness overreaches itself in this form of the grotesque? Some
good intention must be the root of it. But the thing is none the less
pernicious. A "cant" voice is as abominable as a cant phraseology. Both
are of the very substance of evil.

"But it is easier to _say,_ 'Be natural' than to _be_ it," said one
teacher to me desperately.

B