eyond dispute. To those of us who are cursed with an over-abundant
measure of self-consciousness, nothing is harder than simple naturalness.
The remedy is to lose oneself in one's art. Think of the story so
absorbingly and vividly that you have no room to think of yourself. Live
it. Sink yourself in that mood you have summoned up, and let it carry you.

If you do this, simplicity of matter will come easily. Your choice of
words and images will naturally become simple.

It is, I think, a familiar precept to educators, that children should not
have their literature too much simplified for them. We are told that they
like something beyond them, and that it is good for them to have a sense
of mystery and power beyond the sense they grasp. That may be true; but if
so it does not apply to story-telling as it does to reading. We have
constantly to remember that the movement of a story told is very swift. A
concept not grasped in passing is irrevocably lost; there is no
possibility of turning back, or lingering over the page. Also, since the
art of story-telling is primarily an art of entertainment, its very
object is sacrificed if the ideas and images do not slip into the child's
consciousness smoothly enough to avoid the sense of strain. For this
reason short, familiar, vivid words are best.

Simplicity of manner and of matter are both essential to the right appeal
to children.

_Directness_ in telling is a most important quality. The story, listened
to, is like the drama, beheld. Its movement must be unimpeded,
increasingly swift, winding up "with a snap." Long-windedness, or talking
round the story, utterly destroys this movement. The incidents should be
told, one after another, without explanation or description beyond what is
absolutely necessary; and _they should be told in logical sequence._
Nothing is more distressing than the cart-before-the-horse
method,--nothing more quickly destroys interest than the failure to get a
clue in the right place.

Sometimes, to be sure, a side remark adds piquancy and a personal savour.
But the general rule is, great discretion in this respect.

Every epithet or adjective beyond what is needed to give the image, is a
five-barred gate in the path of the eager mind travelling to a climax.

Explanations and moralising are usually sheer clatter. Some few stories
necessarily include a little explanation, and stories of the fable order
may quaintly end with an obvious moral. But here ag