story-teller is
as absolute and invariable as that of a devotee to the priest of his own
sect.

This power is especially valuable in the case of children whose natural
shyness has been augmented by rough environment or by the strangeness of
foreign habit. And with such children even more than with others it is
also true that the story is a simple and effective means of forming the
habit of concentration, of fixed attention; any teacher who deals with
this class of children knows the difficulty of doing this fundamental and
indispensable thing, and the value of any practical aid in doing it.

More than one instance of the power of story-telling to develop
attentiveness comes to my mind, but the most prominent in memory is a
rather recent incident, in which the actors were boys and girls far past
the child-stage of docility.

I had been asked to tell stories to about sixty boys and girls of a club;
the president warned me in her invitation that the children were
exceptionally undisciplined, but my previous experiences with similar
gatherings led me to interpret her words with a moderation which left me
totally unready for the reality. When I faced my audience, I saw a
squirming jumble of faces, backs of heads, and the various members of many
small bodies,--not a person in the room was paying the slightest attention
to me; the president's introduction could scarcely be said to succeed in
interrupting the interchange of social amenities which was in progress,
and which looked delusively like a free fight. I came as near stage
fright in the first minutes of that occasion as it is comfortable to be,
and if it had not been impossible to run away I think I should not have
remained. But I began, with as funny a tale as I knew, following the safe
plan of not speaking very loudly, and aiming my effort at the nearest
children. As I went on, a very few faces held intelligently to mine; the
majority answered only fitfully; and not a few of my hearers conversed
with their neighbours as if I were non-existent. The sense of bafflement,
the futile effort, forced the perspiration to my hands and face--yet
something in the faces before me told me that it was no ill-will that
fought against me; it was the apathy of minds without the power or habit
of concentration, unable to follow a sequence of ideas any distance, and
rendered more restless by bodies which were probably uncomfortable,
certainly undisciplined.

The first story took ten