Stories to Tell Children | Page 3

the secret of the mystery, and admit your audience on somewhat unequal terms; they should have no creeping doubts as to your complete initiation into the secrets of the happenings you relate.
Plainly, there can be lapses of memory so complete, so all-embracing, that frank failure is the only outcome; but these are so few as not to need consideration, when dealing with so simple material as that of children's stories. There are times, too, before an adult audience, when a speaker can afford to let his hearers be amused with him over a chance mistake. But with children it is most unwise to break the spell of the entertainment in that way. Consider, in the matter of a detail of action or description, how absolutely unimportant the mere accuracy is, compared with the effect of smoothness and the enjoyment of the hearers. They will not remember the detail, for good or evil, half so long as they will remember the fact that you did not know it. So, for their sakes, as well as for the success of your story, cover your slips of memory, and let them be as if they were not.
And now I come to two points in method which have to do especially with humorous stories. The first is the power of initiating the appreciation of the joke. Every natural humorist does this by instinct, and the value of the power to a story-teller can hardly be overestimated. To initiate appreciation does not mean that one necessarily gives way to mirth, though even that is sometimes natural and effective; one merely feels the approach of the humorous climax, and subtly suggests to the hearers that it will soon be "time to laugh." The suggestion usually comes in the form of facial expression, and in the tone. And children are so much simpler, and so much more accustomed to following another's lead than their elders, that the expression can be much more outright and unguarded than would be permissible with a mature audience.
Children like to feel the joke coming, in this way; they love the anticipation of a laugh, and they will begin to dimple, often, at your first unconscious suggestion of humour. If it is lacking, they are sometimes afraid to follow their own instincts. Especially when you are facing an audience of grown people and children together, you will find that the latter are very hesitant about initiating their own expression of humour. It is more difficult to make them forget their surroundings then, and more desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will see some small listener in an agony of endeavour to cloak the mirth which he--poor mite--fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to laugh, and that everybody is going to.
Having so stimulated the appreciation of the humorous climax, it is important to give your hearers time for the full savour of the jest to permeate their consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It cannot be funny without it.
Everyone who is familiar with the theatre must have noticed how careful all comedians are to give this pause for appreciation and laughter. Often the opportunity is crudely given, or too liberally offered; and that offends. But in a reasonable degree the practice is undoubtedly necessary to any form of humorous expression.
A remarkably good example of the type of humorous story to which these principles of method apply, is the story of Epaminondas on page 92. It will be plain to any reader that all the several funny crises are of the perfectly unmistakable sort children like, and that, moreover, these funny spots are not only easy to see; they are easy to foresee. The teller can hardly help sharing the joke in advance, and the tale is an excellent one with which to practise for power in the points mentioned.
Epaminondas is a valuable little rascal from other points of view, and I mean to return to him, to point a moral. But at the moment I want space for a word or two about the matter of variety of subject and style in school stories.
There are two wholly different kinds of story which are equally necessary for children, I believe, and which ought to be given in about the proportion of one to three, in favour of the second kind; I