Stories to Tell to Children | Page 5

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.
Every one 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." 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 practice 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 just here 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 favor of the second kind; I make the
ratio uneven because the first kind is more dominating in its effect.
The first kind is represented by such stories as the "Pig Brother," which
has now grown so familiar to teachers that it will serve for illustration
without repetition here. It is the type of story which specifically teaches
a certain ethical or conduct lesson, in the form of a fable or an
allegory,--it passes on to the child the conclusions as to conduct and
character, to which the race has, in general, attained through centuries
of experience and moralizing. The story becomes a part of the outfit of
received ideas on manners and morals which is an inescapable and
necessary possession of the heir of civilization.
Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories are
good ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems to
maintain for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one of

the media through which we elders may transmit some very slight share
of the benefit received by us, in turn, from actual or transmitted
experience.
The second kind has no preconceived moral to offer, makes no attempt
to affect judgment or to pass on a standard. It simply presents a picture
of life, usually in fable or poetic image, and says to the hearer, "These
things are." The hearer, then, consciously or otherwise, passes
judgment on the facts. His mind says, "These things are good;" or,
"This was good, and that, bad;" or, "This thing is desirable," or the
contrary.
The story of "The Little Jackal and the Alligator" is a good illustration
of this type. It is a character-story. In the naive form of a folk tale, it
doubtless embodies the observations of a seeing eye, in a country and
time when the little jackal and the great alligator were even more vivid
images of certain human characters than they now are. Again and again,
surely, the author or authors of the tales must have seen the weak, small,
clever being triumph over the bulky, well-accoutred, stupid adversary.
Again and again they had laughed at the discomfiture of the latter,
perhaps rejoicing in it the more because it removed fear from their own
houses. And probably never had they concerned themselves particularly
with the basic ethics of the struggle. It was simply one of the things
they saw. It was life. So they made a picture of it.
The folk tale so made, and of such character, comes to the child
somewhat as an unprejudiced newspaper account of to- day's
happenings comes to us. It pleads no cause, except through its contents;
it exercises no intentioned influence on our moral judgment; it is there,
as life is there, to be seen and judged. And only through such seeing
and judging can the individual perception attain to anything of power
or originality. Just as a certain amount of received ideas is necessary to
sane development, so is a definite opportunity for first-hand judgments
essential to power.
In this epoch of well-trained minds we run some risk of an inundation
of accepted ethics. The mind which can make independent judgments,
can