The Art of the Story-Teller | Page 6

and fearless
visitor has undertaken to tell a story on the spur of the moment to a
group of restless children.
She opens thus:
"Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, what do you think I
saw?"
The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious that
Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested, "An el'phunt."
"Why, no. Why should I see an elephant in my yard? It was not nearly
so big as that--it was a little thing."
"A fish," ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in
the corner. The raconteuse smiled patiently.
"Now, how could a fish, a live fish, get into my front yard?"
"A dead fish," says Eddy.

He had never been known to relinquish voluntarily an idea.
"No; it was a little kitten," said the story-teller decidedly. "A little white
kitten. She was standing right near a big puddle of water. Now, what
else do you think I saw?"
"Another kitten," suggests Marantha, conservatively.
"No; it was a big Newfoundland dog. He saw the little kitten near the
water. Now, cats don't like water, do they? What do they like?"
"Mice," said Joseph Zukoffsky abruptly.
"Well, yes, they do; but there were no mice in my yard. I'm sure you
know what I mean. If they don't like water, what do they like?"
"Milk," cried Sarah Fuller confidently.
"They like a dry place," said Mrs. R. B. Smith. "Now, what do you
suppose the dog did?"
It may be that successive failures had disheartened the listeners. Itmay
be that the very range of choice presented to them and the dog alike
dazzled their imagination. At all events, they made no answer.
"Nobody knows what the dog did?" repeated the story-teller
encouragingly. "What would you do if you saw a little kitten like that?"
And Philip remarked gloomily:
"I'd pull its tail."
"And what do the rest of you think? I hope you are not as cruel as that
little boy."
A jealous desire to share Philip's success prompted the quick response:
"I'd pull it too."

Now, the reason of the total failure of this story was the inability to
draw any real response from the children, partly because of the
hopeless vagueness of the questions, partly because, there being no
time for reflection, children say the first thing that comes into their
heads without any reference to their real thoughts on the subject.
I cannot imagine anything less like the enlightened methods of the best
kindergarten teaching. Had Mrs. R. B. Smith been a real, and not a
fictional, person, it would certainly have been her last appearance as a
raconteuse in this educational institution.
5. The difficulty of gauging the effect of a story upon the audience rises
from lack of observation and experience; it is the want of these
qualities which leads to the adoption of such a method as I have just
presented. We learn in time that want of expression on the faces of the
audience and want of any kind of external response do not always
mean either lack of interest or attention. There is often real interest
deep down, but no power, or perhaps no wish, to display that interest,
which is deliberately concealed at times so as to protect oneself from
questions which may be put.
6. The danger of overillustration. After long experience, and after
considering the effect produced on children when pictures are shown to
them during the narration, I have come to the conclusion that the
appeal to the eye and the ear at the same time is of doubtful value, and
has, generally speaking, a distracting effect: the concentration on one
channel of communication attracts and holds the attention more
completely. I was confirmed in this theory when I addressed an
audience of blind people[4] for the first time, and noticed how closely
they attended, and how much easier it seemed to them because they
were so completely "undistracted by the sights around them."
I have often suggested to young teachers two experiments in support of
this theory. They are not practical experiments, nor could they be
repeated often with the same audience, but they are intensely
interesting, and they serve to show the actual effect of appealing to one
sense at a time. The first of these experiments is to take a small group
of children and suggest that they should close their eyes while you tell

them a story. You will then notice how much more attention is given to
the intonation and inflection of the voice. The reason is obvious. With
nothing to distract the attention, it is concentrated on the only thing
offered the listeners, that is, sound, to enable them to seize the dramatic
interest of the story.
We find an example of the dramatic power of