Surely there was never a little one who did not crave for stories, though here and there may be found an older child, who got none at the right time, and who, therefore, lost that most healthy of appetites.  Most of us will agree that there is something wrong with the child who does not like stories, but it may be that the something wrong belonged to the mother.  One such said to the Abbe Klein one day, “My children have never asked for stories.”  “But, madame,” was the reply, “neither would they ask for cake if they had never eaten it, or even seen it.”

It is easy for us to find reasons why we should tell stories.  We can brush aside minor aims such as increasing the child’s vocabulary.  Undoubtedly his vocabulary does increase enormously from listening to stories, but it is difficult to imagine that any one could rise to real heights in story-telling with this as an aim or end.  That the narrator should clothe his living story in words expressive of its atmosphere, and that the listener should in this way gain such power over language, that he, too, can fitly express himself is quite another matter.

First, then, we tell stories because we love to tell them and because the children love to listen.  We choose stories that appeal to our audience.  It is something beautiful, humorous, heroic or witty that we have found, and being social animals we want to share it.  As educators with an aim before us, we deliberately tell stories in order to place before our children ideals of unselfishness, courage and truth.  We know from our own experience, not only in childhood, but all through life how the story reaches our feelings as no sermon or moralising ever does, and we have learned that “out of the heart are the issues of life.”  Unguided feelings may be a danger, but the story does more than rouse feelings—­it gives opportunity for the exercise of moral judgement, for the exercise of judgement upon questions of right and wrong.  Feeling is aroused, but it is not usually a personal feeling, so judgement is likely to be unbiassed.  It may, however, be biassed by the tone absorbed from the environment even in childhood, as when the mother makes more of table etiquette than of kindness, and the child, instead of condemning Jacob’s refusal to feed his hungry brother with the red pottage, as all natural children do condemn, says:  “No, Esau shouldn’t have got it, ’cause he asked for it.”

As a rule, the children’s standard is correct enough, and approval or condemnation is justly bestowed, provided that the story has been chosen to suit the child’s stage of development.  One little girl objected strongly to Macaulay’s ideal Roman, who “in Rome’s quarrel, spared neither land nor gold, nor son nor wife.”  “That wasn’t right,” she said stoutly, “he ought to think of his own wife and children first.”  She was satisfied, however, when it was explained to her that Horatius might be able to save many fathers to many wives and children.  In my earliest teaching