When form secures a perfect adaptation of the language to the thought and feeling expressed, it may be said to possess style, in a broad sense of the word.  In a more detailed sense, when form is characterized by precision, energy, delicacy, and personality, and at the same time has the elements of its composition controlled by the principles of sincerity, unity, mass, and coherence, it is said to possess style.  The fairy tale which is a classic characterized by that perfect form called style, will possess the general qualities of precision, energy, delicacy, and personality; and the elements of its structure, its words, its sentences, its paragraphs, will display a control of the principles of sincerity, unity, mass, and coherence.

A tale which well illustrates the literary form possible to the child’s tale, which may be said to possess that perfection of form we call style, and which may be used with the distinct aim to improve the child’s English and perfect his language expression, is the modern realistic fairy tale, Oeyvind and Marit.

Oeyvind and Marit is so entirely realistic as to be excluded here, but the talking rhymes which the Mother sings to Oeyvind bring in the fairy element of the talking animals.  In the form of this tale, the perfect fidelity with which the words fit the meaning is apparent—­nothing seems superfluous.  When Oeyvind asked Marit who she was, she replied:—­

“I am Marit, mother’s little one, father’s fiddle, the elf in the house, granddaughter of Ole Nordistuen of the Heidi farms, four years old in the autumn, two days after the frost nights, I!”

And Oeyvind replied:—­

     “Are you really?”—­and drew a long breath which he had not
     dared to do so long as she was speaking.

The story is full of instances illustrating precision, energy, and delicacy.  In fact, almost any passage exemplifies the general qualities of form and the qualities of composition.  The personality of the writer has given to the tale a poetic and dramatic charm of simplicity.  Note the precision and delicacy displayed in the opening paragraph:—­

Oeyvind was his name.  A low barren cliff overhung the house in which he was born; fir and birch looked down on the roof, and wild cherry strewed flowers over it.  Upon this roof there walked about a little goat, which belonged to Oeyvind.  He was kept there that he might not go astray; and Oeyvind carried leaves and grass up to him.  One fine day the goat leaped down, and away to the cliff; he went straight up and came where he never had been before.

Energy is apparent in the following passage:—­

     “Is it yours, this goat?” asked the girl again.

     “Yes,” he said, and looked up.

     “I have taken such a fancy to the goat.  You will not give it
     to me?”

     “No, that I won’t.”

     She lay kicking her legs and looking down at him, and then
     she said, “But if I give you a butter-cake for the goat, can
     I have him then?”