in the chapter on the “Short-Story.”  Or, if you follow the successive doings of the characters you get the whole, as may be observed in the story of Medio Pollito, described later in the “Animal Tale” in the chapter, “Classes of Tales.”  Or if you follow the successive happenings to the characters, the plot, you get the whole, as may appear in the outline of Three Pigs given in the chapter which handles “Plot.”  Note the beauty of detail and the quality of atmosphere with which the setting surrounds the tale; note the individual traits of the characters and their contrasts; observe how what each one does causes what happens to him.  Realize your story from the three points of view to enter into the author’s fullness.  Get a good general notion of the story first.

3.  The next step is:  Master the complete structure of the tale.  This is the most important step in the particular study of the tale, for it is the unity about which any perfection in the art of telling must center.  To discern that repose of centrality which the main theme of the tale gives, to follow it to its climax and to its conclusion, where poetic justice leaves the listener satisfied—­this is the most fundamental work of the story-teller.  The teacher must analyze the structure of her tale into its leading episodes, as has been illustrated in the handling of structure, under the subject, “Plot,” in the chapter on the “Short-Story.”

4.  The next step is:  Secure the message of the tale.The message is what we wish to transmit, it is the explicit reason for telling the tale.  And one evidently must possess a message before one can give it.  As the message is the chief worth of the tale, the message should dominate the telling and pervade its life.  A complete realization of the message of the tale will affect the minutest details giving color and tone to the telling, and resulting so that what the child does with the story will deepen the impression of the message he receives.

5.  The next step is:  Master the tale as form.  This means that if the tale is in classic form, not only the message and the structure must be transmitted, but the actual words.  Words are the artist’s medium, Stevenson includes them in his pattern of style, and how can we exclude them if we wish to express what they have expressed?  A tale like Kipling’s The Elephant’s Child would be ruined without those clinging epithets, such as “the wait-a-bit thorn-bush,” “mere-smear nose,” “slushy squshy mud-cap,” “Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake,” and “satiable curtiosity.”  No one could substitute other words in this tale; for contrasts of feeling and humor are so tied up with the words that other words would fail to tell the real story.  If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part of speech, note the vision of tropical setting opened up by the exclamation, “O Bananas!  Where did you learn that trick?” This is indeed a tale where the form is the matter, the form and the