The Art of the Story-Teller Part 6

Jane S. came home with her clothes soiled and hands badly torn.

"Where have you been?" asked her mother.

"I fell down the bank near the mill," said Jane, "and I should have been drowned, if Mr. M. had not seen me and pulled me out."

"Why did you go so near the edge of the brink?"

"There was a pretty flower there that I wanted, and I only meant to take one step, but I slipped and fell down."

_Moral_: Young people often take but one step in sinful indulgence [Poor Jane!], but they fall into soul-destroying sins.

They can do it by a single act of sin. [The heinous act of picking a flower!] They do it; but the act leads to another, and they fall into the gulf of Perdition, unless G.o.d interposes.

Now, quite apart from the folly of this story we must condemn it on moral grounds. Could we imagine a lower standard of a Deity than that presented here to the child?

Today the teacher would commend Jane for a laudable interest in botany, but might add a word of caution about choosing inclined planes in the close neighborhood of a body of running water as a hunting ground for specimens and a popular, lucid explanation of the inexorable law of gravity.

Here we have an instance of applying a moral when we have finished our story, but there are many stories where nothing is left to chance in this matter and where there is no means for the child to use ingenuity or imagination in making out the meaning for himself.

Henry Morley has condemned the use of this method as applied to fairy stories. He says: "Moralizing in a fairy story is like the snoring of _Bottom_ in _t.i.tania's_ lap."

But I think this applies to all stories, and most especially to those by which we do wish to teach something.

John Burroughs says in his article, "Thou Shalt Not Preach":[19]

"Didactic fiction can never rank high. Thou shalt not preach or teach; thou shalt portray and create, and have ends as universal as nature. . . . What Art demands is that the artist's personal convictions and notions, his likes and dislikes, do not obtrude themselves at all; that good and evil stand judged in his work by the logic of events, as they do in nature, and not by any special pleading on his part. He does non hold a brief for either side; he exemplifies the working of the creative energy. . . . The great artist works in and _through_ and _from_ moral ideas; his works are indirectly a criticism of life. He is moral without having a moral. The moment a moral obtrudes itself, that moment he begins to fall from grace as an artist. . . . The great distinction of Art is that it aims to see life steadily and to see it whole. . . . It affords the one point of view whence the world appears harmonious and complete."

It would seem, then, from this pa.s.sage, that it is of _moral_ importance to put things dramatically.

In Froebel's "Mother Play" he demonstrates the educational value of stories, emphasizing that their highest use consists in their ability to enable the child, through _suggestion_, to form a pure and n.o.ble idea of what a man may be or do. The sensitiveness of a child's mind is offended if the moral is forced upon him, but if he absorbs it unconsciously, he has received its influence for all time.

To me the idea of pointing out the moral of the story has always seemed as futile as tying a flower on a stalk instead of letting the flower grow out of the stalk, as Nature has intended. In the first case, the flower, showy and bright for the moment, soon fades away.

In the second instance, it develops slowly, coming to perfection in fullness of time because of the life within.

Lastly, the element to avoid is that which rouses emotions which cannot be translated into action.

Mr. Earl Barnes, to whom all teachers owe a debt of grat.i.tude for the inspiration of his educational views, insists strongly on this point.

The sole effect of such stories is to produce a form of hysteria, fortunately short-lived, but a waste of force which might be directed into a better channel.[20] Such stories are so easy to recognize that it would be useless to make a formal list, but I make further allusion to them, in dealing with stories from the lives of the saints.

These, then, are the main elements to avoid in the selection of material suitable for normal children. Much might be added in the way of detail, and the special tendency of the day may make it necessary to avoid one cla.s.s of story more than another, but this care belongs to another generation of teachers and parents.

CHAPTER V. ELEMENTS TO SEEK IN CHOICE OF MATERIAL.

In his "Choice of Books," Frederic Harrison has said: "The most useful help to reading is to know what we shall _not_ read, what we shall keep from that small, cleared spot in the overgrown jungle of information which we can call our ordered patch of fruit-bearing knowledge."

Now, the same statement applies to our stories, and, having busied myself during the last chapter with "clearing my small spot" by cutting away a ma.s.s of unfruitful growth, I am no going to suggest what would be the best kind of seed to sow in the patch which I have "reclaimed from the jungle."

Again, I repeat, I have no wish to be dogmatic and in offering suggestions as to the stories to be told, I am catering only for a group of normal school children. My list of subjects does not pretend to cover the whole ground of children's needs, and just as I exclude the abnormal or unusual child from the scope of my warning in subjects to avoid, so do I also exclude that child from the limitation in choice of subjects to be sought, because you can offer almost any subject to the unusual child, especially if you stand in close relation to him and know his powers of apprehension. In this matter, age has very little to say; it is a question of the stage of development.

Experience has taught me that for the group of normal children, irrespective of age, the first kind of story suitable for them will contain an appeal to conditions to which the child is accustomed. The reason for this is obvious: the child, having limited experience, can only be reached by this experience, until his imagination is awakened and he is enabled to grasp through this faculty what he has not actually pa.s.sed through. Before this awakening has taken place he enters the realm of fiction, represented in the story, by comparison with his personal experience. Every story and every point in the story mean more as that experience widens, and the interest varies, of course, with temperament, quickness of perception, power of visualizing and of concentration.

In "The Marsh King's Daughter," Hans Christian Andersen says:

"The storks have a great many stories which they tell their little ones, all about the bogs and marshes. They suit them to their age and capacity. The young ones are quite satisfied with _kribble, krabble_, or some such nonsense, and find it charming; but the elder ones want something with more meaning."

One of the most interesting experiments to be made in connection with this subject is to tell the same story at intervals of a year or six months to an individual child.[21] The different incidents in the story which appeal to him (and one must watch it closely, to be sure the interest is real and not artificially stimulated by any suggestion on one's own part) will mark his mental development and the gradual awakening of his imagination. This experiment is a very delicate one and will not be infallible, because children are secretive and the appreciation is often simulated (unconsciously) or concealed through shyness or want of articulation. But it is, in spite of this, a deeply interesting and helpful experiment.

To take a concrete example: Let us suppose the story Andersen's "Tin Soldier" told to a child of five or six years. At the first recital, the point which will interest the child most will be the setting up of the tin soldiers on the table, because he can understand this by means of his own experience, in his own nursery. It is an appeal to conditions to which he is accustomed and for which no exercise of the imagination is needed, unless we take the effect of memory to be, according to Queyrat, retrospective imagination.

The next incident that appeals is the unfamiliar behavior of the toys, but still in familiar surroundings; that is to say, the _unusual_ activities are carried on in the safe precincts of the nursery--the _usual_ atmosphere of the child.

I quote from the text:

Late in the evening the other soldiers were put in their box, and the people of the house went to bed. Now was the time for the toys to play; they amused themselves with paying visits, fighting battles and giving b.a.l.l.s. The tin soldiers rustled about in their box, for they wanted to join the games, but they could not get the lid off. The nut-crackers turned somersaults, and the pencil scribbled nonsense on the slate.

Now, from this point onwards in the story, the events will be quite outside the personal experience of the child and there will have to be a real stretch of imagination to appreciate the thrilling and blood- curdling adventures of the tin soldier, namely, the terrible sailing down the gutter under the bridge, the meeting with the fierce rat who demands the soldier's pa.s.sport, the horrible sensation in the fish's body, etc. Last of all, perhaps, will come the appreciation of the best qualities of the hero: his modesty, his dignity, his reticence, his courage and his constancy. He seems to combine all the qualities of the best soldier with those of the best civilian, without the more obvious qualities which generally attract first. As for the love story, we must _expect_ any child to see its tenderness and beauty, though the individual child may intuitively appreciate these qualities, but it is not what we wish for or work for at this period of child life.

This method could be applied to various stories. I have chosen the "Tin Soldier" because of its dramatic qualities and because it is marked off, probably quite unconsciously on the part of Andersen, into periods which correspond to the child's development.

In Eugene Field's exquisite little poem of "The d.i.n.key Bird," we find the objects familiar to the child in _unusual_ places, so that some imagination is needed to realize that "big red sugar-plums are clinging to the cliffs beside the sea"; but the introduction of the fantastic bird and the soothing sound of amfalula tree are new and delightful sensations, quite out of the child's personal experience.

Another such instance is to be found in Mrs. W. K. Clifford's story of "Master Willie." The abnormal behavior of familiar objects, such as a doll, leads from the ordinary routine to the paths of adventure. This story is to be found in a little book called "Very Short Stories," a most interesting collection for teachers and children.

We now come to the second element we should seek in material, namely, the element of the unusual, which we have already antic.i.p.ated in the story of the "Tin Soldier."

This element is necessary in response to the demand of the child who expressed the needs of his fellow-playmates when he said: "I want to go to the place where the shadows are real." This is the true definition of "faerie" lands and is the first sign of real mental development in the child when he is no longer content with the stories of his own little deeds and experiences, when his ear begins to appreciate sounds different from the words in his own everyday language, and when he begins to separate his own personality from the action of the story.

George Goschen says:

"What I want for the young are books and stories which do not simply deal with our daily life. I like the fancy even of little children to have some larger food than images of their own little lives, and I confess I am sorry for the children whose imaginations are not sometimes stimulated by beautiful fairy tales which carry them to worlds different from those in which their future will be pa.s.sed. . . .

I hold that what removes them more or less from their daily life is better than what reminds them of it at every step."[22]

It is because of the great value of leading children to something beyond the limited circle of their own lives that I deplore the twaddling boarding-school stories written for girls and the artificially prepared public school stories for boys. Why not give them the dramatic interest of a larger stage? No account of a cricket match or a football triumph could present a finer appeal to boys and girls than the description of the Peacestead in the "Heroes of Asgaard":

"This was the playground of the Aesir, where they practiced trials of skill one with another and held tournaments and sham fights. These last were always conducted in the gentlest and most honorable manner; for the strongest law of the Peacestead was that no angry blow should be struck or spiteful word spoken upon the sacred field."

For my part, I would unhesitatingly give to boys and girls an element of strong romance in the stories which are told them even before they are twelve.

Miss Sewell says:

"The system that keeps girls in the schoolroom reading simple stories, without reading Scott and Shakespeare and Spenser, and then hands them over to the unexplored recesses of the Circulating Library, has been shown to be the most frivolizing that can be devised." She sets forth as the result of her experience that a good novel, especially a romantic one, read at twelve or fourteen, is really a beneficial thing.

At present, so many of the children from the elementary schools get their first idea of love, if one can give it such a name from vulgar pictures displayed in the shop windows or jokes on marriage, culled from the lowest type of paper, or the proceedings of a divorce court.

What an antidote to such representation might be found in the stories of Hector and Andromache, Siegfried and Brunnehilde, Dido and Aeneas, Orpheus and Eurydice, St. Francis and St. Clare!