(The child then played a song by a “’lectric” engine on the piano and tried to write the notes.)

Two Stories by Five-Year-Olds

I am far from meaning that five-year-olds should be confined to their literal experiences. They have made considerable progress in separating themselves from their environment though at times they seem still to think of the things around them more or less as extensions of themselves. Their inquiries still emanate from their own personal experiences; but they do not end there. A child of this age has a genuine curiosity about where things come from and where they go to. “What’s it for?” indeed, implies a dim conception beyond the “here” and the “now,” a conception which his stories should help him to clarify. If we try to escape the pitfall of “fairy stories,”—abandoning a child in unrealities,—we must not fall into the opposite pitfall and continue the easy habit of merely recounting a series of events, neither significant in themselves nor, as in the earlier years, significant because they are personal experiences. “Arabella and Araminta” and their like give a five-year-old no real food. They are saved, if saved they are, not by their content, but by a daring and skilful use of repetition and of sound quality. No, our stories must add something to the children’s knowledge and must take them beyond the “here” and the “now.” But this “something,” as I have already said, is not so much new information as it is a new relationship among already familiar facts.

In each of the stories for four-and five-year-olds I have attempted to clarify known facts by showing them in a relationship a little beyond the children’s own experience. All the stories came from definite inquiries raised by some child. They attempt to answer these inquiries and to raise others. “How the Engine Learned the Knowing Song,” “The Fog Boat Story,” “Hammer and Saw and Plane,” “How the Singing Water Gets to the Tub,” “Things That Loved the Lake,” “The Children’s New Dresses,” “How Animals Move,”—all are based on definite relationships, largely physical, between simple physical facts.

Interest in these relationships,—inquiries which hold the germ of physical science, continue and increase with each year. In addition, a little later, children seem to begin questioning things social and to be ready for the simpler social relationships which underlie and determine the physical world of their acquaintance. “What’s it for?” still dominates, but a six-year-old is on the way to becoming a conscious member of society. He now likes his answers to be in human terms. He takes readily to such conceptions as congestion as the cause for subways and elevated trains; the desire for speed as the cause of change in transportation; the dependence of man on other living things,—all of which I have made the bases of stories. To the children the material in “The Subway Car,” “Speed,” “Silly Will,” is familiar; the relationships in which it appears are new.

Somewhere about seven years, there seems to be another transition period. Psychologists, whether in or out of schools, generally agree in this. Children of this age are acquiring a sense of social values,—a consciousness of others as sharply distinguished from themselves. They are also acquiring a sense of workmanship, of technique,—of things as sharply distinguished from themselves. They seek information in and for itself,—not merely in its immediate application to themselves. Their inquiries take on the character of “how?” This means, does it not, that the children have oriented themselves in their narrow personal world and that they are reaching out for experience in larger fields? It means that the “not-me” which was so shadowy in the earlier years has gained in social and in physical significance. And this again means that opportunity for exploration in ever-widening circles should be given. Stories should follow this general trend and open up the relationships in larger and larger environments until at last a child is capable of seeing relationships for himself and of regarding the whole world in its infinite physical and social complexity, as his own environment.

Probably the first extra-personal excursions should be into alien scenes or experiences which lead back or contribute directly to their old familiar world. Stories of unknown raw material which turn into well-known products are of this type,—cattle raising in Texas, dairy farms in New England, lumbering in Minnesota, sheep raising in California. It is a happy coincidence that raw materials are often produced under semi-primitive conditions, so that a vicarious participation in their production gives to children something of that thrilling contact with the elemental that does the life of primitive men, and this without sending them into the remote and, for modern children, “unnatural” world of unmodified nature. The danger here is that the story will be sacrificed to the information. Indeed it can hardly be otherwise, if the aim is to give an adequate picture of some process of production. This, of course, is a legitimate aim,—but for the encyclopedia, not for the story. What I have in mind is a dramatic situation which has this process as a background, so that the child becomes interested in the process because of the part it plays in the drama just as he would if the process were a background in his own life. I am thinking of the opportunities which these comparatively primitive situations give for adventure rather than for the detailed elucidation of a process of production.

It is the peculiar function of a story to raise inquiries, not to give instruction. A story must stimulate not merely inform. This is the trouble with our “informational literature” for children, of which very little is worthy of the name. Indeed, I am not sure it is not a contradiction of terms. It is frankly didactic. It aims to make clear certain facts, not to stimulate thought. It assumes that if a child swallows a fact it must nourish him. To give the child material with which to experiment,—this lies outside its present range. Reaction from the unloveliness of this didactic writing has produced a distressing result. The misunderstood and misapplied educational principle that children’s work should interest them has developed a new species of story,—a sort of pseudo-literary thing in which the medicinal facts are concealed by various sugar-coating devices. Children will take this sort of story,—what will their eager little minds not take? And like encyclopedias and other books of reference this type has its place in a child’s world. But it should never be confused with literature.

Literature must give a sense of adventure. This sense of adventure, of excursion into the unknown, must be furnished to children of every age. As I have said before, I think “Peek-a-boo, there’s the baby!” is the elementary expression of this love of adventure. The baby disappears into the unknown vastness behind the handkerchief and to her, her reappearance is a thrilling experience. Children’s stories,—as indeed all stories,—have been largely founded on this. The “Prudy” and “Dotty Dimple” books though keyed so low in the scale seem adventurous because of the meagre background of their young readers. But children of the age we are considering,—who have left the narrowly personal and predominantly play period demand something higher in the scale of adventure. To them are offered the great variety of tales of adventure and danger of which the boy scout is the latest example. Every child in reading these becomes a hero. And every child (and grown-up) enjoys being a hero. Higher still comes “Kidnapped” and so up to Stanley Weyman and “The Three Musketeers” which differ in their art, not in their appeal.

Now is it not possible to give children these adventurous excursions which they crave and should have, without so much killing of animals or men, and so many blood-thirsty excitements, and so much fake heroism? What relationships do such tales interpret? What truths do they give a child upon which to base his thinking? The relation of life to life is a delicate and difficult thing to interpret. But surely we can do better at an interpretation than tales of hunting, of impossible heroisms, and of war. Or at least, we can protest against having these almost the sole interpretations of adventure which are offered to children. The world of industry holds possibilities for adventure as thrilling as the world of high-colored romance. We must look with fresh eyes to see it. When once we see it, we shall be able to give the children a new type of the “story of adventure.” Of all the experiments which the stories in this collection represent, this attempt to find and picture the romance and adventure in our world here and now, I consider the most important and difficult. In such stories as “Boris” and “Eben’s Cows” and “The Sky Scraper,” I have made experimental attempts to give children a sense of adventure by presenting social relations in this new way.

The cultured world has yet another answer to the question, “How shall we give our children adventure?” It points to the wealth of classical myths, of Iliads, sagas, of fairy-stories which are practically folk-lore, semi-magic, semi-allegorical, semi-moral tales which express the ideals and experiences of a different and younger world than ours of today. And it replies, “Give them these.” It feels in the sternness of saga stuff and in the humanity of folk-lore, a validity and a dignity and a simplicity which seem to make them suitable for children. These tales tell of beliefs of folk less experienced than we: we have outgrown them. They must be suited to the less experienced: give them to children. Thus runs the common argument. And so we find Hawthorne’s “Tanglewood Tales,” Æsop’s “Fables,” various Indian myths and Celtic legends, and even the “Niebelungen Lied” often given to quite young children. But do we find this reasoning valid when we examine these tales free from the glamour which adult sophistication casts around them? Remember we are thinking now of children in that delicate seven-to eight-year-old transition period. I have already told how I believe these children are but just beginning to have conceptions of laws,—social and physical. They are groping their way, regimenting their experiences, seeing dim generalizations and abstractions. But they are not firmly oriented. They are beginners in the world of physical or social science and can be easily side-tracked or confused. A child of twelve or even ten is quite a different creature, often with clear if not articulate conceptions of the make-up of the physical and human world. He has something to measure against, some standards to cling to. But we are talking about children still in the early plastic stages of standards who will take the relationships we offer them through stories and build them into the very fabric of their thinking.

Now, how much of the classical literature follows the lead of the children’s own inquiries? How much of it stimulates fruitful inquiries? What are the relationships which sagas, myths and folk-lore interpret? And what are the interpretations? This is a vast question and can be answered only briefly with the full consciousness that there is much lumping of dissimilar material with resulting injustices and superficiality. Also there is no attempt to use the words “myth,” “saga” and “folk-lore” in technical senses.[A] I have merely taken the dominant characteristic of any piece of literature as determining its class.

Myths, properly, are slow-wrought beliefs which embody a people’s effort to understand their relations to the great unknown. They are essentially religious, symbolic, mystic, subtle, full of fears and propitiations, involved, often based on the forgotten,—altogether unlike in their approach to the ingenuous and confident child. They are full of the struggle of life. Hardly before the involved introspections and theories of adolescence can we expect the real beauty and poignancy of a genuine myth to be even dimly understood. And why offer the shell without the spirit? It is likely to remain a shell forever if we do. And indeed, such an empty thing to most of us is the great myth of Prometheus or of the Garden of Eden.

But sagas! Are they not of exactly the heroic stuff for little children? In essence the relationships with which they deal are human,—social. The story of Siegfried, of Achilles, of Abraham,—these are great sagas. Each is a tremendous picture of a human experience, the first two under heroic, enlarged conditions, the last under a human culture picturesquely different from our own. But even as straight tales of adventure they do not carry for little children. The environment is too remote, the world to be conquered too unknown to carry a convincing sense of heroism to small children. The same is true of the heroic tales of romance,—of Arthur and all the legends which cluster around his name. Magic, the children will get from these tales but little else. But if the tales should succeed in taking a child with them in their strange exploits into a strange land, they would surely fail to take him into the turgid human drama they picture. And as surely we should wish them to fail. The sagas, like most genuine folk-lore deal with the great elemental human facts, life and death, love, sexual passion and its consequences, marriage, motherhood, fatherhood. We grasp at them for our children, I believe, just because they deal with these fundamental things,—the very things we are afraid of unless they come to us concealed in strange clothing. But what kind of a foundation for interpreting these great elemental facts will the stories of Achilles and Briseus, of Jason and Medea, Pluto and Proserpina, of Guinevere and Launcelot make? What do we expect a child to get from these pictures of sexual passion on the part of the man,—even though a god,—and of social dependence of woman? Do Greek draperies make prostitution suitable for children? Does the glamour of chivalry explain illicit love? Most parents and schools who unhesitatingly hand over these social pictures to their children have never tried,—and neither care nor dare to try,—to face these elemental facts with their children. Can we really wish to avoid a frank statement of the positive in sex relations, of the facts of parenthood, of the institution of marriage, of the mutual companionship between man and woman, and give the negative, the unfulfilled, the distorted? This is preposterous and no one would uphold it. It must be the beauty of the tale, and not the significance we are after. But are these tales beautiful except as we endow them with the subtleties of a classical civilization, as we read into them piquant contrasts of a sensitive, expressive race still primitive in its social thinking and social habits,—that elusive thing which we mean by “Greek”? And can children get this without its background, particularly as they have yet no social background in their own world to hold it up against? And can children do any better with the perplexing ideals of the chivalrous knight swept by a human passion?

And in the same way can a child really get the beauty of Siegfried? What can he make out of the incestuous love of Siegmund and Sieglinda? And of Siegfried’s naïve passion on his first glimpse of a woman? What do we want him to make of it? Is that the way we wish to introduce him to sex? And as for the rest, the allegory of the ring itself, the sword, the dragon’s blood, what do little children get from this except the excitement of magic? What we get because of what we have to put into it, is a different matter and should never be confused with the straight question of what children get. Outgrown adult thinking in social matters is no more suitable to children than outgrown thinking on physical facts. We do not teach that the world is flat because grown-ups once believed it was. We are not afraid of a round earth so we tell the truth about it. But we come near to teaching “spontaneous generation” with our endless evasions. We are afraid of a reproducing world, and so we fall back on curious mixtures of sex fables,—on storks and fairy godmothers and leave the mysteries of sex to be interpreted by Achilles and Siegfried and Guinevere! To emasculate these tales is to insult them,—to strip them of their significance and individuality. Is it not wiser to wait until children will not be confused by all their straight vigor and beauty?

There is other folk-lore less gripping in its human intensity. Through this may not children safely gain their needed adventures? And here we come again to the real “Märchen,”—the fairy tales. They take us into a lovely world of unreality where magic and luck hold sway and where the child is safe from human problems and from scientific laws alike. I have already said in talking of the younger children that I feel it unsafe to loose a child in this unsubstantial world before he is fairly well grounded in a sense of reality. Once he has his bearings there is a good deal he will enjoy without confusion. The common defense that the mystery of fairy tales answers to a legitimate need in children, I believe holds good for children of six or seven, or even five, who have had opportunities for rational experiences. We all know how children revel in a secret. They like to live in a world of surprises. To give the children this sense of mystery I do not believe it is at all necessary to turn to vicious tales of giants, of ogres, and Bluebeards, or to the no less vicious pictures of the beautiful princess and the wicked stepmother. Even after rejecting the brutal and sentimental we have a good deal left,—a good deal that is intrinsically amusing as in “The Musicians of Bremen” or “Prudent Hans” or charming as in “Briar Rose.” Symbolic or primitive attempts to explain the physical world,—as in the Indian legend of “Tavwots” I have never found held great appeal for the modern six- or seven-year-old scientists. Also the burden of symbolic morality rests on a good many of the traditional tales which usually neither adds nor detracts for the child and satisfies an adult yearning. Allegories like Æsop’s “Fables” and “The Lion of Androcles” have a certain right to a hearing because of their historic prestige, apart from any reform they may accomplish in the way of character building. And in our own day many animals have achieved what I believe is a permanent place in child literature. “The Elephant’s Child,” the wild creatures of the “Jungle Book,” “Raggylug” and even the little mole in the “Wind in the Willows,”—these are animals to trust any child with. Yet even in these exquisitely drawn tales, I doubt if children enjoy what we adults wish them to enjoy either in content or in form. And I doubt if we should accept even some of Kipling’s matchless tales if the faultless form did not intrigue us and make us oblivious of the content.

It is just here that most of us fail to be discriminating. Most of the classical literature, most of the legends, or the folk tales that I have been discussing have a compelling charm through their form. But unfortunately that does not make their content suitable! Their place in the world’s thinking and feeling and their transcription into their present forms by really great artists give them a permanent place in the world’s literature. This I do not question. It is partly because I believe this so intensely that I wish them kept for fuller appreciation. It is as formative factors in a young child’s thinking that I am afraid of them. Neither am I afraid of all of them. There are some old conceptions of life and death and human relations which the race has not outgrown, perhaps never will outgrow. The mystery and pathos of the Pied Piper, the humor of Prudent Hans, the cleverness of the boy David, the heroism of the little Dutch boy stopping the hole in the dyke, the love of the Queer Little Baker, and the greed and grief of Midas are eternal. In spite of these and many more, I maintain that for the most part, myths, sagas, folk-lore depend for their significance and beauty alike upon a grasp of present social values which a young child cannot have and that our first attention should be to give him those values in terms intelligible to him. After we have done that he is safe. It matters little what we give him so long as it is good: for he will have standards by which to judge our offerings for himself.

Yet after all is said and done, we may be reduced to giving children some of the stories we think inappropriate, for lack of something better. But a recognition of the need may evoke a great writer for children. I maintain we have never had one of the first order. The best books that we have for children are throw-offs from artists primarily concerned with adults,—Kipling and Stevenson stand in this group,—or child versions of adult literature,—from Charles and Mary Lamb down. The world has yet to see a genuinely great creator whose real vision is for children. When children have their Psalmist, their Shakespeare, their Keats, they will not be offered diluted adult literature.

So after we have gathered what we can from the world’s store for children of this seven-to-eight-year old period I think we shall find many unfilled gaps. Most attempts at humor, for instance, are on the level of the comic sheet of the Sunday supplement or the circus. There is little except a few of the “drolls” which give the child pure fun unmixed with excitement or confusion. Even “Alice in Wonderland” when first read to a six-year-old who was used to rational thinking and talking was pronounced “Too funny!” This same boy, however, went back to Alice again and again. He always relished such bits as:

No child’s world is complete without humor. And children have a sense of the preposterous, the inappropriate all their own. Lewis Carroll and a few others have occasionally found it. Still, I think much remains to be done in the way of studying the things that children themselves find amusing. This is true for the younger ones as well. I give several younger children’s stories which appeared both to the tellers and their audiences to be convulsing. The humor is strangely physical and amazingly simple. And it is all fresh.

Stories by Four-Year-Olds

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Story by Five-Year-Old

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Stories by Six-Year-Olds

There is still another kind of story which I believe children of this transition period and a little older seek and for the most part seek in vain. These children are beginning to generalize, to marshal their facts and experiences along lines which in their later developments we call “laws.” They like these wide-spreading conceptions which order the world for them. But they cannot always take them as bald scientific statements. Moreover there are certain general truths which tie together isolated familiar facts which can be most simply pictured through some device such as personification,—for at this age personification is recognized and enjoyed as a device and not, as in earlier years, as a necessary expression of thought. This uniting bond, this underlying relation may be a physical law like the dependence of life on life; it may be a social law like the division of labor in modern industry. Any dramatic statement of these laws is a simplification as is a diagram or map. And like a diagram or map, it is in a way artificial since it gives weight to one element at the expense of the others. But again like the diagram or map, the thing it shows is a fact, a fact which is more readily grasped by this artificial device than by bald statement. Maps do not take the place of photographs, nevertheless they have their own peculiar place in making intelligible the make-up of the physical world. In the same way, personification does not take the place of science. Nevertheless it has its own peculiar place in making clear to the child some simplifying principle,—physical or social,—which unifies his multitudinous experiences. So long as personification elucidates a true, a scientific principle, so long as it is not pressed to tortuous lengths which actually give false impressions, so long as it is kept within the bounds of æsthetic decency, so long as it is recognized as a play device and does not confuse a child’s thinking,—so long as it is justified. No more. It is a useful intellectual tool and a charming device for play. Kipling is preëminently the master here. It is a dangerous tool in lesser hands. Yet I have dared to use it and without scruple in “Speed,” in “Once the Barn was Full of Hay” and in “Silly Will.” Here again I feel sure that study of children’s questions and stories would bring rich suggestions as to how to fill this large gap in their present literature.

Gaps there are, and many and large ones. Still, taken all in all, the field for the seven- to eight-year-old transition period is not as completely barren as the field for the earlier years. For these children are evolving from the stage where they need “Here and Now” stories. They are beginning to take on adult modes of thought and to appreciate and understand the peculiar language which adults use no matter how young a child they address! So much for the content of children’s stories. And at best the content is but half.

FORM

If content is but half, form is the other half of stories and not the easier half, either. Every story, to be worthy of the name, must have a pattern, a pattern which is both pleasing and comprehensible. This design, this composition, this pattern, whether it be of a story as a whole or of a sentence or a phrase, is as essential to a piece of writing as is the design or composition to a picture. It satisfies the emotional need of the child which is as essential in real education as is the intellectual. Without this design, language remains on the utilitarian level,—where, to be sure, we usually find it in modern days.

Now what kind of pattern is adapted to a small child,—say a three-year-old? What kind does he like? More, what kind can he perceive? Herein the expression as fatally as in the content has the adult shaped the mould to his own liking. Or rather, the case is even worse. The adult more often than not has presented his stories and verse to children in forms which the children could not like because they literally could not hear them! The pattern, as such, did not exist for them. But what have we to guide us in creating suitable patterns for these little children who can help us neither by analysis nor by articulate remonstrance? We have two sources of help and both of them come straight from the children. The first are the children’s own spontaneous art forms; the second are the story and verse patterns which make an almost universal appeal to little children. Even a superficial study of these two sources,—and where shall we find a thorough study?—suggests two fundamental principles. They sound obvious and perhaps they are. But how often is the obvious ignored in the treatment of children! The first is that the individual units whether ideas, sentences or phrases must be simple. The second is that these simple units must be put close together.

As the quickest and most eloquent exemplification of both these principles I give four stories. The first was told by a little girl of twenty-two months, a singularly articulate little person,—as she looked at the blank wall where had hung a picture of a baby (she supposed her little brother), a cow and a donkey. The second was a story told by a little girl of two and a half after a summer on the seashore. The third was achieved by a boy of three,—a child, in general, unsensitive to music. The fourth was told in school by a four-year-old girl.

Story by Twenty-Two-Months-Old Child

Story by Two-and-a-Half-Year-Old

Story by Three-Year-Old

Story by a Four-Year-Old

Certainly all have form,—spontaneous native art form. Indeed they strongly suggest that to the child, the pleasure lay in the form rather than in the content. The patterns of the first two are somewhat alike,—variations of a simple statement. In content the younger child keeps her attention on one point, so to speak, while the older child allows a slight movement like an embryonic narrative. The pattern of the three-year-old’s is considerably more complex. The phrases shorten, the tempo quickens, until the whole swings off into wordless melody. The fourth probably started from some remembered lullaby but quickly became the child’s own. I give two more examples of stories. In the first, does not this five-year-old girl give us her vivid impressions in marvelously simple sense and motor terms? And does not the six-year-old boy in the second show that imagination can spring from real experiences?

Stories by Five-Year-Olds

The Talk of the Brook

Technically in all these stories the child exemplifies the two rules. He attends to but one thing at a time. And his steps from one point to the next are short and clear.

When we look at the forms which have been presented to children with these their spontaneous patterns fresh in mind, we can see, I think, why Mother Goose has been taken as a child’s own and Eugene Field and even Stevenson rejected as unintelligible. I do not believe there is anything in the content of Mother Goose to win the child. I believe it is the form that makes the appeal. Vachel Lindsay, whose daring play with words has made him an object of suspicion to the reluctant of mind, has given us one poem in pattern singularly like the children’s own and in content full of interest and charm. Again I give examples as the quickest of arguments. And I give them in verse where the form is more obvious and can be shown in briefer space than in stories.

Time to Rise

The Little Turtle

(A recitation for Martha Wakefield, three years old)

From The Dinkey-Bird

Of the two “Jack and Jill” and “Birdie with the Yellow Bill,” surely Stevenson’s is the more charming to the adult ear. But when I have read it to three-year-olds, I have felt that they were lost. They could not sustain the long grammatical suspense, could not carry over “A birdie” from the first line to the conclusion and so actually did not know who was saying “Ain’t you shamed, you sleepy-head!” Mother Goose repeats her subject. The span to carry is two phrases in Mother Goose as against four in Stevenson. The Vachel Lindsay I have found is as easily remembered and as much enjoyed as Mother Goose, though it is a pity it is about an unfamiliar animal. As for the Dinkey-bird even a seven-year-old can hardly hear the rhyme even if intellectually he could follow the adult vocabulary and the complicated sentence with its long postponed subject.

It is the same with stories. The classic tales which have held small children,—“The Gingerbread Man,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “Goldylocks,”—have patterns so obvious and so simple that they cannot be missed. In “The Gingerbread Man” the pattern is one of increasing additions. It belongs to the aptly called “cumulative” tales. The refrains act like sign-posts to help the child to mark the progress. This is simply a skilful way of making the continuity close, of showing the ladder rungs for the child’s feet. I venture to say that any good story-teller consciously or unconsciously puts up sign-posts to help the children. If he is skilful, he makes a pattern of them so that they are not merely intellectually helpful but charming as well. So Kipling in his “Just So Stories” uses his sign-posts,—which are sometimes words, sometimes phrases, sometimes situations,—in such a way that they ring musically and give a pleasant sense of pattern even to children too young to find them intellectually helpful.

In other words, the little child is not equipped psychologically to hear complicated units. I wish some one could determine how the average four-year-old hears the harmony of a chord on the piano. Is it much except confusion? In the same way, he is not equipped to leap a span between units. I wish some one would determine the four-year-old’s memory span for rhymes, for instance. The involutions, the suggestiveness so attractive to adult ears, he cannot hear. Even an adult ear, untutored, can scarcely hear the intermingling rhythms and overlapping rhymes which blend like overtones of a chord in such verse as Patmore’s Ode “The Toys.” I feel sure the small child cannot hear complexities; he cannot leap gaps. And so he cannot understand when even simple ideas are given in complex and discontinuous form. This explains his notorious love of repetition. Repetition is the simplest of patterns, simple enough to be enjoyed as pattern. I have found that almost any simple phrase of music or words repeated slowly and with a kind of ceremonious attention, enthralls a year-old child. If the unit is simple enough to be remembered he will inevitably enjoy recognizing it as it recurs and recurs. This is the embryonic pattern sense.

This pattern enjoyment too is motor in its basis. His early repetitions of sounds are probably largely pleasure in muscle patterns. We all know that a child uses first his large muscles,—arm, leg and back,—and that he early enjoys any regular recurrent use of these muscles. So at the time when the vocal muscles tend to become his means of expression, he enjoys repeating the same sounds over and over. And soon he gets enjoyment from listening to repetitions or rhythmic language,—a vicarious motor enjoyment. Surely it is important that stories should furnish him this exercise and pleasure. Three- and four-year-olds will enjoy a positively astounding amount of repetition. In the Arabella and Araminta stories a large proportion of the sentences are given in duplicate by the simple device of having twins who do and say the same things and by telling the remarks and actions of each. The selection quoted is repeated entire four times, the variation being only in the flower picked: