Miss Lee says: "Little children love stories and can be appealed to by stories in a unique way; and the vehicle of spiritual truth for them must mainly be Story-telling. We note how conspicuous a place was taken by story and parable in our Lord's teaching. By a parable,' the people ('children' in spiritual matters) were mainly taught. Questions were answered, difficulties met, in an indirect, not direct, method, by a story; and stories, too, in which hearers as a rule were trusted to find their own moral and deduce their own application, unless as individuals they desired further explanation. What is it that attracts the little child to the story? 'Story telling is a veritable spirit bath,' says Froebel. 'Eye, hand, and ear open to the genuine storyteller. The boy sees life reflected in the story.' The story shows life to the boy and so needs to show, in these early all-impressionable years, the best of life.”

The Purpose of Using Stories.

Holmes names three aims in story-telling: (1) To win attention. Nothing will do it like a story. Try it with a restless class and see the result. (2) To anchor Truth in memory. Stories are like pegs on which facts are hung. Stories, as Dr. Roads puts it, "are intellectual eye-glasses," through which we see the truth more clearly and thus remember it more readily. (3) To quicken and stimulate thought. The subject is dwelt on longer, is looked at from manifold view-points, and hence is thought about more.

To What in the Child Does Illustration Appeal?

Here again, Mr. Holmes is suggestive. Illustration appeals "(1) to Sight. It appeals to the eye. It lays before it pictures, maps, objects, and causes it to see in these things likenesses of truth, or evidences of what has occurred, or the places where things have occurred in their relations to the pupil's own time and place. (2) To Memory. It appeals to the memory, and asks it to reproduce from its store the full particulars of something which it suggests in part. (3) To Touch. It comes to the hand, and asks it to help in giving an idea of length, breadth, height, etc., by serving itself as a measure. (4) To Imagination. Here it opens a wonderful world. Here are aroused similes, metaphors, vivid portraits in the picture gallery of the brain.

It is the world of illustrative fictions, not falsehood, but fictions, figments, things made in this enchanted chamber of the brain. (5) To Reason. It lays hold on the logical faculties and makes them serve. Comparisons are made between truth and natural objects."

Dangers in Illustration.

Several dangers are mentioned by the same author that are worth considering here: (1) Some persons use too much Illustration. They are like college boys who spend too much time on the football field to the neglect of their studies. It is as if a house were all decoration outside with no furniture within. (2) Some Illustrations are too broad. Fiction and truth are too much blended, or rather there has been too much fiction. The Truth is lost sight of in the haystack of fiction. They carry aid to some thought far from their user's purpose. They often defeat the end of their use. Of such beware. (3) Illustrations are used too carelessly. They illustrate too much, and so defeat their own end. Some persons occasionally use Illustrations only for effect, to cover up insufficient preparation.

Characteristics of a Good Illustration.

Dr. Hervey, a master in illustrating, has devoted an entire book to Picture Work. He notes two distinctions to be always borne in mind: (1) The Main Story, the skeleton on which we build. "Not merely for children, but for grown folk, too, is picture-work a means of teaching. In a densely populated quarter of New York City there is to-day a minister who is not content with mere word pictures. He brings into the pulpit the objects themselves-it may be a candle, a plumb-line, a live frog, an air pump. With him the method is a success, as it has been with others. Does this seem crude? So are the mental processes of every forty-nine out of fifty the world over. We never can know anything without having something to know it with. A 'like' is the key that enables us to unlock and to enter the door of the unknown." (2) Its Side Lights, or environment, so to speak.

The Main Story corresponds to the outline of a picture, the skeleton; the side lights to the finished background, the filled-in atmosphere. It has been claimed by some educators that the

wood engraving or line-cut picture, being outline and sketchy, appeals more to the smaller child, while the half-tone does to the older pupil. This does not necessarily follow from a study of child-nature. Granted that the small child does draw at first only in outline: granted also that he is highly imaginative and symbolic, and that he reads much more into that outline sketch than do we adults, yet the small child does not draw in outline because he wants to, but because he has to. The grosser and larger muscular movements are developed first, then the more delicate and highly-specialized ones. The child does not talk "baby-talk" because he wants to, but because his tongue cannot yet imitate accurately the more delicate sounds in specialized muscular action. You do not help him to get nearer the right pronunciation by talking "baby-talk" back to him. He will realize his imitative struggles all the sooner by hearing the right syllablization. So with stories and pictures, the full and natural portrayal, the picture as Nature presents it, with all its background and lights and shadows, is the more correct mood of presentation.

"The Good Story Should Have the Following Marks:

(3)

"(1) The story must have a beginning, concrete, interestcompelling, curiosity-piquing. 'All things have two handles; beware of the wrong one.' (2) It must have a climax, properly led up to, easily led down from; and that never missed. Many good stories have rhythm, recurrence, repetition of the leit motiv. "The Three Bears' is a favorite for this reason, among others. The commands of the Lord to Moses were regularly repeated thrice in the Bible story; in the book of Daniel, the sonorous catalog of flute, harp, sackbut and the rest, comes in none too often for the purposes of the story-teller. (4) All good stories have unity; parts well subordinated; the main lesson unmistakably clear; the point, whether tactfully hidden or brought out by skilful questions, never missed." Dr. Roads puts it another way: "(1) The Illustration must be transparent, and not in itself so attractive as to fix the attention. (2) Yet it should be so interesting as to give the truth a fresh setting. (3) The Illustration is for the Truth, not the Truth for the Illustration."

Points to be Remembered in Story Telling.

Says Dr. Hervey again: "(1) Use direct discourse. That is, to have the story vivid, put in so far as may be in running, personal, descriptive form, leaving out the third person. It will require an effort to keep yourself (in your embarrassment) from taking refuge behind the indirect form, saying, for example, 'And when he came to himself he said that he would rise and go to his father and tell him that he had sinned.' (2) Choose actions rather than descriptions, the dynamics rather than the statistics of your subjects-your story will thus have 'go,' as all Bible stories have. Those of us who have grown away from childhood tend to reverse the true order, to place the emphasis on the question, 'What kind of a man is he,' and not on, 'what did he do.' Let what he did tell what he was. (3) Use concrete terms, not abstract; tell what was done, not how somebody felt or thought when something was done; be objective, not subjective. (4) A story-teller should have taste. To form this. taste it is indispensable that he should not read, but drink in the great masters: Homer, Chaucer, Bunyan, Hawthorne ("The Wonder Book,' for example), and above all the Bible itself. No one can absorb these without unconsciously forming a pure, simple style and getting a more childlike point of view and way of speech. Modern writers and modern ways of thinking are, in general, too reflective, self-conscious, subjective, and where children are concerned, too direct, bare, 'preachy.' (5) The secret of story-telling lies-first of all, in being FULL-full of the story, the picture, the children; and then in being morally and spiritually up to concert-pitch, which is the true source of power in anything. From these comes spontaneity; what is within must come out; the story tells itself; and of your fulness the children all receive." Dr. Roads enlarges: "By being spiritually minded always and deepening the spiritual life, so that spiritual analogies and truths may be seen in all that is seen, or read, or experienced. The teacher must have a clear understanding of the truth he would illustrate. He cannot show what he does not see."

Brief Rules.

Finally, Dr. Hervey sums up his suggestions as to the

story: "(1) See it. If you are to make others see it, you must see it yourself. (2) Feel it. If it is to touch your class, it must first have touched you. (3) Shorten it. It is probably too long. Brevity is the soul of story-telling. (4) Expand it. It is probably meagre in necessary background, in details. (5) Master it. Practise. Repetition is the mother of stories well told; readiness, the secret of classes well held. (6) Repeat it. Don't be afraid of re-telling a good story. The younger children are, the better they like old friends. But everyone loves a 'twice-told tale.'" He adds: "The 'wholes' of Scripture narrative, whole books, whole lives, whole stories told as wholes by the teacher or by a single pupil, and not picked out piecemeal by the teacher from halting individuals-these are the things that in the class give interest and that in the mind live and grow and bear fruit. 'Moral power is the effect of large, unbroken masses of thought; in these alone can a strong interest be developed,' and from these alone can a steady will spring."

Referring to the art of story-telling, Mizpah S. Greene says: "One reason why the story arouses so much interest in the mind of a child is because it presents events to him in wholes. Thus, he is not satisfied with parts of stories; the beginning, the middle, or the end alone, but he insists upon hearing the complete story. A usually attentive little girl showed her evident discontent and lack of interest while her Sabbath-school teacher was telling, in an interesting manner, the story of David and Goliath. The child's dissatisfaction was so plainly shown that at length the teacher asked, a little impatiently, 'What is the matter, Anna? Don't you like to hear all about brave David and how he conquered the terrible giant?' 'You didn't tell us about David as a little boy, and how he grew to be so strong and brave,' was the child's reply, followed by a shower of tears."

Professor Adams says: "While the chapter-interest dies with each chapter, the story-interest goes on increasing from chapter to chapter. So in teaching-the lesson-interest should. run down at the end of each lesson, but the interest of the course as a whole should rise from lesson to lesson."

Dr. William M. Taylor, as quoted by Dr. Hervey, told once of a conversation with a carpenter, in which he advised him to use certain decorations. "That," said the carpenter, "would