Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/99

Rh suggestion appears when it shows an object by indicating how it is like something else; by telling what we feel when we see the object; and by telling what actions of the person or object make it hateful or charming. We learn to know Andersen's Snow Man through what the Dog says of him.

Description, in the sense of a static, detailed delineation of various qualities of objects, has no place in the child's story, for it bores the child, who is very persistent in wanting the main theme uninterrupted. But description that has touches of movement and action or that lays emphasis on a single effect and has point, distinctly aids visualization, and produces a pleasing result, as we have seen in Kipling's Elephant's Child. The young child of to-day, trained in nature study to look upon bird, tree, and flower with vital interest, to observe the color and the form of these, gains a love of the beautiful that makes him exclaim over the plumage of a bird or tint of a flower. To him beauty in the tale must make a direct appeal which the child unfamiliar with these things might not feel. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils makes an appeal to the modern child which could not possibly have been felt by the child living before 1850. The modern child brought up on phonics is sensitive to sound also, and open to an appreciation of the beauty of the individual word used in description. This description, when it occurs, should be characterized mainly by aptness and concreteness.