Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/108

 The story of the flood, divided into its four parts, as given in the collected stories of this book, should be made equally familiar to the children. A comparison of these stories with the Bible narrative will show that the original language has been retained, and only such detail and repetition as would confuse the little child, have been omitted. The literary style is unchanged.

In these stories there is all the charm of the folk-tale with its simple directness of style, its rapid action, its repetition of words and phrases, such as "every living thing, of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing," yet it is lifted far above the folk-tale by the all-pervading thought of God acting in righteousness.

No Bible story is worthily told which does not touch the underlying truth of the beauty of holiness, and the folly and inevitable consequences of sin. In preparing Bible stories for telling, the story-teller should have always in mind what has been called the "basic principle of both Old and New Testaments"—the perfect God desiring to restore man "to holiness and true communion with Himself." But this truth should be inherent in