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 CHAPTER X

Systematic Story-Telling

The thought that literature is a growth; that it had its infancy, and its periods of development through succeeding ages; that the different periods are related to each other and spring from one another, is too often ignored in the study and in the teaching of the subject.

Not only the average child, but the great majority of children—if not of adults—look upon literature as a great heap of miscellany; a vast array of unrelated writings. Few grasp the idea that "literature is the evolution of the thought of humanity"; that it had its beginning in the myth-making ages, was further developed by the Greeks and then by the Latin races; that after the time of Christ there was the distinctive literature of the chivalric period, followed by the development of Chaucer's time, of Shakespeare's, up to and including that of the present age. Each of these periods has its many