Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/119

 merriment; a spontaneous ring of laughter; and then the plea, "One more, oh, please, one more!" When you have done this; when you have won to you the shy children of a whole village, then you know the pure joy of storytelling. There is nothing better worth winning than the love of a child, and there is no surer way of reaching a child's heart than through the story. The Story Hour

Story-telling may be made a serious matter as to its purpose, but it should never be a serious matter as to its presentation. Whatever its purpose, the story itself must be a source of joy to the hearer, or its purpose fails. The lesson to be taught, whether moral or educational, fails in its object if the story itself be irksome or stupid.

Conscientious teachers, feeling the weight of argument against them, and taking up the task of story-telling as an added obligation of schoolroom duty, wonder why the results are not what the evidence of other storytellers had led them to believe. Story-telling,