Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/25

 *lined, she is not only forming his taste in literature along right lines, but she is helping to enlarge his vocabulary.

"What does 'embark' mean, Mamma?" is sure to follow the first or second recital of Stevenson's "My Bed Is a Boat":

My bed is like a little boat; Nurse helps me in when I embark; She girds me in my sailor coat And starts me in the dark.

And "gird" will also need interpreting. These words will soon become a part of his normal vocabulary. He may not use them in his everyday speech, but he will not need to have them explained to him when he comes upon them in his later reading. Teachers invariably know when a child comes from a home of culture and of good literary taste, by the foundation already laid. The child's own forms of expression and the range of his vocabulary are unmistakable evidence of the home influence and teaching.

A literary sequence which will give the child a knowledge of literature as a development or a growth—not as a vast accumulation of unrelated parts—can be carried through his reading and study. This subject