Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/44

 *were to add an explanation of the effect of the nightingale's song in restoring the Emperor to health! It would be like offering a glass of "plain soda" from which all the effervescence had departed.

Bring the story to its self-wrought denouement and—let go. Do not apologize for the ending, do not explain it, do not tack on a moral—just "let go," and you will leave all the tingle and exhilaration of the magnetic current still in the veins of your listeners.

So much for the structural form of the story. Next let us consider its

Point of Contact

Has the story something which is in common with the life and experience of the listeners? Has it a familiar groundwork? Does it deal with familiar objects or actions? In other words, is it "understandable" from the child's point of view? Not that all the characters nor all the adjustments of the story need to be those which the child already knows by experience, but there must be some common ground from which a start may be made. Then the story may lead on into wonderful regions of fancy or into remote times