Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/47

 *umphs should ever be told to children, for in its essence such a story is not true, its teaching is not true; it is not in accord with God's eternal laws. Children assimilate long before they analyze.

At first glance it may seem easy to decide as to the moral influence of a story, but there are differences of opinion even here, and some writers condemn unsparingly that old acquaintance of our childhood, Jack, of Bean-*stalk fame, and set him down as an arrant thief and murderer whose crimes brought him riches and comfort in his old age. And the tale of Cinderella, while it can be said to cast no stain upon the character of its heroine, is condemned as leaving an impression, upon the impressionable mind of childhood, that all step-mothers are hard and cruel and unjust. As the Mother Goose stories are dealt with at greater length in a later chapter, I will make no comment now upon these criticisms. But they are worthy of due consideration, and go to show that it is not always as easy as it may at first appear, to judge the exact influence of a story, and some of our old acquaintances which have been accepted simply because they are old ac