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 CHAPTER VII

Myth and Hero Tale

The world is a wonder-palace to the child. "Everything hints at something more magical and more marvelous which is to come." The inanimate objects about him are given living attributes; animals and flowers are endowed by his fancy with human thought and feeling. He talks to the clouds and the stars; he peoples the sky with living inhabitants; to him the winds are not "forces of nature"; they are boisterous companions or gentle friends.

This applies to the imaginative child, and there are more imaginative children than the most of us suspect. The imagination may be suppressed by older and "wiser" companions, or natural shyness may cause the imaginative fancies to remain unvoiced; but the fancies are there—bubbling over in fantastic follies or childish imagery, or kept in those hidden chambers of the soul to which grown-ups are forbidden entrance.