Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/87

 Few children will accept these stories as absolute statements of fact, nor need they be so presented. Whatever this personification of the universal elements may have meant to the ancient Greeks, to us it is purely imaginary; it is the fairy-land of nature. Children love to "make believe," and their own personifications of the forces of nature, while spontaneous and vivid, are a part of their imaginative world—a part of their "make believe." So, mythological stories are never accepted by them upon the literal plane of the true nature story, nor should they ever be so presented. When stories of the ancient gods and goddesses are told, they may be very briefly outlined as the imaginative stories of an ancient race. This will give them their true place, without in the least detracting from their charm.

The child who is made familiar with the old mythology by means of stories and verse, holds the key of understanding to the countless allusions of the world's best literature. He may not comprehend the deeper meaning, nor understand that they were the religion of an ancient people, but when in his later reading of some masterpiece of poetry or prose he