Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/88

 finds an allusion to Phaeton, to Apollo, or to Neptune, he will experience the same delight that comes to one who meets an old play-*fellow in a foreign land.

The Hero-Tale

As the child creates a world of fancy and, when left to himself, lives within it, so marvelous deeds and achievements are to him as the daily breath of our own lives. He imagines himself the hero of such wonderful and impossible adventures that when he is told of Phaeton and his mad ride, he accepts it with the same calm appreciation which is accorded the imaginings of his own creative moods. The slaying of the Gorgon is fully in harmony with his own future plans. Not that he believes in these hero tales literally, or comprehends their deeper significance, but they fit in so perfectly with his normal habit of creative fancy that they seem to him as his very own, and he loves them.

The hero-tale appeals as strongly to the child as does the myth—probably more strongly to the boy. Indeed, the myth and hero-tale are often one, for Greek and Norse mythology abound in heroes and heroic ad