Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/90

 fiction if books and stories of the right sort are placed in their hands, and the surest way to make these attractive is to give them the contents or a part of the contents in story form first. Make the stories vivid, give them plenty of life and action, and Captain Kidd or Bunco Bill will pale before King Arthur and Ulysses.

The younger children will listen with greatest delight to stories of imaginary heroes, such as abound in folk-lore and myth—Jack the Giant Killer easily leading in favor, as has been proven by statistics.

Children demand definite aims, swift action, prompt reward of the good, and punishment of the evil. They do not understand complex motives nor the slow working out of nature's retribution. This comes with later years. The story-teller must choose her subjects in accordance with the age of the child. The world of fancy gradually gives way before the world of fact, and there comes a time when the heroes of the myth and the fairy tale are received with a certain degree of scorn. They are "out-grown." At this period the boy and girl demand heroes of flesh and blood; men who "do and dare"