Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/92

 their lives almost daily to carry on the mechanical processes of modern civilization. Any of these will form the nucleus of stories of thrilling interest to the growing boy and girl. Let the motive for the heroic deed be felt throughout the story. Do not tack it on as a moral; let it permeate the whole narrative. It has been truly said that "To add a moral application to a story is as complete a confession of failure as to append an explanation to a joke."

The material for hero-tales lies all about us—upon the pages of the newspaper and the magazine, as well as between the covers of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Give the boy and girl stories "clean in the warp and woof"; stories of brave, noble men and women, worthy of emulation, for "with the great, one's thoughts and manners easily become great."

The following story of "The Coming of Arthur" from Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them (Newson and Company), by Richard Thomas Wyche, founder of The Story-Tellers' League, is one of the best examples known to the author of the sort of hero or knight story which all boys love, and