It is always difficult to see the beginnings of things: we know that stories form the raw material of morality, it is not easy to trace morality in Little Black Sambo, The Three Bears, Alice in Wonderland, or The Sleeping Beauty, but nevertheless morality is there if we recognise morality in everyday things. It is not too much to say that everybody should have an ideal, even a burglar: his ideal is to be a good and thorough burglar, and probably if he is a burglar of the finer sort, it is to play fair to the whole gang. It is better to be a burglar with an ideal than a blameless person with very little soul or personality, who just slides through life accepting things: it is better to have a coster's ideal of a holiday than to be too indifferent or stupid to care or to know what you want.

Now ideals are supposed to be the essence of morality and morality comes to us through experience, and only experience tests its truth. The story with a moral is generally neither literature nor morality, except such unique examples as _The Pilgrim's Progress _or Everyman. The kind of experience with which morality is concerned is experience of human life in various circumstances, and the way people behave under those circumstances. The beginning of such experience is our own behaviour and the behaviour of other people we know, but this is too limited an experience to produce a satisfactory ideal; so we crave for something wider. It is curious how strong is the craving for this kind of experience in all normal children, in whom one would suppose sense experiences and especially muscular experiences to be enough. The need to know about people other than ourselves, and yet not too unlike, in circumstances other than our own, and yet not too strange, seems to be a necessary part of our education, and we interpret it in the light of our own personal conduct. Out of this, as well as out of our direct experience, we build our ideal. When one realises how an ideal may colour the whole outlook of a person, one begins to realise what literature means to a child. The early ideal is crude; it may be Jack the Giant-Killer, or an engine-driver, Cinderella, or the step-cleaner; this may grow into Hiawatha or Robinson Crusoe, for boys, and a fairy tale Princess or one of the "Little Women" for girls. In every hero a child half-unconsciously sees himself, and the ideal stimulates all that hidden life which is probably the most important part of his growth. As indirect experiences grow, or in other words as he hears or reads more stories, his ideal widens, and his knowledge of the problems of life is enlarged. This is the raw material of morality, for out of his answers to these problems he builds up standards of conduct and of judgement. He projects himself into his own ideal, and he projects himself into the experiences of other people: he lives in both: this is imagination of the highest kind, it is often called sympathy, but the term is too limited, it is rather imaginative understanding.

There is another side of life grasped by means of this new world of experience, and that is, the spiritual side that lies between conduct and ideals; children have always accepted the supernatural quite readily and it is not to be wondered at, for all the world is new and therefore supernatural to them. Magic is done daily in children's eyes, and there is no line between what is understandable and what is not, until adults try to interpret it for them.

They are curious about birth and death and all origins: thunder is terrifying, the sea is enthralling, the wind is mysterious, the sky is immense, and all suggest a power beyond: in this the children are reproducing the race experience as expressed in myths, when power was embodied in a god or goddess. Therefore the fairy world or the giant world, or the wood full of dwarfs and witches' houses, is as real to them, and as acceptable, as any part of life. It is their recognition of a world of spirits which later on mingles itself with the spiritual life of religion. That life is behind all matter, is the main truth they hold, and while it is difficult here to disentangle morality from religion, it is supremely evident that a very great and significant side of a child's education is before us.

It is by means of the divine gift of imagination, probably the most spiritual of a child's gifts, that he can lay hold of all that the world of literature has to offer him. Because of imagination he is independent of poverty, monotony, and the indifference of other people; he has a world of his own in which nothing is impossible. Edwin Pugh says of a child of the slums who was passionately fond of reading cheap literature:—"It was by means of this penny passport to Heaven that she escaped from the Hell of her surroundings. It was in the maudlin fancies of some poor besotted literary hack maybe, that she found surcease from the pains of weariness, the carks and cares of her miserable estate."

A teacher realising this, should feel an almost unspeakable sense of responsibility in having to select and present matter: but the problem should be solved on the one hand by her own high standard of story material, and on the other by her knowledge of the child's needs. According to his experiences of life the interpretation of the story will differ: for example, it was found that the children of a low slum neighbourhood translated Jack the Giant-killer into terms of a street fight: to children living by a river or the sea, the Water-Babies would mean very much, while Jan of the Windmill would be more familiar ground for country children. Fairy stories of the best kind have a universal appeal.

In choosing a story a teacher should be aware of the imperishable part of it, the truth around which it grew; sometimes the truth may seem a very commonplace one, sometimes a curious one. For example, very young children generally prefer stories of home life because round the family their experience gathers: the subject seems homely, but it is really one of the fundamental things of life and the teacher should realise this in such a way that the telling or reading of the story makes the kernel its central point. To some children the ideal home life comes only through literature: daily experiences rather contradict it. Humour is an important factor in morality; unless a person is capable of seeing the humor of a situation he is likely to be wanting in a sense of balance; the humor of a situation is often caused by the wrong proportion or wrong balance of things: for example the humour of The Mad Tea-Party lies, partly at least, in the absurd gravity with which the animals regarded the whole situation, the extreme literal-mindedness of Alice, and the exaggerated imitation of human beings: a really moral person must have balance as well as sympathy, else he sees things out of proportion. These examples make evident that we are not to seek for anything very patently high-flown in the stories for children; it is life in all its phases that gives the material, but it must be true life: not false or sentimental or trivial life: this will rule out the "pretty" stories for children written by trivial people in teachers' papers, or the pseudo-nature story, or the artificial myth of the "How did" type, or the would-be childish story where the language is rather that of the grown-up imitating children than that of real children. Of late years, with the discovery of children, children's literature has grown, and there is a good deal to choose from past and present writers.

There is no recognised or stereotyped method of telling a story to children: it is something much deeper than merely an acquired art, it is the teacher giving something of her personality to the children, something that is most precious. One of the finest of our English Kindergarten teachers once said, "I feel almost as if I ought to prepare my soul before telling a story to young children," and this is the sense in which the story should be chosen and told. There are, of course, certain external qualifications which must be so fully acquired as to be used unconsciously, such as a good vocabulary, power over one's voice, a recognition of certain literary phases in a story, such as the working up to the dramatic crisis, the working down to the end so that it shall not fall flat, and the dramatic touches that give life; these are certainly most necessary, and should be studied and cultivated; but a teacher should not be hampered in her telling by being too conscious of them. Rather she should feel such respect and even reverence for this side of a child's education that the framework and setting can only be of the best, always remembering at the same time what is framework and setting, and what is essence.

Much that has been said about the method and aim of stories might apply to those taken from the Bible, but they need certain additional considerations. Here religion and morality come very closely together: the recognition of a definite personality behind all circumstances of life, to whom our conduct matters, gives a soul to morality. The Old Testament is a record of the growth of a nation more fully conscious of God than is the record of any other nation, and because of this children can understand God in human life when they read such stories as the childhood of Moses and of Samuel. Children resemble the young Jewish nation in this respect: they accept the direct intervention of God in the life of every day. Their primitive sense of justice, which is an eye for an eye, will make them welcome joyfully the plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea. It would be premature to force on them the more mature idea of mercy, which would probably lead to confusion of judgement: they must be clear about the balance of things before they readjust it for themselves.

Much of the material in the Old Testament is hardly suitable for very young children, but the most should be made of what there is: the lives of Eastern people are interesting to children and help to make the phraseology of the Psalms and even of the narratives clear to them. Wonder stories such as the Creation, the Flood, the Burning Bush, Elijah's experiences, appeal to them on another side, the side that is eager to wonder: the accounts of the childhood of Ishmael, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David and Samuel, and the little Syrian maid, come very close to them. Such stories should be given to young children so that they form part of the enchanted memory of childhood—which is permanent.

With the New Testament the problem is more difficult: one hesitates to bring the life of Christ before children until they are ready to understand, even in some degree, its significance; the subject is apt to be dealt with either too familiarly, and made too commonplace and everyday a matter, or as something so far removed from human affairs as to be mysterious and remote to a child. To mix Old and New Testament indiscriminately, as, for example, by taking them on alternate days, is unforgivable, and no teacher who has studied the Bible seriously could do so, if she cared about the religious training of her children, and understood the Bible.

If the children can realise something of the sense in which Christ helped human beings, then some of the incidents in His life might be given, such as His birth, His work of healing, feeding and helping the poor, and some of His stories, such as the lost sheep, the lost son, the sower, the good Samaritan. It is difficult to speak strongly enough of the mistreatment of Scripture, under the name of religion: it has been spoilt more than any other subject in the curriculum, chiefly by being taken too often and too slightly, by teachers who may be in themselves deeply religious, but who have not applied intelligence to this matter. The religious life of a young child is very direct: there is only a little in the religious experiences of the Jews that can help him, and much that can puzzle and hinder him; their interpretation of God as revengeful, cruel and one-sided in His dealings with their enemies must greatly puzzle him, when he hears on the other hand that God is the Father of all the nations on the earth. What is suitable should be taken and taken well, but there is no virtue in the Bible misunderstood.

Poetry is a form of literature which appeals to children if they are not made to learn it by rote. Unconsciously they learn it very quickly and easily, if they understand in a general way the meaning, and if they like the sound of the words. Rhythm is an early inheritance and can be encouraged by poetry, music and movement. The sound of words appeals strongly to young children, and rhyming is almost a game. The kind of poetry preferred varies a good deal but on the whole narrative or nonsense verses seem most popular; few children are ready for sentiment or reflection even about themselves, and this is why some of Stevenson's most charming poems about children are not appreciated by them as much as by grown-up people. And for the same reason only a few nature poems are really liked.

Without doubt, the only aim in giving poetry to children is to help them to appreciate it, and the only method to secure this is to read it to them appreciatively and often.

Besides such anthologies as The Golden Staircase, E.V. Lucas's Book of Verses for Children, and others, we must go to the Bible for poems like the Song of Miriam, or of Deborah, and the Psalms; to Shakespeare for such songs as "Where the Bee Sucks," "I know a Bank," "Ye Spotted Snakes," either with or without music; to Longfellow's Hiawatha for descriptive pieces, and to Scott and Tennyson for ballads and songs, and to many other simple classic sources outside the ordinary collections.

In both prose and poetry, probably the ultimate aim is appreciation of beauty in human conduct. Clutton Brock says, "The value of art is the value of the aesthetic activity of the spirit, and we must all value that before we can value works of art rightly: and ultimately we must value this glory of the universe, to which we give the name of beauty when we apprehend it." Again he says, "Parents, nurses and teachers ought to be aware that the child when he forgets himself in the beauty of the world is passing through a sacred experience which will enrich and glorify the whole of his life."

If all this is what literature means in a child's experiences of life, then it must be given a worthy place in the time-table and curriculum and in the serious preparation by the teacher for her work.