Story-telling is almost the oldest Art in the world—the first conscious form of literary communication. In the East it still survives, and it is not an uncommon thing to see a crowd at a street-corner held by the simple narration of a story. There are signs in the West of a growing interest in this ancient art, and we may yet live to see the renaissance of the troubadours and the minstrels whose appeal will then rival that of the mob orator or itinerant politician. One of the surest signs of a belief in the educational power of the story is its introduction into the curriculum of the Training-College and the classes of the Elementary and Secondary Schools. It is just at the time when the imagination is most keen—the mind being unhampered by accumulation of facts—that stories appeal most vividly and are retained for all time.

It is to be hoped that some day stories will only be told to school groups by experts who have devoted special time and preparation to the art of telling them. It is a great fallacy to suppose that the systematic study of story-telling destroys the spontaneity of narrative. After a long experience, I find the exact converse to be true, namely, that it is only when one has overcome the mechanical difficulties that one can “let oneself go” in the dramatic interest of the story.

By the expert story-teller I do not mean the professional elocutionist. The name—wrongly enough—has become associated in the mind of the public with persons who beat their breast, tear their hair, and declaim blood-curdling episodes. A decade or more ago, the drawing-room reciter was of this type, and was rapidly becoming the bugbear of social gatherings. The difference between the stilted reciter and the simple story-teller is perhaps best illustrated by an episode in Hans C. Andersen's immortal story of the Nightingale.[1] The real Nightingale and the artificial Nightingale have been bidden by the Emperor to unite their forces and to sing a duet at a Court function. The duet turns out most disastrously, and whilst the artificial Nightingale is singing his one solo for the thirty-third time, the real Nightingale flies out of the window back to the green wood—a true artist, instinctively choosing his right atmosphere. But the bandmaster—symbol of the pompous pedagogue—in trying to soothe the outraged feelings of the courtiers, says, “Because, you see, Ladies and Gentlemen, and, above all, Your Imperial Majesty, with the real nightingale you never can tell what you will hear, but in the artificial nightingale everything is decided beforehand. So it is, and so it must remain. It cannot be otherwise.”

And as in the case of the two nightingales, so it is with the stilted reciter and the simple narrator: one is busy displaying the machinery, showing “how the tunes go”—the other is anxious to conceal the art. Simplicity should be the keynote of story-telling, but (and here the comparison with the Nightingale breaks down) it is a simplicity which comes after much training in self-control, and much hard work in overcoming the difficulties which beset the presentation.

I do not mean that there are not born story-tellers who could hold an audience without preparation, but they are so rare in number that we can afford to neglect them in our general consideration; for this work is dedicated to the average story-tellers anxious to make the best use of their dramatic ability, and it is to them that I present my plea for special study and preparation before telling a story to a group of children—that is, if they wish for the far-reaching effects I shall speak of later on. Only the preparation must be of a much less stereotyped nature than that by which the ordinary reciters are trained for their career.

Some years ago, when I was in the States, I was asked to put into the form of lectures my views upon the educational value of telling stories. A sudden inspiration seized me. I began to cherish a dream of long hours to be spent in the British Museum, the Congressional Library in Washington and the Public Library at Boston—and this is the only portion of the dream which has been realized. I planned an elaborate scheme of research work which was to result in a magnificent (if musty) philological treatise. I thought of trying to discover by long and patient researches what species of lullaby were crooned by Egyptian mothers to their babes, and what were the elementary dramatic poems in vogue among Assyrian nursemaids which were the prototypes of “Little Jack Horner,” “Dickory, Dickory Dock,” and other nursery classics. I intended to follow up the study of these ancient documents by making an appendix of modern variants, showing what progress we had made—if any—among modern nations.

But there came to me suddenly one day the remembrance of a scene from Racine's “Plaideurs” in which the counsel for the defence, eager to show how fundamental is his knowledge, begins his speech:— “Before the Creation of the World”—And the Judge (with a touch of weariness tempered by humour) suggests:—

“Let us pass on to the Deluge.”

And thus I, too, have “passed on to the Deluge.” I have abandoned an account of the origin and past of stories which at the best would only have displayed a little recently-acquired book-knowledge. When I thought of the number of scholars who could treat this part of the question so infinitely better than myself, I realized how much wiser it would be—though the task is much more humdrum—to deal with the present possibilities of story-telling for our generation of parents and teachers, and, leaving out the folk-lore side, devote myself to the story itself.

My objects in urging the use of stories in the education of children are at least five-fold:

First, to give them dramatic joy, for which they have a natural craving. Secondly, to develop a sense of humour, which is really a sense of proportion. Thirdly, to correct certain tendencies by showing the consequences in the career of the hero in the story. (Of this motive the children must be quite unconscious, and there must be no didactic emphasis.) Fourthly, by means of example, not precept, to present such ideals as will sooner or later (I care not which) be translated into action. Fifthly, to develop the imagination, which really takes in all the other points.

So much for the purely educational side of the book. But the art of story-telling, quite apart from the subject, appeals not only to the educational world or to parents as parents, but also to a wider outside public, who may be interested in the purely human point of view.

In great contrast to the lofty scheme I had originally proposed to myself, I now simply place before all those who are interested in the Art of Story-telling in any form the practical experience I have had in my travels across the United States and through England; and, because I am confining myself to personal experience which must of necessity be limited, I am very anxious not to appear dogmatic or to give the impression that I wish to lay down the law on the subject. But I hope my readers may profit by my errors, improve on my methods, and thus help to bring about the revival of an almost lost art—one which appeals more directly and more stirringly than any other method to the majority of listeners.

In Sir Philip Sidney's “Defence of Poesy” we find these words:

“Forsooth he cometh to you with a tale, which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste.”

MARIE L. SHEDLOCK.