Part 4 (1/2)

”We have all this straight from the alderman's newspaper, but it is not to be depended on.” From ”Jack the Dullard,” Hans Christian Andersen.

Or by evading the point:

”Whoever does not believe this must buy shares in the Tanner's yard.”

From ”A Great Grief,” Hans Christian Andersen.

Or by some striking general comment:

”He has never caught up with the three days he missed at the beginning of the world, and he has never learnt how to behave.” From ”How the Camel got his Hump”: ”Just So Stories,” Rudyard Kipling.

I have only suggested in this chapter a few of the artifices which I have found useful in my own experience, but I am sure that many more might be added.

CHAPTER IV. ELEMENTS TO AVOID IN THE SELECTION OF MATERIAL.

I am confronted in this portion of my work with a great difficulty, because I cannot afford to be as catholic as I could wish (this rejection or selection of material being primarily intended for those story-tellers dealing with normal children); but I do wish from the outset to distinguish between a story told to an individual child in the home circle or by a personal friend, and a story told to a group of children as part of the school curriculum. And if I seem to reiterate this difference, it is because I wish to show very clearly that the recital of parents and friends may be quite separate in content and manner from that offered by the teaching world. In the former case, almost any subject can be treated, because, knowing the individual temperament of the child, a wise parent or friend knows also what can be presented or not presented to the child; but in dealing with a group of normal children in school much has to be eliminated that could be given fearlessly to the abnormal child; I mean the child who, by circ.u.mstances or temperament, is developed beyond his years.

I shall now mention some of the elements which experience has shown me to be unsuitable for cla.s.s stories.

I. _Stories dealing with a.n.a.lysis of motive and feeling_. This warning is specially necessary today, because this is, above all, an age of introspection and a.n.a.lysis. We have only to glance at the princ.i.p.al novels and plays during the last quarter of a century, more especially during the last ten years, to see how this spirit has crept into our literature and life.

Now, this tendency to a.n.a.lyze is obviously more dangerous for children than for adults, because, from lack of experience and knowledge of psychology, the child's a.n.a.lysis is incomplete. It cannot see all the causes of the action, nor can it make that philosophical allowance for mood which brings the adult to truer conclusions.

Therefore, we should discourage the child who shows a tendency to a.n.a.lyze too closely the motives of its action, and refrain from presenting to them in our stories any example which might encourage them to persist in this course.

I remember, on one occasion, when I went to say good night to a little girl of my acquaintance, I found her sitting up in bed, very wide- awake. Her eyes were s.h.i.+ning, her cheeks were flushed, and when I asked her what had excited her so much, she said:

”I _know_ I have done something wrong today, but I cannot quite remember what it was.”

I said: ”But, Phyllis, if you put your hand, which is really quite small, in front of your eyes, you could not see the shape of anything else, however large it might be. Now, what you have done today appears very large because it is so close, but when it is a little further off, you will be able to see better and know more about it.

So let us wait till tomorrow morning.”

I am happy to say that she took my advice. She was soon fast asleep, and the next morning she had forgotten the wrong over which she had been unhealthily brooding the night before.

2. _Stories dealing too much with sarcasm and satire_. These are weapons which are too sharply polished, and therefore too dangerous, to place in the hands of children. For here again, as in the case of a.n.a.lysis, they can only have a very incomplete conception of the case. They do not know the real cause which produces the apparently ridiculous appearance, and it is only the abnormally gifted child or grown-up person who discovers this by instinct. It takes a lifetime to arrive at the position described in Sterne's words: ”I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of misery to be ent.i.tled to all the with which Rabelais has ever scattered.”

I will hasten to add that I should not wish children to have their sympathy too much drawn out, of their emotions kindled too much to pity, because this would be neither healthy nor helpful to themselves or others. I only want to protect children from the dangerous critical att.i.tude induced by the use of satire which sacrifices too much of the atmosphere of trust and belief in human beings which ought to be an essential of child life. By indulging in satire, the sense of kindness in children would become perverted, their sympathy cramped, and they themselves would be old before their time. We have an excellent example of this in Hans Christian Andersen's ”Snow Queen.”

When Kay gets the piece of broken mirror into his eye, he no longer sees the world from the normal child's point of view; he can no longer see anything but the foibles of those about him, a condition usually reached by a course of pessimistic experience.

Andersen sums up the unnatural point of view in these words: ”When Kay tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he could only remember the multiplication table.” Now, without taking these words in any literal sense, we can admit that they represent the development of the head at the expense of the heart.

An example of this kind of story to avoid is Andersen's ”Story of the b.u.t.terfly.” The bitterness of the Anemones, the sentimentality of the Violets, the schoolgirlishness of the Snowdrops, the domesticity of the Sweetpeas--all this tickles the palate of the adult, but does not belong to the place of the normal child. Again, I repeat, that the unusual child may take all this in and even preserve his kindly att.i.tude towards the world, but it is dangerous atmosphere for the ordinary child.

3. _Stories of a sentimental character_. Strange to say, this element of sentimentality appeals more to the young teachers than to the children themselves. It is difficult to define the difference between real sentiment and sentimentality, but the healthy normal boy or girl of, let us say, ten or eleven years old, seems to feel it unconsciously, though the distinction is not so clear a few years later.

Mrs. Elisabeth McCracken contributed an excellent article some years ago to the _Outlook_ on the subject of literature for the young, in which we find a good ill.u.s.tration of this power of discrimination on the part of a child.

A young teacher was telling her pupils the story of the emotional lady who, to put her lover to the test, bade him pick up the glove which she had thrown down into the arena between the tiger and the lion.

The lover does her bidding in order to vindicate his character as a brave knight. One boy after hearing the story at once states his contempt for the knight's acquiescence, which he declares to be unworthy.