ART OF THE STORY-TELLER, by MARIE L. SHEDLOCK




PREFACE.


Some day we shall have a science of education comparable to the
science of medicine; but even when that day arrives the art of
education will still remain the inspiration and the guide of all
wise teachers. The laws that regulate our physical and mental
development will be reduced to order; but the impulses which lead
each new generation to play its way into possession of all that
is best in life will still have to be interpreted for us by the
artists who, with the wisdom of years, have not lost the direct
vision of children.

Some years ago I heard Miss Shedlock tell stories in England. Her
fine sense of literary and dramatic values, her power in sympathetic
interpretation, always restrained within the limits of the art she was
using, and her understanding of educational values, based on a wide
experience of teaching, all marked her as an artist in story-telling.
She was equally at home in interpreting the subtle blending of wit and
wisdom in Daudet, the folk lore philosophy of Grimm, or the deeper
world philosophy and poignant human appeal of Hans Christian Andersen.

Then she came to America and for two or three years she taught us the
difference between the nightingale that sings in the tree tops and the
artificial bird that goes with a spring. Cities like New York, Boston,