evening they found some hours for the serious concerns of life." They
gave their days to commerce, but their evenings were devoted to more
important interests!

These words are written for those older people who have made the mistake
of straying away from childhood; children do not read introductions,
because they know that the valuable part of the book is to be found in
the later pages. They read the stories; their elders read the
introduction as well. They both need the stuff of imagination, of which
myths, legends, and fairy tales are made. So much may be said of these
old stories that it is a serious question where to begin, and a still
more difficult question where to end. For these tales are the first
outpourings of that spring of imagination whence flow the most
illuminating, inspiring, refreshing and captivating thoughts and ideas
about life. No philosophy is deeper than that which underlies these
stories; no psychology is more important than that which finds its
choicest illustration in them; no chapter in the history of thought is
more suggestive and engrossing than that which records their growth and
divines their meaning. Fairy tales and myths are so much akin that they
are easily transformed and exchange costumes without changing character;
while the legend, which belongs to a later period, often reflects the
large meaning of the myth and the free fancy of the fairy tale.

As a class, children not only possess the faculty of imagination, but
are very largely occupied with it during the most sensitive and
formative years, and those who lack it are brought under its spell by
their fellows. They do not accurately distinguish between the actual and
the imaginary, and they live at ease in a world out of which paths run
in every direction into wonderland. They begin their education when they
begin to play; for play not only affords an outlet for their energy, and