crudities and occasional absurdities. The teacher, on the other hand,
must avoid, with great judgment, certain absurdities which can easily be
initiated by her. The first direful possibility is in the choice of
material. It is very desirable that children should not be allowed to
dramatise stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially
valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to the
pupils through its present crude handling. Mother Goose is a hardy old
lady, and will not suffer from the grasp of the seven-year-old; and the
familiar fables and tales of the "Goldilocks" variety have a firmness of
surface which does not let the glamour rub off; but stories in which
there is a hint of the beauty just beyond the palpable--or of a dignity
suggestive of developed literature--are sorely hurt in their
metamorphosis, and should be protected from it. They are for telling
only.

Another point on which it is necessary to exercise reserve is in the
degree to which any story can be acted. In the justifiable desire to
bring a large number of children into the action one must not lose sight
of the sanity and propriety of the presentation. For example, one must
not make a ridiculous caricature, where a picture, however crude, is the
intention. Personally represent only such things as are definitely and
dramatically personified in the story. If a natural force, the wind, for
example, is represented as talking and acting like a human being in the
story, it can be imaged by a person in the play; but if it remains a
part of the picture in the story, performing only its natural motions,
it is a caricature to enact it as a rôle. The most powerful instance of
a mistake of this kind which I have ever seen will doubtless make my
meaning clear. In playing a pretty story about animals and children,
some children in an elementary school were made by the teacher to take
the part of the sea. In the story, the sea was said to "beat upon the