shore," as a sea would, without doubt. In the play the children were
allowed to thump the floor lustily, as a presentation of their watery
functions! It was unconscionably funny. Fancy presenting even the
crudest image of the mighty sea, surging up on the shore, by a row of
infants squatted on the floor and pounding with their fists! Such
pitfalls can be avoided by the simple rule of personifying only
characters that actually behave like human beings.

A caution which directly concerns the art of story-telling itself, must
be added here. There is a definite distinction between the arts of
narration and dramatisation which must never be overlooked. Do not,
yourself, half tell and half act the story; and do not let the children
do it. It is done in very good schools, sometimes, because an enthusiasm
for realistic and lively presentation momentarily obscures the faculty
of discrimination. A much loved and respected teacher whom I recently
listened to, and who will laugh if she recognises her blunder here,
offers a good "bad example" in this particular. She said to an attentive
audience of students that she had at last, with much difficulty, brought
herself to the point where she could forget herself in her story: where
she could, for instance, hop, like the fox, when she told the story of
the "sour grapes." She said, "It was hard at first, but now it is a
matter of course; _and the children do it too, when they tell the
story_." That was the pity! I saw the illustration myself a little
later. The child who played fox began with a story: he said, "Once there
was an old fox, and he saw some grapes"; then the child walked to the
other side of the room, and looked at an imaginary vine, and said, "He
wanted some; he thought they would taste good, so he jumped for them";
at this-point the child did jump, like his rôle; then he continued with
his story, "but he couldn't get them." And so he proceeded, with a
constant alternation of narrative and dramatisation which was enough to