up, looked him over, and soliloquised in precise language,--evidently
remembered, "What is the matter with the lion? Oh, I see; he is caught in
a trap." And then she gnawed with her teeth at the imaginary rope which
bound him.

"What makes you so kind to me, little Mouse?" said the rescued lion.

"You let me go, when I asked you," said the mouse demurely.

"Thank you, little Mouse," answered the lion; and therewith, finis.

It is not impossible that all this play atmosphere may seem incongruous
and unnecessary to teachers used to more conventional methods, but I feel
sure that an actual experience of it would modify that point of view
conclusively. The children of the schools where story-telling and
"dramatising" were practised were startlingly better in reading, in
attentiveness, and in general power of expression, than the pupils of like
social conditions in the same grades of other cities which I visited soon
after, and in which the more conventional methods were exclusively used.
The teachers, also, were stronger in power of expression.

But the most noticeable, though the least tangible, difference was in the
moral atmosphere of the schoolroom. There had been a great gain in
vitality in all the rooms where stories were a part of the work. It had
acted and reacted on pupils and teachers alike. The telling of a story
well so depends on being thoroughly vitalised that, naturally, habitual
telling had resulted in habitual vitalisation.

This result was not, of course, wholly due to the practice of
story-telling, but it was in some measure due to that. And it was a result