culture of taste. Fairy stories are not all well told, but the best fairy
stories are supremely well told. And most folk-tales have a movement, a
sweep, and an unaffectedness which make them splendid foundations for
taste in style.

For this, and for poetic presentation of truths in easily assimilated
form, and because it gives joyous stimulus to the imagination, and is
necessary to full appreciation of adult literature, we may freely use the
wonder tale.

Closely related to, sometimes identical with, the fairy tale is the old,
old source of children's love and laughter,

THE NONSENSE TALE

Under this head I wish to include all the merely funny tales of childhood,
embracing the cumulative stories like that of the old woman and the pig
which would not go over the stile. They all have a specific use and
benefit, and are worth the repetition children demand for them. Their
value lies, of course, in the tonic and relaxing properties of humour.
Nowhere is that property more welcome or needed than in the schoolroom. It
does us all good to laugh, if there is no sneer nor smirch in the laugh;
fun sets the blood flowing more freely in the veins, and loosens the
strained cords of feeling and thought; the delicious shock of surprise at
every "funny spot" is a kind of electric treatment for the nerves. But it
especially does us good to laugh when we are children. Every little body
is released from the conscious control school imposes on it, and huddles
into restful comfort or responds gaily to the joke.

More than this, humour teaches children, as it does their grown-up