who will become a story-teller.

From the very start, the mood of the tale should be definite and
authoritative, beginning with the mood of the teller and emanating
therefrom in proportion as the physique of the teller is a responsive
medium.

Now we are off. Knowing your story, having your hearers well arranged, and
being as thoroughly as you are able in the right mood, you begin to tell
it. Tell it, then, simply, directly, dramatically, with zest.

_Simply_ applies both to manner and matter. As to manner, I mean without
affectation, without any form of pretence, in short, without posing. It is
a pity to "talk down" to the children, to assume a honeyed voice, to think
of the edifying or educational value of the work one is doing.
Naturalness, being oneself, is the desideratum. I wonder why we so often
use a preposterous voice,--a super-sweetened whine, in talking to
children? Is it that the effort to realise an ideal of gentleness and
affectionateness overreaches itself in this form of the grotesque? Some
good intention must be the root of it. But the thing is none the less
pernicious. A "cant" voice is as abominable as a cant phraseology. Both
are of the very substance of evil.

"But it is easier to _say,_ 'Be natural' than to _be_ it," said one
teacher to me desperately.

Beyond dispute. To those of us who are cursed with an over-abundant
measure of self-consciousness, nothing is harder than simple naturalness.
The remedy is to lose oneself in one's art. Think of the story so
absorbingly and vividly that you have no room to think of yourself. Live