Stories bring the force of example to bear upon children in the very
best possible way. Here we can speak to the newly awakened soul and
touch it to nobler issues. This can be done with very little of that
abstract moralizing which is generally so ineffective. A moral "lugged
in" by the heels, so to speak, without any sense of perspective on the
part of the Story-Teller, can no more incline a child to nobler living
than cold victuals can serve as a fillip to the appetite. The facts
themselves should suffice to exert the moral influence; the deeds
should speak louder than the words, and in clearer, fuller tones. At
the end of such a story, "Go thou and do likewise" sounds in the
child's heart, and a new throb of tenderness and aspiration, of desire
to do, to grow, and to be, stirs gently there and wakes the soul to
higher ideals. In such a story the canting, vapid, or didactic little
moral, tacked like a tag on the end, for fear we shall not read the
lesson aright, is nothing short of an insult to the better feelings.
It used to be very much in vogue, but we have learned better nowadays,
and we recognize (to paraphrase Mrs. Whitney's bright speech) that we
have often vaccinated children with morality for fear of their taking
it the natural way.

It is a curious fact that children sympathize with the imaginary woes
of birds and butterflies and plants much more readily than with the
sufferings of human beings; and they are melted to tears much more
quickly by simple incidents from the manifold life of nature, than by
the tragedies of human experience which surround them on every side.
Robert Louis Stevenson says in his essay on "Child's Play," "Once,
when I was groaning aloud with physical pain, a young gentleman came
into the room and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and
arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he accepted, as he had
to accept so much else, as a piece of the inexplicable conduct of his