never read; for little children need the magnetism of eye and smile as
well as the gesture which illuminates the strange word and endows it
with meaning. The story that is told is always a thousand times more
attractive, real, and personal than anything read from a book.

Well-chosen, graphically told stories can be made of distinct
educative value in the nursery or kindergarten. They give the child a
love of reading, develop in him the germ, at least, of a taste for
good literature, and teach him the art of speech. If they are told in
simple, graceful, expressive English, they are a direct and valuable
object lesson in this last direction.

The ear of the child becomes used to refined intonations, and slovenly
language will grow more and more disagreeable to him. The
kindergartner cannot be too careful in this matter. By the sweetness
of her tone and the perfection of her enunciation she not only makes
herself a worthy model for the children, but she constantly reveals
the possibilities of language and its inner meaning.

"The very brooding of a voice on a word," says George Macdonald,
"seems to hatch something of what is in it."

Stories help a child to form a standard by which he can live and grow,
for they are his first introduction into the grand world of the ideal
in character.

"We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love; And even as these are well and
wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend."

The child understands his own life better, when he is enabled to