impulse for which I cannot account prompted me to go off on a side
issue to describe the personal appearance of Ulysses.

The children were visibly bored, but with polite indifference they
listened to my elaborate description of the hero. If I had given them
an actual description from Homer, I believe that the strength of the
language would have appealed to their imagination (all the more
strongly because the might not have understood the individual words)
and have lessened their disappointment at the dramatic issue being
postponed; but I trusted to my own lame verbal efforts, and signally
failed. Attention flagged, fidgeting began, the atmosphere was
rapidly becoming spoiled in spit of the patience and toleration still
shown by the children. At last, however, one little girl in the front
row, as spokeswoman for the class, suddenly said: "If you please,
before you go on any further, do you mind telling us whether, after
all, that Poly . . . [slight pause] . . . that . . . [final attempt]
. . . _Polyanthus_ died?"

Now, the remembrance of this question has been of extreme use to me in
my career as a story-teller. I have realized that in a short dramatic
story the mind of the listeners must be set at ease with regard to
the ultimate fate of the special Polyanthus who takes the center of
the stage.

I remember, too, the despair of a little boy at a dramatic
representation of "Little Red Riding-Hood," when that little person
delayed the thrilling catastrophe with the Wolf, by singing a pleasant
song on her way through the wood. "Oh, why," said the little boy,
"does she not get on?" And I quite shared his impatience.