This warning is necessary only in connection with the short dramatic
narrative. There are occasions when we can well afford to offer short
descriptions for the sake of literary style, and for the purpose of
enlarging the vocabulary of the child. I have found, however, in
these cases, it is well to take the children into your confidence,
warning them that they are to expect nothing particularly exciting in
the way of dramatic event. They will then settle down with a freer
mind (though the mood may include a touch of resignation) to the
description you are about to offer them.

2. _Altering the story to suit special occasions_ is done sometimes
from extreme conscientiousness, sometimes from sheer ignorance of the
ways of children. It is the desire to protect them from knowledge which
they already possess and with which they, equally conscientious, are apt
to "turn and rend" the narrator. I remember once when I was telling the
story of the Siege of Troy to very young children, I suddenly felt
anxious lest there should be anything in the story of the rape of Helen
not altogether suitable for the average age of the class, namely, nine
years. I threw, therefore, a domestic coloring over the whole subject
and presented an imaginary conversation between Paris and Helen, in
which Paris tried to persuade Helen that she was strong-minded woman
thrown away on a limited society in Sparta, and that she should come
away and visit some of the institutions of the world with him, which
would doubtless prove a mutually instructive journey.[1] I then gave
the children the view taken by Herodotus that Helen never went to Troy,
but was detained in Egypt. The children were much thrilled by the
story, and responded most eagerly when, in my inexperience, I invited
them to reproduce in writing for the next day the story I had just told
them. A small child presented _me_, as you will see, with the ethical
problem from which I had so laboriously protected _her_. The essay ran: